Monday, June 30, 2014

gah. and now my fingers are sore again. well, that's how this works until i get the calluses back up.

the library is, in fact, open today, so i'll have those scores printed, and i'll be focusing on the full version. that's pick work, mostly - quick to finish. i'm not going to hold my life up on this. i'll keep working at it sporadically.

it's not the speed that i keep fucking up, it's the dynamics. put bluntly, i need to practice this before i can produce a version i can upload. a lot.

then again, maybe getting some sleep would help.
today was a wash. i made it to the library for some printing, but it was closed. i'm not sure if it's because it's sunday (things still close on sunday? why?) or because it's holiday season here, but it was a piss off.

i lost most of the day to running around, and then got sucked into youtube. but i've got a few hours now and will hopefully have something up before the sun reappears.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

people may have observed me running at full pace down the street today while pushing a shopping cart (it was starting to rain), and, if they did, they were no doubt struck by my wanton disrespect for rules and flat out rebellious behaviour.

yes, i was told not to run with a shopping cart, and warned of the dangers of doing so. yet, i heed the laws of no man!

in other news, the library was closed today, and i wasn't happy about it.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

reacting to a classical guitar satire on youtube

i think you're almost making a valid point. i've picked up a few pieces that seem to sound roughly like this, but what you're doing is mistaking bad writers for a bad method. i would agree that the problem is compounded by the "academic establishment", who for some reason tend to pick out the worst of the bunch out of some kind of a desire for shock value. there's probably an underlying psychiatric condition that causes music teachers to hate the thing they cycle their life around. whether an expression of the ultraparadoxical or a reflection of self-loathing remains an open question in my mind, but it's gotta be something like that. it's some kind of rebellion, and that's something to cherish in principle if it doesn't always work out in practice. but, let's be blunt: this is a topic for two centuries ago. if you want to create interesting music in the 21st century, you can't be dragging the corpse of music theory around with you. holding on to music theory at this late a date is really something like holding on to creationism. or causality. pitches are mathematical objects. they exist in a continuum. any attempt to order that - be it through conventional music theory or tone rows - is just meaningless, oppressive structure.

the right way to look at it is that it's really just a question of tonal freedom. it's my composition, and i'll flat diminished if i want to, flat diminished if i want to....

the better side of it has a level of artistry that goes beyond the pretension. it just reduces to tension and release when you break it down to it's most basic. does it not seem foolhardy to restrict your emotional expression to a flawed mathematical relation? i think the best conventional composers have all understood this, and it's what really makes them stand out. standing on the other side of webern and cage just means coming to terms with it, without the hubris of pretending otherwise.

which is pretty pretentious, too.

but, i hear you - it's there, especially in the universities, and, sadly, they seem intent on upholding it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pwKMtJxUC0

as i expected, letting my hand heal a few days was a good move. i haven't slept in a few days, and i need to eat immediately, but, eyelids permitting, i may be able to get the electric version up by the end of the night.

i need another week for my fingernails for the classical version.

i've also decided to do an expressive version when i get around to filming myself. i mean, the piece is sort of robotic. and it's sort of ironic that the only scores i've ever not run ramshackle over are my own. i don't want to put the video up under pretensions of being a guitar hero or something. first, it's not challenging enough. second, fuck that nonsense, anyways. it's a nice piece. i'm an expressive player. i should play to my strengths.

but i do feel the need to get proper versions up first. like i said, it's going to be a bit, anyways, so i'd might as well have some fun with it.

correcting the time machine, again

so, i've uploaded those two files one last time. the bass wasn't coming across well on low end equipment, which is sort of essential stylistically. i had to cut the parts up and resequence them all, but it bounces now...
actually, i'm fighting with the bass. grargh.
i'm going to need to print some more sheet music before i can record the live version, but it should actually be relatively quick - i'm just replacing five guitar tracks, and they're all short and relatively easy. i'll probably print them as soon as this afternoon.

but i'm going to want to work that reprise out first, probably. it'll be in it's own space on the single and attached to the full version on jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj, which will go to youtube as a 6-7 minute track, if i don't add a third section (and i'm thinking i might).

uploading the time machine to thru (original uploads)

i'm putting mixes together for "singles", but, ultimately, the thru mix is one of two mirror images i'm working on. meaning this is this version's home. meaning it's done, now.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 23, 2014 and updated on june 28, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-time-machine

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 28, 2014 and updated later on that day.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-time-machine-5

the time machine (vst mix) (correction of original upload)

this is the vst mix, which hooks up the constructed score to a series of vst instruments through the magic of midi sequencing and outputs the notes through various effects processors to create something approaching the sound of a live band.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 28, 2014 and updated later on that day.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/vst-mix-2

the time machine (soundblaster mix) (correction of original upload)

ok, so that's done now. the thru entry will come in on rss.

i had to clean up the drums a bit because the effects i had on them were saturating the mix. it's better now.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 23, 2014 and updated on june 28, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/soundblaster-mix-3

the time machine (vst mix) (original upload)

this is getting close to a final mix of the renaissance guitar piece i've been orchestrating this month. it's arranged here in a heavy drum 'n' bass mix. so, play it through a subwoofer if you've got one. influences on this mix are of the warp records variety: aphex twin, autechre, squarepusher. keep in mind it was written and first imagined this way back in '01, when that sound was kind of winding down, and starting to morph into post-rock via tortoise and do make say think, which is also stylistically present in the mix. but i need to stress this is fundamentally renaissance music. i'm also trying to get a grungy guitar sound at points, which will come out clearer in the final mix with live guitars (the guitars here are played by a sample-based midi sequencer through some amp simulators - they sound good, but they're not live). the drums are also written with a heavy phil collins influence, of all things.

so, this is warp records + do make say think + phil collins + swans + renaissance music. an eclectic mix, i might say, that i'm sort of proud of. give it a listen....

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 28, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/vst-mix-2

Friday, June 27, 2014

fwiw, this is going to be the final score. i've doubled a few things, but i'm not going to update the soundblaster mix...


uploading the time machine (vst mix) to the scratchpad

so, this is the mix i'll be chewing on over the next few days. specific points of issue are in the bass and the guitar tone. see, this is drum and bass, so i want the thick bottom end, but i want it a bit more organic sounding, because it's also renaissance music, so i'm going to have to play with things for a while. and i'm always fussing over guitar tone...

this is the vst version, though, rather than the live one. solely computers, here. live version will follow.

i also need to get back to practicing that classical and fingerpicking variety....

https://googledrive.com/host/0B5JfVE9XTZikMS1zek9ER0xSU1E/scratchpad/

Thursday, June 26, 2014

uploading the time machine (reprise) (end loop) to the scratchpad

i've pulled this loop out. it's sort of like a memory fading. obviously, it needs a guitar solo.

https://googledrive.com/host/0B5JfVE9XTZikMS1zek9ER0xSU1E/scratchpad/
actually, i'm starting to think the thing with bandstand is that it's purely sample based so it's stuttering out badly when it's not able to find a sample that matches the note.

....meaning i'm driving it too hard.

which reduces to that it sucks. i mean, it needs to be able to do at least what my soundcard from 1997 can do.

and don't tell me i ought to have a quadcore with 40 gb of ram to emulate my soundcard from 1997. that's ridiculous.

i think the soundcard is 64 mb of ram. i dunno why they don't just build something that sits in ram.

but the drums sound fine, which is what i'm using it for, so i'll stop complaining.
bandstand sucks. i think it should be enough for the track, but i need to find a better way to render general midi through cubase. remarkably, you want to know what the most popular approach is on the internet? record to wave and import. which defeats the point of cubase.

bandstand seems to just be really, really bad at playing back notes. like, it just doesn't play the notes as they're written. there's one thing it's supposed to do....

and, i know it's the vsti because it works fine as soon as i switch it.

i acknowledge it may be the evaluation copy. regardless, i need to find another solution.

i'm kind of doing this the old fashioned way. people tend to use samplers or wave files in loops nowadays. nobody sits down and scores out drums for general midi, then tries to find a vsti that understands general midi over track 10.

i have two alesis dm5 drum heads that i'd expect should read the data, but i'd rather keep this particular project at a software level if i can

it's just a conceptual thing on keeping it in software.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

thoughts on the new jack white album

well, jack white is almost 40, now. yeah, that's crazy, huh? so, i guess it's time to be more subtle and introspective and grown-up and all that other boring shit.

it'll happen to you, too.
</grandpa simpson>

on principle, it's not a bad thing if he wants to be a little more sophisticated. it's just that the nashville direction he's spinning in isn't going to sit well with a lot of the fans he's built up on the dirty garage/psych side of things, who'd rather hear his sophistication branch out in more of a tame impala direction (to use a contemporary act as a reference point). bluntly, a lot of us are probably going to finally trip the line with this and admit we're bored by it - not because it's "more sophisticated" but because it's just wandered too far out of our sphere of interest. the couple of mahavishnu romps seem forced. and, note that mahavishnu was not the sonics, huh?

and, that's fine. he doesn't need the cash. and we can all find something else to listen to. but, if he's smart, and he is, he'll find a way to better align his marketing apparatus with his musical future.


/>

thoughts on the new jack white single

deathtokoalas
well, jack white still has the best tone ever in the history of guitars. man, that thing just squeals.

i'm going to interpret the rest of this as tongue-in-cheek, but i'm not really sure what the point of taking jsbx to as far of an ironic extreme as is possible really is....


ahmad almheiri
The guitar work is VERY similar to Led Zeppelin, but not nearly as good. But still a good song.

deathtokoalas
this particular track demonstrates an overall primary influence from john mclaughlin, rather than jimmy page. it's subtle, but trust me.

Justtryme90
I wish more people were influenced by Mclaughlin, Mahavishnu Orchestra are amazing.

deathtokoalas
well, it's easy to forget that it's also the case that john mclaughlin's biggest fan and primary protege was....jimmy page. he'd probably have spent the rest of his life doing session work for country musicians if mclaughlin didn't take him aside and show him a few things. but, the violin work here is very mahavishnu and the overall style is an update on the graham bond organization through a filter of jon spencer.

Ademga348
zepelin are shit band if you dont know

Thomas Haley
Zeppelin are one of the very first true Metal bands along with Sabbath. And Jimmy Page was one of the greatest guitarist ever.

deathtokoalas
but, the fact that they were early metal is why they were often a shit band. that being said,they did a few solid blues jams, and wrote a few proto-punk tunes. it's not all bad. but, most of it is...

ZGrep58
Just because a guitarist claims that his riff was stolen 40 YEARS after a massive hit was released does not mean it is true. The two songs sound faintly similar. If it was really stolen don't you think he would have noticed when it came out considering that Stairway was a massive hit?

deathtokoalas
just fwiw, these accusations of stairway being a rip are not new. i remember hearing about them when i was learning to play stairway in the early 90s (my guitar teacher at the time was a 60s/70s rock expert. he had me doing the blues classics: santana, zeppelin, hendrix. but he also had me doing some prog, like genesis. i started teaching myself nirvana, soundgarden, pumpkins, etc a few years later - and also some forgotten stuff like collective soul that had some tasty guitar playing. i think it was come as you are that got me first, but i remember spending a lot of time with superunknown and siamese dream, particularly.). i agree that it certainly took them long enough to file legal action, but it's not like nobody noticed.

further, page is known to have stolen many, many other riffs from early blues guitarists, as well as from john mclaughlin. and, that itself is really only contemptible in the context of how much money he made from it. the blues are not about artistic creativity, they're about personal expression. all the blues guitarists stole riffs from each other.

if there was absolute justice in the world, the boot of god would come down from the sky, kick jimmy in the ass and redistribute his sizable fortune across about 50 blues guitarists, many of colour, and most of whom are now dead. alas...

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
well, stairway isn't really a blues tune. and the rip is more in the arrangement.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

btw, this is my walkaway conclusion from researching my diet and trying to be a little bit more healthy...

"eat food. not too much. mostly plants."

this is more or less how i've lived my whole life. i'm more confirming my existing philosophy than deriving a new one...

...and i don't think that's an oversimplification. it's not that it doesn't matter what you eat, it's that it only matters in relation to how your body *stores* what you consume, which is what happens when you eat *too much*. so, processed carbs are worse for your heart than red meat, but it's not because of how your body metabolizes it but because of how your body stores the fat. there's a growing problem with people that replaced too much red meat with too much processed carbs. basically, they didn't grasp that the real problem is that their lifestyles have them eating far too much relative to the amount of exercise they get. in the end, your body stores processed carbs as badly as or worse than it stores red meat and the same problems end up happening; replacing too much of one thing with too much of another doesn't solve anything.

i don't think studies have been done on it, but i would suspect that you'd see the same problems amongst people that eat thousands of calories worth of fruit and vegetables on a daily basis. if you eat so much fruit that your body is forced to store it, stuff starts getting clogged....

so, if the problem is the way your body stores fuel (perhaps we're not really evolved to store fuel as fat as well as we could be), then the solution is to reduce the amount of fuel it's storing by reducing diet as much as possible, or burning it all off. it's less about *what goes in* and more about *how much gets stored*.

it follows that a bagel that contains 15% of your daily carb intake is absolutely fine if it's also 50% of the carbs you eat through the day. and etc.

this is not a problem for me to accomplish because i don't follow set eating times. i follow my stomach, and eat when i'm hungry. i really couldn't imagine eating thrice daily - that strikes me as pure insanity. twice, at most....

but, extrapolating what i've learned, that's maybe the best advice there is: don't eat unless you're hungry.
i do need to reiterate that life really is almost absolutely perfect for me right now. if i could define an existence for myself in a computer model, it would be almost exactly the life that i'm living right now. excluding border papers, there's nothing i want that i don't have. i have unrestricted free time. i'm getting some work done for the first time in many years. i legitimately couldn't be happier.
i continue to have these bizarrely vivid recurring dreams about lions and tigers. it's been going on for years - decades, maybe - but it comes and goes. recently, it's been really intense....

the plot is some variation on how i'm supposed to get used to them and stop being silly because the idea that they're going to eat me is just me being paranoid, but me knowing better, and escaping moments before they turn on me, which always "excites them" into eating some loved one, which i get the blame for. further, the dream is almost always set in the south gloucester ghetto/project/neighbourhood i grew up in.

i'm convinced i had some kind of traumatic childhood experience with some kind of large cat that lived around the corner on hunter's way, near the community pool. i don't know if it was ever confirmed that there was a large cat living there or not, but i know exactly what house it was. it's very vivid. i was going out to go swimming on my little bicycle (i couldn't have been more than ten years old), and i looked up and saw a bengal tiger walk by. i was absolutely nerd enough of a kid to know the precise difference between a bengal tiger, a snow leopard, an african lion, a puma, a serval, an oceolot, a black jaguar, a cheetah, etc. i had taken out a book from the library that categorically listed every known species of cat (including the smaller species of african and asian wild cats) and studied it pretty closely, so i would have been able to (and for the most part am still able to) identify just about any species of cat i could've seen with a high degree of accuracy.

it didn't seem to see me. but, i sure saw it, and i got on my bike and rode home and didn't go near the pool the rest of the summer due to a very intense and very real fear of the bengal tiger in the house on hunter's point. but every time i explained it, people thought i just had an overactive imagination and was seeing things.

the tiger is usually a lion nowadays, and the place in the neighbourhood shifts dramatically from dream to dream, but i just can't shake this one. and it's not fun to wake up knowing that you just escaped a hungry pack of lions or tigers that you know is about to consume your sister and/or your mom....

Monday, June 23, 2014

the time machine (soundblaster mix) (original upload)

this is the crux of what this thing is going to sound like, i just need to improve the sound fonts and clean the mix up.

this is a temporary mix, built up in noteworthy, that suffers from a slightly blurry drum sound due to everything being run through channel 10 in the soundcard synthesizer. specifically, i'd like to turn the snare down (because it blurs the toms) but it doesn't seem to be possible to do this. obviously, i'll want to fix this as i build more sophisticated mixes of the track. however, this is what the track sounded like on playback as i was actually arranging it....

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in mid june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 23, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/soundblaster-mix-3
cops came and went. these ones seemed a little less like your typical cops, and understood the premise a little bit better.

it was pointed out that i'd have a better chance of ensuring a diagnosis if i'm able to build a relationship with an md. this is more or less what i was thinking, it's why i went through the process of seeing a shrink in the first place, but the idea of trying to get a family doctor to build a diagnosis isn't something that crossed my mind. well, it's an avenue to explore, and it would be imprudent not to explore it.

again, they seemed surprised by my level of rational thinking. they weren't really expecting me to agree with them and were visibly shaken by how easily i agreed that the suggestion was reasonable. they seem to have been expecting me to resist somehow.

so, i have an alternate plan i'll want to put into motion in the next few days. but i want to be clear that the fundamental situation remains unaltered.
so, the drums are in for the first half. i think that's done, now. so, lunch time....

the mix is going to be a little messy until i get it imported into cubase. despite notating them in separate staffs, i'm not able to modify the volume of independent drum sounds because they're all out channel 10. afaik, it's a flaw in the technology and i can't do anything about it.
what would happen if phil collins and autechre mated?

gots the toms in....

Sunday, June 22, 2014

just slept about 26 hours or so, waking up only briefly to eat and check social media. it's my neck again. i think it's ok, now.

i can't really pin a cause. it's probably a culmination of things. i went for a long walk on friday morning with a bag full of compost, but i really felt fine when i came back. i feel comfortable in my decision to do so, but i don't deny that there's been a little stress about deciding to end my own life in a few months, conditional on circumstances. a lot of coffee. lack of sleep. the piece i've been practicing has got me really tense, with clenched teeth and everything - this is i think is the primary culprit, the others are only secondary. and nicotine (i'm still on target, but cracked a bit last week). guess i just burnt out.

i'm alert now and hoping to finish the sequencing on the track by the end of the night.

uploading the time machine (soundblaster mix) to the scratchpad

my neck is still seized up, so i'm going to sleep a little more. finishing the drums here remains the primary priority. but, this is what i did yesterday. the idea here is to ask for suggestions.....

https://googledrive.com/host/0B5JfVE9XTZikMS1zek9ER0xSU1E/scratchpad/
my neck seized up again a few hours ago, which forced me to sleep early. i'll be working out the drums this morning.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

getting there.



i think i'm done arranging, except the drums.
yeah. fingers are too sore to play for the day. i guess i haven't played eight hours a day for a few years, but i'm actually really happy to get back to it. just need to get those callouses back to where they should be...

regarding the changes to the score, i'm pretty sure i'll have some kind of something up somewhere before i sleep again.
on second thought, all i've managed to do today is work my fingers down to the bone. i'm going to give them a rest and work on the score tomorrow. i've certainly been mentally writing...

i also need to do something about the clenched teeth while playing this. maybe user a soother ;)

Friday, June 20, 2014

also, you could always listen to every single song i've uploaded in reverse chronological order, if you'd like.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3JSjmqp0cbubsqYGaNbe_PBK0kh9xHD1
hey, i don't know how i managed to get 100 people to decide to subscribe to my youtube channel, but i somehow did manage to do just that. keep an eye out for signs of the apocalypse...

in the meantime, i think this calls for a celebration.

hey, listen - reality is that society is running just fine without me, and that the challenges i'm facing are not unique to me, and will become increasingly prevalent over the course of the next generation. youth unemployment in this region is pushing 30%. there are places in europe where it's pushing 50%. this is a structural level of unemployment that is likely with us permanently moving forwards. the solution is not to magically create jobs where no jobs are necessary, to dig ditches and fill them in as the old saying goes, it's to come to terms with the reality that we've already reached the technological requirements of full communism and adjust the social system to account for that reality. my generation is just unfortunate enough to be on the bleeding edge of it, where the shifts in technology are ahead of the shifts in mass consciousness. there's no future in western society beyond that realization, but there's a lot of social norms and traditions pushing against coming to terms with it. the fact is we live in a reality where we're increasingly only able to employ a small percentage of the population, and the rest is not going to have any option but to live on the wealth that the machines create, in one way or another.

there's a popular misconception that we've lost all the jobs to offshoring, but if you actually look at statistics and ask economists about it the truth will come out that the largest share of job losses are due to mechanization. mexico didn't steal your job, robots did. the robots and artificial intelligences are just getting better. i've seen a number of articles recently asking if doctors are about to be replaced by smart phones. well, i think we'll always have a place for doctors and surgeons especially - but the workload may decrease dramatically. a "family doctor" may soon be a thing of the past. the classrooms of the near future will probably not have teachers in them. &etc.

as all these shifts in technology create ever increasing levels of unemployment, we're going to have to adopt ideas like job sharing. to an extent, we're already there, with the ubiquity of part-time employment. but, again, the social system hasn't adjusted to it. perhaps, more problematically, workers movements haven't adjusted to it. demanding higher wages seems progressive, but it's masking a larger problem. from a quality of life perspective, working part-time is far better than working full-time, is it not? that's less work and more play, which ought to be the goal (i understand it isn't currently). but, it requires structural adjustments like guaranteed incomes to fill in the holes. otherwise, we need to turn the machines off - or adopt ghastly measures to decrease the population.

these are realities that we all need to come to terms with. more and more people are going to be living the way i am, out of necessity, because a prole has nothing to sell but labour, and if capital isn't buying labour then the prole simply doesn't have a way out. i'm just a little ahead of the curve in understanding these things.

the only reason it's not hitting us right now with mass movements is that there's so much wealth tied up in the older generation. i didn't get the worst hand in life, but i didn't get the best one, either. there's thousands and thousands of people in my age group in my situation, but they have family they can live with, so they're not in dire straits.

i mean, i'm sure you've seen these self checkout machines at grocery stores.

consider the consequences if every grocery store, big box chain and retail outlet let their cashiers go as obsolete in the face of new technology. well, it's gonna happen....
lol.

some cops showed up today to talk about my suicidal facebook messages. but, the context in the messages is very clear - i'm not currently suicidal. such an autonomous decision is dependent upon the outcome of the odsp evaluation in september. i was posting to prepare others for the eventuality. further, while i'm fairly certain of the outcome, i'm actually holding out hope that it will be extended. how can i be suicidal if i'm mutedly optimistic about the future, and merely planning for the worst case should it actualize?

i've already posted my logic.

it's always interesting explaining my coldly rational, detached perspective to people that seem to think they have the ability to magically project their desires onto reality.

but, you're giving up too soon! you're young!

it's not a question of giving up. that's a subjective perspective. i'm about analyzing data and coming to objective conclusions. my attitude doesn't affect the data, which clearly demonstrates that my chances of finding employment are exceedingly low. it has nothing to do with how i feel, it's just what the data states.

but, you haven't tried.

sure i have. that's how i built up my data set. why try further when the data projects a high probability of failure? it would be *this* behaviour that would be insane.

but that was in ottawa.

the conditions here are worse than in ottawa. that's why i moved here. it follows that i should spend even less time trying here.

you're just focusing on numbers and statistics, you just need to think positively and...

no. i need to focus on data. your arguments are not convincing, because you're not challenging the data, you're merely asking me to ignore it in favour of magical thinking.

*frown*

i tried to explain it, but they didn't get it. they did, however, convince me to allow a nurse to come later today to talk to me.

btw: the correct mathematical argument against my data-driven deductions is to question whether employment data is dependent. if each process is independent of the next, my conclusions collapse.

i think there is some argument for this. in fact, it even follows that if each process is independent then the probability of eventually finding a job approaches one (because any non-zero probability implies at least one success in infinitely many trials).

however, i'm convinced that the challenges are related to personal character traits, which makes each trial dependent on the last.
love the guitar tone i'm getting. dirty finger pickin' tele sound. canned through the pod, though, not a live amp.
so, i'm running through at 360. it's a little sloppy, but it's coming. i'm thinking i'll have a recording of some sort up by the end of the day. i want to bleach my hair for the vid. well, i want to bleach my hair anyways, but it's a good excuse.

so, that means the vid through old cheri amp is likely for tomorrow.

that's actually the first guitar amp i ever bought. tiny little thing. there's an interview where kim thayil explains that he records with small amps, and he name dropped cheri. i was young and took it on the drop, given there were only a few other in that price range. it's actually a great sounding little mini amp....

Thursday, June 19, 2014

jumped to electric, and that pushed me up to 320. i think this will be relatively soon.

also: it seems that circumstances are going to lead me to take my own life in september or october, so i'm putting all other things on permanent hiatus and focusing solely on music, to try and get as much done as i can before i die.
head cleared, decision clarified, expecting the worst, resolved to get as much music done between now and september as i can.

that means i'm not thinking about it between now and then or wasting my time with it.

i just want to get the logic down somewhere for when (if) they find the body.

1) it does not appear as though i am going to have my disability renewed.
2) therefore, i will be unable to pay rent.
3) therefore, i will lose my studio. again.
4) i have nowhere else to store my studio.
5) therefore, i will have no way to save my studio if i am unable to pay rent to house it.
6) humans need a purpose to continue to exist and whither away without one. i have categorically rejected most accepted purposes for existence as not interesting (children, "career", partner, family, etc.). the one purpose i have is recording.
7) therefore, losing my studio would also be losing my purpose to exist.
8) therefore, i would no longer have a will to exist.
9) therefore, suicide will become desirable.

note that, questions of the desirability of labour aside, the chances of me finding employment here or elsewhere are approaching zero. i haven't had a job of any sort since 2011 and i haven't had a full time job since 2008. i have also consistently been fired from every job i've had since 2008 for being unable to show up on time. i see no use in pretending that i will be able to support myself when the evidence is abundantly clear that i will not be able to.

it follows that i'm better off maximizing the recording time i have left than i am wasting my time trying and failing to find a job i'd be fired from within a few weeks, anyways.

...or neuroticizing over a way out. there isn't one.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/julian-baggini-suicide-can-be-a-rational-choice-1912358.html

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

i've decided to wait.

if i only have a few months left, i don't want to waste it chasing around doctors.
i went back to the clinic to get a second rec and they suggested i go to a "crisis center" at the hospital. i'm debating it, and leaning towards doing it now rather than waiting for the decision and doing it then.

i don't know what the right diagnosis is either, but i'm certain that it's abundantly clear to any person that can analyze evidence that i'm not capable of or interested in participating in society, and anybody denying that clear and obvious truth must have a political motive in front of him.

bluntly: if you actually think i'm capable of properly functioning in this world, you're either stupid or ignorant of the facts.

i'm sick of struggling. if the system doesn't make the right decision, people are going to get hurt.

a life spent working is a life that is not worth living.

if this happens (and i'm hoping things are worked out, but, if odsp throws me off, i will almost certainly choose to end my life or do something that will place me in a jail cell for a long time), you need to think of it in terms of me ending my suffering. it will be for the best.

one day, people will look back at the barbarity of market societies and canonize those who resisted. hopefully, through suicide, as an act of defiance, i can provide inspiration for future generations.
well, that went terribly. and, all the peace and stability and happiness i've been feeling over the last few months just went up in a smoke of rage and anger and hopelessness.

some ideas floating through my mind.

1) show up at the psychiatrist's office with a butcher knife and saw my foot off in front of him. manipulating you? want me to prove otherwise, you producerist piece of fucking shit? how about we get your license taken away? ruining your career would give me more pleasure than my foot does. fucker. die. die. die.

2) taking baseball bats to the odsp building and just hanging out outside until the cops show up, and then admit it. when they release me, do it again. then again. and again. and again....

the bottom line that these fuckers have to come to is this: they can either sign my disability papers, or they can watch me kill myself and/or put me in jail, because i'm not participating in this society. it's a threat, but it's not an empty one. i'm at the end. there's no compromising. no trying to fit in. i'm on the fucking terrorists' side. this society needs to be incinerated. i'd rather bomb a walmart than work in one. and i'd rather read in a jail cell in peace than be forced to participate in the market.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

300. it's getting a little challenging at this speed, but it's mostly "generally rusty" problems, like having lost the strength in the left hand to barre a chord on a pinky hammer-pull-off. the dexterity came back fast, but that didn't. thankfully, the fix is easy: practice. i think i'll probably be stuck at 300 for a few days due to that, but it will probably speed up quickly afterwards.

Monday, June 16, 2014

(several posts were lost from june 9th-17th, mostly about performing the piece on guitar. the problem is that there is active code of some sort on facebook that causes word documents to seize up and crash when pasted into them.

iirc, the write-up was something like this...

while the track is not challenging to perform at a slow tempo, it is quite challenging to perform at the tempo it's written at: eighth note at 360. so, it was necessary to practice the track before it could be recorded. i decided that it would be best to start at a slow speed, and then gradually build speed by slowly increasing the tempo. i decided that it would take a few days before i could play it at 360. of course, i updated my progress as i went. i'm not sure where i started, but the narrative picks back up again at 300.

i have a screenshot dated to june 16th at 14:18 called tricky.jpg, which is attached here. it seems to be that i was pointing out that this is the tricky part at a fast tempo. i may have also pointed out that the C# at the very top is a very big problem because it can only be reached via harmonic. and, i do recall getting around it by actually playing the harmonic, and at quite a fast tempo.)

tricky.jpg:

Saturday, June 14, 2014

the sad reality nowadays is that google fails far more often than it succeeds.


uploading recent guitar demo to soundcloud

a math rock version of the three's company theme, or something. i'm now caught up. these are the kind of silly shorts that will be posted here moving forward....

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/2014-05-18a

Friday, June 13, 2014

uploading boogeyman to youtube

somebody asked me about what inspired me to write this, here's my answer.

the 09-11 are just the track numbers on the inricycled compilation (9, 11 are the intro and ending, 10 is boogeyman). that demo version was done up when i was fifteen, but is a little older and ultimately stems from being told to lock the door at night. i guess i was probably more like ten at the time. when it started getting dark at night, my mom would yell at me to go lock the door before the boogeyman came in to get us. but, she'd be a little dramatic about it. kind of a...

mom: shhh. do you hear that?
me: it's getting dark, maybe it's...
mom: it's the boogeyman! go run and lock the door before he comes in and gets us!

so, i'd get up and run to the front door and lock it, peering out to make sure there was nobody there.

i don't think i ever thought a boogeyman existed, but i didn't grow up in an affluent neighbourhood and i was well aware of the dangers of straying too far from home after night. i didn't understand much about drugs or gangs at the time, i just knew that sometimes people died of gunshot wounds outside and didn't want to be stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. it was legitimately important to block off entrance points.

the run had a bit of a rush of adrenaline-based fear to it, because the hallway was dark. getting to the door and back could at times be a little scary.

by 15, i'd grown out of that, but the song is a memory of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gTfycvt1VU

Thursday, June 12, 2014

uploading guitar demo from 2010 to soundcloud

this is another broken jam session and will come off as really simple (and it is, on some level) if you don't appreciate the subtle dissonance. regardless, it's easy to hear the stomp under it. i don't write much of it, but i'd love to start a really dirty garage rock band...

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/2010-09-19a

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

i'm pretty sure my last featured track got throttled starting last week. it ran up to 301, then was stuck there for several days as there was a difference of roughly 60 hits between the shown and the confirmed, which is something that's happening across multiple videos and only makes sense to me in the context of it being an error by youtube. basically, youtube doesn't seem to want to accept views from certain countries, under the argument that views from those countries must be bought.

it did push past 301 after the delay, but the hits went down drastically in ways that didn't really make sense. there were a few days where the ratio of total views to featured views was pushing 4:1, which defies any sort of logic because one has to click through the feature to get to the other videos. it only makes sense if the video is being throttled.

i hope that youtube is storing the information so it can fix it when it determines it's error. but, the feature over the last two weeks isn't exactly my best work, anyways. i'm not really upset about it coming in behind some of the other tracks. it's the *principle* of throttling, especially when it's racial profiling, that bothers me.

this track will go back up tomorrow at midnight and the timeframes are such that it will be there for an entire month. i should hopefully get some serious work done in that time frame. and i kind of expect this to be my first video to reach 1000 hits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gTfycvt1VU&list=PL3JSjmqp0cbslW9qCBKT_nEcwUt1DY0aN

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

got some life shit worked out today, things are continuing to come together.

1) got accepted by a psychiatrist around the corner. i'm hoping this guy can do two things for me. the first is diagnose me with something i can rely on for longer term disability - i'm thinking i'm probably clinically schizophrenic, even if it's only a problem when i'm thrust into the "real world". there is no real world. there. qed. i laugh, but it's self-deprecating. the second thing i'm thinking is that it'd be nice to have cheap, legal, easy access to marijuana. i'm actually *very* convinced that it helps keep me stable. i don't even need large doses, and i wouldn't really want to be stoned all the time, but i'm very strongly of the opinion that a bit of pot every few days is very good for mental health, and may go so far as to say i'd probably have harmed myself by now if it wasn't for the pot. further, i won't take drugs in the form of pills. i'm a hippie like that. so, if he tries to prescribe me wellbutrin or prozac or something, i won't fill the rx - i'll ask for pot instead.

2) stage one of my border documents have been approved. i think the combined governments of the united states and canada are real assholes for standing over the bridge with an ax declaring that none shall pass, but they're the fuckers with the weapons, so what to do but mutter under your breath? i've wasted almost a year of my time due to this stupidity, which isn't making anybody safer and really *should* be a political liability. but i can't even vote against it. one day, we'll tear these walls down. for now, it's relieving to be just about through the annoyance. i need to go for an interview to prove i'm not arabic, i mean a threat to security. catching the swans show is not looking likely. and there's not going to be too many more chances for it, either. ugh. fucking fascists.

uploading guitar demo from 2008 to soundcloud

going through my lo-fi demoes a few days ago, i realized that i'd already released most of them in the form of two existing demos.

the first was entitled "impressionist jazz punk" and was mid 2005. i'll be uploading it as is to bandcamp when i get there (i'm currently doing stuff from '01 and moving forward chronologically) and then deciding what should be redone. the second was a six track proverbs demo that was supposed to act as a plan for the proverbs symphony. it still will, if mildly modified. so, the bulk of the tracks won't go to the lo-fi site.

i kind of forgot about the rest. this is a jam from early '08 that i put aside for further work and forgot about.

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/2008-02-16a

yeah, this thing is playable. i'll give you a live vid of it on my mini nylon guitar, just give me a few days to polish it up.

Monday, June 9, 2014

i'm heading out to get this score printed...

thankfully, it's formatted well, unlike the last one. i'm hoping i can get a proper guitar version, however i idm it up in the end.

the time machine (midi piano mix)

this is the next 2001 period piece i'll be working on. my memory is blurry; yet, i have a vivid recollection of playing parts of it for my guitar teacher on a sunny day, where there was still snow on the ground.

it's funny how we remember seemingly irrelevant details, but i guess the atmosphere of the performance is important because the performance is. that would date it to roughly march, 2001.

i switched the piece from classical guitar to piano halfway through writing it, and vaguely remember thinking that an impossible interval had something to do with it. yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's guitar music. the counterpoint is very guitar.

i'll have to analyse the score and determine whether it's actually playable or not, or if i can get it close enough. but this one is an open palette right now in the sense that it needs to be filled out, so the early instrumentation choices are really just a suggestion.

one possible idea is that i may split it into a guitar piece to start and a piano piece to finish. i'm thinking of adding sequenced drums and a more defined, squelchy bass part.

written in early 2001. rendered june 9, 2014.

youtube's a weird system. i'm up to 90 subscribers, but i don't know anything about any of them. stranger, it seems like virtually none of them checked out my new song. i'm sending the information to almost 100 people and i'm not convinced that any of them are in my 12 hits - it seems like they're all random hits. so, why subscribe to the channel? i dunno, maybe it'll change in the next few days, but it seem to me like a youtube subscribe is some kind of act of solidarity or something.

i do suspect people are mildly confused and what they should be doing is following me on google+ if they want to follow my ranting, but i can't correct that.

i think my initial observation that youtube users have a longer attention span than bandcamp users is still valid, overall, but the average view length on those 12 views is still less than a minute meaning that the few subscribers that did check it out, if there were any, weren't actually interested, compounding my confusion.

i'm also at 5000 hits, though, which is a bit of a milestone. i just wish i knew more about people following me to understand what they're looking for.

i'm not collecting ad information, i'm just trying to build a small fan base. i don't work through a label or anything. there's no chance i'm going to play your town - even if i could get a basic band together, i couldn't really reproduce most of this stuff (which doesn't mean it can't happen, just that the live product would be drastically different. but it's not likely, and i'm not really interested in pushing for it at the moment.). there's really no wall of separation between you and i. so, if you're following me here, and you want to tell me a little about yourself and why you're following me if it's not to hear some tunes....

i think i've figured out that some of it is an implied market operation: people will subscribe with the expectation that i'll subscribe back. which is to what aim? a lot of inflated stats that prioritize networking skills over genuine interest? i'm not going to play that game. it's not about some kind of opposition to market collusion (i fully understand that 'free market' is an oxymoron), it's just that i don't see the use in having 1000 subscribers or likes or followers or whatever if they're not actually interested. it's a lie that doesn't build a real listening base. and, as a user, i don't want to sort through a cluttered feed of shit i'm not actually interested in.

some of it is obvious, and it's worst when it makes no sense. like, i got a subscribe from some bullshit trendy americana-indie band from new york that i've never heard of. nothing i do is anywhere near the genre, and i'm actually not even a fan of the style. at all. what's the use in pretending? i guess if i got the request from something i legitimately liked and respected, i'd reciprocate, but it seems outrageously contrived to do it to inflate stats. in the end, if everybody does that, we're just running on a treadmill, anyways. i want real likes, real followers, real subscribers, real views. and if the number is lower than it would be if i played the game of market collusion, that just reflects the reality of the situation - i'm not a pop artist.

anyways, i'm not going to prod. but i'd like to know what your interest in me is, if you're willing to share.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

now that the song is done, i'm going to take a quick break to finish reading leviathan and then start the process of shifting off facebook to my own site, over here:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/

i'll be using the network to check show listings, but i won't be posting here further. one of the things i'll want to do, shifting over, is set up various rss feeds.

the reason i'm shifting off is that i don't like facebook's decision to push the ui down from above. i want control over how my site looks. i want the ads removed. i'm sorry they don't agree with that.

but, there's lots of good reasons to get the data off facebook, too.

the best way to reach me is by email. if you don't have my email, i probably don't want you to have it. if you think i do want you to have it, msg me to find out if your intuition is correct.

i have several pages up, so it's going to take some time to transfer things. i'll be following a scorched-earth policy: delete everything as i transfer it to my own site. if there's something here you want saved, now's the time to save it.

what will remain will be a collection of rss dumps, because so long as people continue to use facebook it's kind of necessary to have something.

i think the long run solution has to be some kind of feed aggregator that works at the rss level. i think people are going to end up reading their twitter and facebook and youtube feeds all at the same time. it's probably actually a "woah. you can do that?" type thing. i'd guess almost everybody would switch to it if they knew it was possible. the idea was catching on for people merging msn, icq and etc right before facebook took over.

an interface that could cross-link the comments systems would be really ideal, especially if it could run standalone. and, it could conceivably kill a few sites off that don't want to play by the rules (facebook being the worst).

so, i also want greater control over the serving mechanism. right now, it sounds a little crazy, but wait for it.

i'm actually surprised that what i'm looking for doesn't exist in any kind of stable form. the idea has certainly been experimented with, but it's all for profit companies that fall apart when they realize there's no money in it. further development seems to be geared towards ipad type apps (which i'm never going to go for) and smart phones, which i'll never really get used to. i want a desktop product. fuck the trends...

i only use a handful of social media sites. if i were to build it myself, it would be very basic and never updated. but i'd be happy to throw the software out, open source, for further development.
one thing at a time. i don't even know how to get appspot to send out rss yet.

specifically: i don't want a ticker on a website, or multiple feeds on one page. just a simple, aggregated feed that i can interact with - and preferably through a standalone program that blocks ads and scripts.

it's the most basic, least visual, low return thing you could imagine.

and something like it is going to define how this shit works five years from now.

uploading stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides to youtube

and, it's up at youtube, too.

i was considering doing a screenshot capture of me running through the 83 cubase tracks that come together in this track and slowly collapsing the tree into an organized collection of ten group tracks to the main out because i thought it would be sort of epic to run through that level of complexity, but i decided in the end that it would just be an ad for the software.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9cIRP7ml5c

note that that is in addition to the compilation of midi/vst tracks, which should otherwise have a similar tracklisting to the jjjjjjjjjjjjj record.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/thru

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (final album mix)

this completed live version will also front the 2001 "serious period" album. i was filing the serious shit under jjjjjjjjj (there's nine there) at the time. it's a sort of tongue-in-cheek self parody at the idea of writing serious music. 'cause if i was ever going to commission a piece, i'd have to get rid of surnames and superfluous syllables and just shorten it to the basic "j", just to get the point across about rejecting anything formal. i was tripping out into some rather silly number theory...

anyways, that's the opening track. the second will be some fun to try and put together, but the others should be done fairly quick now that i have some hardware/software that can deal with it.

written late 2000 & early 2001. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may 2014. completed on june 6, 2014.

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (final single mix)

this is the final mix, without as many lead parts as i was thinking at one point, and without the vocals i considered adding, but with more than enough atmospheric additions to make the live recording worthwhile. it will end up opening the ep of remixes of this track that i posted to jan 10, 2001 and also end up opening the front of this compilation of material written over 2001, which will be the main album of the period.

i had some bad luck recording this. hopefully, the other stuff gets out a little faster.

written late 2000 & early 2001. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may 2014. completed on june 6, 2014.

publishing stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (inri043)

this is one of the tracks that i can't date well. i do, however, remember working on it during the winter, which means it must have been late '00 or early '01. i'm going to consequently deduce that it must have been what i was working on over the 2000 christmas break and date it coming out right after it.

actually, i have another reason to date it in early '01 rather than late '00: the introductory piano part was recorded live into my notation program on my dx100, which i was given over christmas (maybe a little before; it was a cheap garage sale pickup) to act as a controller for my recently broken jx-8p, that i had tried to take apart over the summer to clean a sticky key (a common problem with mid-80s roland analog synths) but failed and left keyless. it's still keyless. yet, the dx still drives it....

that introductory piano part formed the basis of the track, which built itself up fairly quickly. somewhere, i lost the nwc file by saving it as midi, which ruined all the formatting. it's been sitting on my drive ever since.

why put together seven different midi versions of the same track, and sequence them after a polished recorded version? well, this was never actually meant to be computer music. i was just composing something the old fashioned way with the intent of later giving it to some musicians to play. that never happened. what did happen was that i found myself playing it back on multiple sound cards over many years, trying to make it sound as good as possible in the short run - until i could finally get the chance to sit down and actually record it. while each of the different renders has it's strong and weak points, i ultimately don't feel that they form a total order. something i thought about doing was recording tracks independently on different cards and then pasting them together, but that would have just created another dozen incomparable mixes. rather than arbitrarily pick one, i decided to just upload all of them.

in hindsight, i think the format is interesting in itself in terms of it being a psychological experiment with sound. the differences from track to track are sometimes inaudible and sometimes extremely noticeable. stringing it all together in a row like this is challenging to any listener in the sense that it rips apart the process of becoming familiar with a piece. it means listening to exactly the same song through multiple different sound libraries. i think your brain would have to interpret that as a sort of a trip, especially when it comes to trying to build associations in sound within tracks that are both similar and different sounding, soundcard wise. i think that might be part of the reason i had so much difficulty isolating tracks in the first place.

so, listening to the ep through all the way is likely to be a bit disorienting and might ultimately be a strange experience. however, if you like the track for what it is as a collection of overlapping sequences of notes then i hope you get something out of the process of comparing and contrasting the renders together.

i have included the original midi file as a bonus item in the download, if you want to play with it on your own. the added guitar sections in the final version are recent additions and have not been written out.

written late 2000 & early 2001. the renders present here are all from the early months of 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - electric piano, programming, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals, vocoders, digital effects & treatments, digital wave editing, composition.

the rendered electronic orchestras variously include piano, bass, synth bass, distorted electric guitar, clean electric guitar, steel string acoustic guitar, nylon string classical guitar, sitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, synthesizers, clarinet, flute, piccolo, xylophone, glockenspiel, tubular bells, jazz drum kit, hand drums and electronic drum kit.

released january 10, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides
...or do i want vocals after all?

the track wasn't written with any. i didn't have plans to specifically include or exclude, but my work in the period was generally instrumental.

pretty much everything else on this midi music disc is going to be instrumental.

i was just thinking that some vocals would carry the piece, but it came out of humming a part. hence the melodyne thing. that extrapolated itself outwards into an idea about urban decay.

but this is cliched.

....and i don't think i have enough words to carry the length of the track, and the end is striking me as vocally daunting, because i am not a singer and do not generally sing. it's just these big power chords that would need "real singing" if any at all. leaving it empty negates the purpose.

i guess i was thinking of saturating it with guitars, but i'm avoiding that, too.

i'm going to listen to it 100 more times. sporadically, perhaps.

i'm getting the feeling, though, that this is done.

lyrics for stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides

whisper:
claus
ter
phob
bic
lies (life)  (1/5) - delay/decay - switching pan

centre - descending - vocals
to run and to hide and to
in a ball on the floor

descending countermelody:
how to be alive,
when it's all collapsing on all sides

WATCH IT FALL NOW
(HORNS KICK IN)

(background:
the falling debris feels like fear/love/pain/hope)

Friday, June 6, 2014

yeah, that's the last version of this. it'll be coming down in the next few hours, as i get the vocal melody in.

so, i need to figure out how to use melodyne, next. i've never pitch shifted my own voice (i've never had to), but i did use some more crude methods to modify sean's voice back in the day. that's not really the goal, though...

what i want to do is convert the vocal melody line into a synthesizer part, then vocode it back into the vocal part. i suppose i could write it out, but because i'm not the best singer i'm hoping it will let me microtone it precisely. that is to say, that i'm really looking for the audio to midi capability in order to ensure the vocoder is NOT in tune. i know, i'm always overcomplicating things, but i wouldn't be me if i just did it the easy way.

right now, the goal is to leave the synthesized section in the instrumental version.

first, i need to actually get the vocal melody in...

i'm going to have to play with this, but i think it should be possible to convert it to raw frequency.

yeah, i'm noticing it. what i'm experiencing is that hits from certain countries in the former soviet union and east asia especially (but countries outside the "first world" in general) get erased by some kind of software that is probably designed to prevent hit buying. i can't speak for you but i'm certainly not buying hits, i just get a lot of traffic from international news agencies (and a flip through my public google+ profile will make it obvious why).

basically, it seems like what youtube is doing is saying "if you have a high amount of traffic from outside of europe and north america then you must be buying hits, and those hits will be erased.". which is heavy-handed and counterproductive. i can get behind schemes designed to prevent view buying, but the algorithm seems to be making things worse by hyper-americanizing the site. i mean, i don't even live in the united states...

that being said, i can get my head around some bad implementation. bugs. fine. but, it seems to be getting worse and not better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d09EwcYc5k
this is close to a final mix. there may be some minor mix adjustments, and there will be a central vocal part, and there might be a guitar solo at the end, but if you want to say something that i'll almost certainly ignore, your time window is almost closed.

uploading stuck.. to the scratchpad

i'll probably update this several times over the next few hours. the edits are localized to within the first 1:30. the thing is i'm at the point with the track where it requires so much processor speed real time that i simply can't reproduce without bouncing (which i hate doing), so i'm forced to mix it down just to listen to it....

https://googledrive.com/host/0B5JfVE9XTZikMS1zek9ER0xSU1E/scratchpad/
i just gotta say it one more time...

i don't care if you like bland, repetitive techno. i don't. really.

just stop deluding yourself into thinking it's futuristic or defines a generation or something. it hit it's peak of creativity about 1993 and has been cycling in circles ever since.

techno, today, is a *retro* fashion. k?

there's a number of rock forms that only make sense when placed after techno, as fusion only makes sense when positioned after jazz (but in a real sense was also both the end and high point of jazz). where we're standing in 2014, we've even managed to exhaust just about any kind of interesting electronic hybrids, which happened some time in the mid 00s.

so, it's like.....sorry, kids, but techno is something that already happened, and you missed it. why don't you take some time to explore some more contemporary forms, instead of getting lost in a concept of the future that is properly dated to c. 1983?

here lies techno. while there was initially much promise, and many victories, the end was meandering and dull.

rip.

techno.
(1975-2005)

Thursday, June 5, 2014

yeah. i've decided i'm not going to find the remaining furniture i need in here, so i'm going to wait until the beginning of august and take a shopping cart of wood home with me. i'll need to varnish it. and i'll probably get a drill, too.

i'm hoping i can find a coffee table before then, but i'm looking for something that's roughly 14x40 and they're just not out there. people want these gross square coffee tables. or glass ones. yuck. if not, it should cost me something like $6 to build one and polyurethane over it.

there's this kind of enclave that i wanted to put shelving into but my initial plan isn't the best one. there's a window in the corner. i was just going to put shelving in square over the window, which would eliminate the need for curtains and make it harder to break in here. i mean, there's bars, but that's merely a disincentive. i've learned over the spring that access to this window is important, due to the air upstairs. so, i'm going to frame around it, instead, and get some curtains after all. that's three walls of framing that has to go around the window. i'm thinking i could probably do it for around $50, which is considerably cheaper than trying to cram a dozen oddly shaped bookcases in - and better because there's no wasted space. i suppose it's sort of a gift to the unit, in the end, because i couldn't really take it with me. but i plan on staying for a while...

similarly for the corner shelving. i posted some pictures. the easiest thing to do will probably be to get some studs and just screw the shelves in, but it's going to depend on scrap wood from the other projects.

i want to build a simple three story desk to put near my bed to put a speaker unit up top, the laptop in the middle and various documents underneath. i've been hoping i can find something, but the space is only thirteen inches across.

the last thing is a cd shelf. the big problem has been "how do i get that much wood here". if i do it at once, i'll take the home depot cart back for the hour walk....

i'll just have to measure it all up in a few weeks.

which means i'm under budget for the first time since february and may be able to go catch a show, if an interesting one is happening this side of the river. actually, i'm still hoping i can catch swans in a few weeks. depends on customs. it'll be a few days one way or another. should put the cash aside for that....

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

so, i'm used to losing a few days around the start of the month. wish i didn't lose a few around the end of it, too.

i'm back on this track. i want it done soon, but i don't want to push it out prematurely. i had given myself the first, but that's off. hopefully, it's a by the end of the week thing.

mods are going to be minor, though. it's weird how you can have an idea, then listen to it over and over in your head, until you realize that it's already there in the first place. i guess it's sort of like listening to a complicated piece of music until you get it. it's just weird when it's your own. but the mix you make is not the mix you imagine, so you need to get used to it just the same.

it happens a lot with drums. i'll imagine it with a deep bass, listen to it 100 times asking "do i need to deepen the bass?" and eventually conclude the bass is pretty deep, so long as the listener has listened to it enough to be conditioned to it. meaning that the random listener out there with random co-ordinates may not get the deep bass on first listen, but the proportions will make sense after the 50th. which is what the mixing aim needs to be.

....because i have no choice to condition myself as well, because i'm ultimately listening to the mix the first time as well, regardless of how much time i've spent imagining the track in my mind. i wouldn't suppose that most people would envision the process that way...

Monday, June 2, 2014

rap news 25

i live in canada, where there's more or less a monopoly on lines in any given area. when i was in ottawa, it was rogers for cable and bell for dsl. i'm now in windsor, across the river from detroit, where cogeco owns all the cable lines.

it's kind of wasteful and stupid to suggest running competing lines side by side. but, our regulators have agreed that a monopoly is anti-competitive, so they've forced the line owners to rent the lines out to smaller companies. there are a few quirks to going with a smaller company, but one of the things they offer is cheaper access rates at lower speeds. ultimately, it just exposes how much of a rip-off the major carriers are: how else could a smaller company turn a profit by buying bandwidth from them, then undercutting them on it?

the process of moving down here and switching had me think a lot about it. is an internet line a public good? the analogy that keeps coming through my mind is public roads. we even have the language of an "information superhighway". there are some fringe opinions that disagree, but we mostly all agree that roads should be owned by the public and maintained collectively through taxation. one of the reasons we mostly all believe this is that it provides equal access for everybody. the idea that large companies could take over our roads and start charging us whatever they want for whatever access they advertise is inconceivably backwards to most of us.

it's one thing to stand up against this and argue that things are fine as they are, but the machinery of private property laws is staggered against us. should we not change our perception of what the internet is, it's inevitable that these sorts of changes will take place. what that means is that it's necessary to articulate an alternate vision of how internet lines are owned in order to maintain net neutrality.