publishing to spin inside dull aberrations (inri048)

that completes inri029.

i want to see how much of the main track of inri030 that i can salvage for the j-squared part, but i believe the vocals are inseparable from the bass, permanently placing the track in rabit. i may have a trick or two.

the next project is that choir.

i don't expect a track to cost me as much time as this did for quit a ways, looking forward. the pace of uploads is going to increase quite a bit.

--

this track represents somewhat of a refocus, but it never found itself to fruition in the way it was meant to.

over the summer of 2001, a friend of a friend decided he wanted to start a band and asked me to play bass. now, we didn't really have a lot in common besides both being musicians. i was spiralling out into obscure independent music, and he was into all the mainstream rock bands. 2001 was the point where grunge was losing it's last bit of mainstream potential, and giving way to nu metal and various watered down, corporatized offshoots of hardcore. so, i was sitting around listening to tortoise and writing jazz compositions and he was sitting around listening to limp bizkit and writing mtv/radio rock. how could this legitimately work?

there was a small amount of overlap, centred mostly around tool. it so happened to be that tool had just released a new record, we were both listening to it and neither of us really had anybody else to talk to about it. so, something formed out of that.

now, when you're an isolated twenty year old that's never been lucky enough to meet another musician you can start a band with, you take what you can get. it seemed implausible that it was going anywhere, but wasn't that the case for every other band that ever went anywhere when they first started off? i don't think either of us thought we were natural creative partners, but we had a set of common goals and if we could put aside our differences...

see, the thing is i knew that the only way anything was going to happen is if i sat down and recorded a bunch of stuff. but, i also knew that this is a guy that defines himself in terms of his oversized ego and that the whole purpose of it from his perspective was to give himself a way to explore it. that's not the worst trait to have if you want to start a band, either. my overwhelmingly shy introversion hasn't exactly got me filling stadiums, has it? nor is it ever going to, and i realized it even at that stage. so, a natural role would be for me to play the producer (along with the bass guitar) while he throws some stuff at me. if that meant i'd be doing 90% of the actual recording, that would be ok, but i realized i had to let him provide the actual song structures or he'd storm off and pout about it.

so, i waited for him to provide some material. and waited. eventually it became clear that he didn't actually have any serious songs. we did a few demos, but he could barely play what he was trying to demo and the tracks were not of a gigging quality level.

in the mean time, he'd recruited a guitarist. he kept saying he was talking to a drummer (no drummer ever appeared), and he also recruited another friend of a friend as a singer. so, we had what seemed like a full band, if you include the imaginary drummer. what i saw was an opportunity. if he wasn't going to write some songs, i guess i'd have to...

the other guitarist almost immediately dropped out, and the whole project really fell apart rather quickly when the guy that initiated the whole thing stopped showing up to practice. it was several weeks in a row that only the singer and i showed up. i had a few songs i had written, so we started working on those instead and that became rabit is wolf. predictably, there was much pouting.

that leaves this particular song in an isolated limbo. when it was reworked for rabit is wolf (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry ), it took on the epic and experimental nature i was exploring at the time and lost the crux of itself as a stadium rock song. i feel something valuable was lost in this process, if for no other reason that this is so dramatically different than anything else i was doing at the time.

thankfully, i still have the original drum files, and i remember how to play the guitar part, so it's simply a process of recreating it. the raw mix sounds exactly as the track did in 2001. the complete mix takes it to it's final conclusion.

written in the summer of 2001. remembered over july, 2014. completed august-september, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits

j - drum programming, orchestral sequencing, guitars, effects, synths, electric bass guitar, digital wave editing, sampling, loops, equalization, vocals (5), production

the rendered electronic orchestra includes tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections.

sean - vocals (track 6)
jon - guitar (track 6)

released september 16, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations

to spin inside dull aberrations (reprise)

the second half, split off, to make the first more attractive to certain people, but still allow for full listening pleasure.

created over a few days near the end of september, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/reprise-2

uploading to spin inside dull aberrations (reprise) to the scratchpad

pretty rough, but this is the idea of the end of the track. i spent the morning "mastering" it to sound a little bassier. i need to add some noise, but it's not going to be very structured.

i also spent last night enjoying my track in the state it's meant to be enjoyed, and i have to say i'm very, very happy with how it came out...

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

rap news 28

thought provoking, as always...

first things first, let's get the factories automated.

to spin inside dull aberrations (final single mix)

so, part 2 ended up being a bit more minimalist than i was initially thinking, but i think it's the better way to get the idea across. the busier piano part didn't really segue well, it just sounded kind of hokey. maybe it's 'cause i'm sick right now, but this really feels like the right way to end it.

the reprise is quite large and may take a few days, but it's actually very much rooted in a monotonous sort of minimalism so it's not going to be nearly as ridiculous to build up. i spent two months on this. if you take a flip through the page, you'll see it was actually quite a struggle: broken guitars, fighting with headphones, sequencing strings, etc. but it's done...

bandcamp offers high quality downloads (not yet for this track, after the reprise - i don't do single tracks, full album dls only) but compresses a little on playback. try to boost the bass just a tad to compensate.

written in the summer of 2001. remembered over july, 2014. completed august-september, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations

ok, got it, think i can refocus...

also, the coughing has started. i'm going to need some cough syrup.

there's a song for that.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/01-jesus-gets-fucked-on-robitussin

nope. crashed. let's try this again...

i think it's loosening up.

must have picked up a virus. it's weird though because it's only three symptoms: sore throat, sore muscles and tiredness. no coughing, fever, stuffinesss, anything like that. but it means i've been sleeping quite heavily since thursday. i wasn't sure at first that it was a virus, but i'm sure now...

so, it's going to get put back another day or two.

there's a yearly event in detroit tonight called the noise camp that i was going to check out, but the virus/rain/sunday combination is going to keep me in. the hope was that it would be done completely before i left; it's not even close. i may actually even crash (again) within minutes...

i'm at least more awake than i've been in a few days and think i can get some work done tonight....

of course, now i'm having trouble with figuring out that segue point.

i don't want it to sound too similar to the time machine, but my brain is producing a similar sort of collapse and fade. i know what i want the third part to sound like, and the framework is constructed, i just need to fill it in. but how i'm going to get from a to c is currently eluding me...

i don't want to skip tracks, but i might have to. i'm going to give it a few more hours.

to spin inside dull aberrations (overdub mix)

i've included the raw mix to document what the track sounded like in 2001. so, i've included an overdub only mix as a counter to it to document what was added in 2014. paste the two on top of each other to get the cubase output of the track.

created over august and september, 2014 to augment track written late in the summer of 2001.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/overdub-mix

i'm actually going to skip the part altogether...

it's a neat riff, don't get me wrong, but it works in contrast to the cracked out white zombie riff - if it's played once. maybe twice. but over a four bar repeat, playing them off against each other ruins both.

i can't put it at the front or the middle as that would be anti-climatic. and it doesn't work at the end, either.

there's enough pizzicato bass in the world. the song doesn't need it.

that means i'm done the first part. amazingly.

well, let me sleep on it...

actually, i want it to cut across the mix a bit higher, so this descending pizzicato part is going to be done with a sequencer.

uploading to spin inside dull aberrations to the scratchpad

finally. give it some volume. final bass part should be quick to do...

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

so, i lost two days due to shows. i was hoping i wouldn't lose all of yesterday, but those drinks at the andy stott show last night were really very unexpectedly strong. like, i think i got something like three-four shots in a six dollar drink - of which i only had two. it's the kind of drunk that usually sets in around 2:00 after you've been drinking mixed drinks since 8:00, and yet hit me immediately after one drink. i don't think the "bartenders" were licensed, they were just eyeballing it, and it resulted in the kind of 40% vodka drink that your already-drunk friend mixes you at midnight. i'll have to be aware of that in the future.

i really hope to be done the mix by the morning and am almost certainly going to start throwing myself into the walls and flapping around in the corner if i don't.

experiencing some manchester in detroit

"you're in the wrong washroom, sweetheart."

as incredibly complex and slightly patronizing as that statement is, it actually means i'm in a cool place. i've been over this a few times, but allow me to reiterate why i usually (not always.) use the dude's room.

1) the primary reason is that i can use the urinals and will choose to in most circumstances. i find something disrespectful about forcing women to listen to it fall in the toilet, cause it's just obvious. the reality is that public washrooms are gross. if you did a random survey of women, you'd learn that something like 98% of them would urinate while standing if they could, because it avoids the ickiness of squatting. it would be irrational of me to not take advantage of my biology in this sense, considering virtually any woman would do the same thing if given the opportunity.

2) i transitioned late. it's generally clear that i'm trans, but few people are going to confuse me for a cis. i completely grasp why the idea of me walking into the women's washroom would be a little unsettling. if i were cis, would i want the actual me waltzing in there? the truth is that i probably wouldn't. i know there's going to be a spectrum of reactions, but i feel obligated to be respectful of this concern and aware of how other people feel about it. the converse is that the worst that's going to happen from using the men's room is a funny stare or a concerned reaction. in the end, it's not really important enough of a concern to me to start pissing people off.

i mean, i support the whole bathroom rights thing. but, personally? i don't really care if the bathroom door has an M or an F on it and i'm willing to compromise pretty dramatically to keep the peace on the issue.

it's not absolute. if i'm wearing a dress, or some other particularly effeminate clothing, and i feel safe in doing so, then i'll probably use the women's washroom. it's pretty rare, though. i really default to standing when i pee....

i actually had a good time tonight at the detroit museum of contemporary art. the drinks were exceedingly strong, it got me a little drunker than i planned to be and i ended up dancing a little. i actually kind of needed that, it'd been a while. reviews in the comments...

got distracted there...

so, the opening dj was actually mildly interesting. he was playing with max or audiomulch or something in real-time, which, yes, tends to unfold somewhat predictably. but it's not clear to me why people will knock some software for this, while not bothering with others. any software system is going to colour the output in a roughly equal manner.

he had some syncing going on with the background films. as one example - bucephalus or not - he had some kids bouncing balls synced to some beats bouncing.

http://shop.overlap.org/album/chris-mcnamara-vague-cities

this is what i pulled myself out to see, and it was quite enjoyable. there's a lot of process in their approach to deep bass music, which tends be very dark ambient and integrate a lot of glitchy noise. you can't dance to this, but it's nice to get as a blast of sound. it was plenty loud, but i do kind of wish it was just a bit louder.

there's an improv inherent in the design, but they did something quite similar to this.

here's a full set:

so, reading up a little on the show, it became apparent that what was driving it was an attempt to pull a little manchester into detroit house. true or not, detroit gets a lot of credit as being an epicentre of electronic music that has sort of lost it's way. so, from detroit's perspective, the idea is to try and bring a little bit of that british artistic genius in (a british invasion, if you will) to kickstart a more interesting electronic music scene in detroit.

but, i can only assume that the opposite perspective is of a sort of a pilgrimage to mecca - detroit being where it all came from. these are a bunch of lanky brits that have never been near to the city, remember.

so, you have to think that andy stott was maybe a bit nervous about playing detroit, and that the overly minimalist start to his set had something to do with playing to the audience - who was visibly a little restless, apparently looking for a drop. whether by design or reaction, he seemed to become very british all of a sudden and morphed into some solid danceable idm - we're talking amen breaks, autechre melodies and rdj basslines. in fact, it seemed like it was just about to break into some kind of totally mental squarepusher chiptune freakout before the clock turned to midnight and we all turned into pumpkins on the floor.

it really wasn't what i was expecting. andy stott is known for morphing minimalist house beats into these sort of impressionist soundscapes, which is something he leaned towards in the first half of the set but didn't really give enough time to develop as it's meant to. i've never heard of him being associated with that warp sound the way that demdike stare is often compared to autechre. unexpected or not, it sure was a lot of fun, though.....

i doubt i'll find much like what i heard out there. this is more the kind of thing he's known for - and did play around with a bit at the beginning of the set, although it was more stripped down.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/09/17.html

cymbals eating stale, mouldy guitars in detroit

so, i've come to the conclusion that it's going to be a while before i get used to the fact that the magic stick really shakes when a band gets going. it's on the second level of a structure that looks like it was built a very long time ago and has been redone repeatedly since the 30s. the additions are quite obvious, and there's been a lot of them. there's this nagging fear that somebody fixed something with duct tape and it's just waiting to give...

on the one hand, an upper floor structure built to handle large standing audiences (that may get a little rowdy) and loud bass music should either be solid concrete or built to give a little in response. it's clearly not concrete. so that little bit of elasticity is hopefully actually a safety mechanism. a rigid structure is going to develop cracks and fall apart.

i don't know that it was engineered that way, though. nor would i have much faith in the architecture if i knew that it was, to be honest. all i know is it sways a little and it's unnerving and that i'm not likely to get over it quickly.

the show tonight was a little lacklustre. allow me to explain...

i knew it was an early show, likely to make space for a long set by bob mould, but i slept in a little late and missed the first few songs. so i need to be careful in the review of cymbals eat guitars' new disc, which i have yet to hear in it's entirety. i didn't hear the opening tracks...

...but this video is a decent representation of what i did see, and what you'll notice is that it's a little bit unadventurous relative to past efforts. the edges have been smoothed over a little, the excesses have been pared down, etc. now, the band seems to be being praised for this by the indie press, but that's what the indie press wants - predictability. what attracted me to the band was that they were a little different, a little rough, kind of coming apart at the seams...

it's not that it seemed dramatically different, it just seemed as though they cast out the parts that made them different and interesting and all that was left was the now ubiquitous generic indie formula. that's not something i'm going to be interested in or connect to.

so, i'm not going to comment on the disc, yet. i'm giving it a first listen right now. and i'm willing to accept that the kinds of things that make their records interesting may be difficult to transfer to a live setting. but i found the set underwhelming in it's move towards a more predictable sound.

this is a full set from a few days later:

i wouldn't have gone just to see bob mould, but i'd hardly skip out on him without giving him a few songs, either. i planned to give him a beer to win me over.

that may seem a little disrespectful, given his status in rock music history, but the truth is he's never really clicked with me and i'm really not familiar with or all that interested in exploring anything he's released as a solo artist. as for husker du itself, i put them on the fence in terms of holding up. i've spoken before of the 80s rock canon and the need to pare it down. i'm not going to forcefully argue against husker du's inclusion, but they're far from a lock within it the way that sonic youth or rem are. there's that one album, and not much else, really.

so, i wasn't sure what i was going to get or how i'd react. the bulk of the set was in the power pop variety, with minimal gazey excursions and really nothing approaching any kind of noise. it was a bit of a nice groove at first, but something became very apparent a few songs in: all his songs sound the same. a few more songs in and it just started getting monotonous. i got bored about an hour in and went downstairs to try the magic stick pizza.

i know his output is more varied than what he provided, and i'm not sure what kind of age-related crisis has got him playing power pop at this stage in his life, but i'd advise avoiding him until he goes back to acting his age.

here's an older tune...

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/09/16.html

so,i've been spending a large amount of time mixing the section between 3:30-4:00. i've got over a dozen string parts (two contrabass, two cellos, electric bass, electric guitar, several violas, several violins) ranging across seven octaves, all distorted and compressed slightly differently, and running three countermelodies simultaneously. finding that sweet spot where i'm able to get the overtones to blur just a little, particularly on the bottom, but can still hear all the different parts at the right proportion, has been challenging. that's a complex problem. every time i alter one channel, it puts something else out of balance. but i'm almost there.

i wanted this done this morning, but i'm hitting cymbals eat guitars tonight and don't want to be falling over so i need to get a few hours of rest.

it's very close...

that's the last one of these for this song. it's basically done. tomorrow...

so weird how sleeping patterns respond so quickly to the weather.

excluding a few nights where i was sick or mildly drunk, i didn't sleep much more than 4 hours a night all summer. that's normal for me. and it wasn't a hot summer. but as soon as the cold hits, i'm sleeping 10+ hours again.

feeling kind of floaty and brain dead. if coffee doesn't help, i'm going to have to do something else tonight....

i don't have the ending pizzicato in. everything else is in and should hopefully be mixed down by the morning. if it's fast enough, i might get the pizzicato in by the morning. otherwise, probably tomorrow.

i'm often slow with bass, but this is intense even by my own standards...

so, the grocery store is getting propertarian about it's shopping carts. it's kind of hard to blame them, because people in the neighbourhood aren't being good anarchists.

i was thinking about it on the way home, and it's actually a great topic to use in an introductory discourse. there might be this misperception that it's unruly hooligan anarchists stealing the shopping carts. the actual reality is that it's the anarchists that bring them back, because they understand them as socially owned property. but, the fact that people take them in the first place indicates a level of intuition towards the idea of social ownership.

and isn't it obvious that people ought to be able to take the carts home? i'm just not quite sure why it isn't so obvious that they should bring them back. laziness only gets you so far, here. i mean, i've walked by houses with four or five on their yard, indicating they're not even bringing them back when they get more food.

i might suggest it lies in the perception of property. that intuition towards social ownership may be overpowered by the enforced hierarchical guilt that keeps propertarianism in place. that is, they may be "stealing" the carts because they figure they ought to be able to use them, but then they can't rationalize it, and figure once they've stolen it it becomes theirs. then they just "steal" more. there could even be fear of consequence regarding being caught "stealing" them when they bring them back. but i'm just making wild guesses, and i'd really like to get a better understanding of this.

me? i'm a good anarchist, so i always return the public property as soon as i'm done using it, so other people can use it. that's the basis of a system of social ownership.

there's been a few times where i've been halfway home, realized my neck was sore, pulled a cart off somebody's lawn and then brought it back to their lawn when i was done. that's taking temporary control of a public good and returning it how i found it.

there's also been a few times where somebody has asked me for the cart on the way back to the store and i've given it to them - although i make sure they promise to bring it back to the store. it wasn't even for groceries a few times. one woman had a broken stroller and used it to get her kid home. another guy had a bag of soil. that's the way this ought to work.

the thing is that the level of social responsibility to make it work doesn't seem to be absent. people are taking the carts home, indicating they get it. but what's suppressing the responsibility to bring them back?

the answer to this isn't locking carts down or whatever other silly approach the store might come up with, it's talking to people and trying to understand why they're not being good anarchists.

success! there was actually a really substantial amount of hair in there, no wonder it was rattling. and i instantly feel a lot better about this mix...

hrmmn. turns out those phones aren't closed after all.

these are so old, i'm only going to get once chance to not fuck it up. but that hair must come out. deep breaths..

good news is i got the bass in the ambient section to sound perfect.

frustrating part is that i need to play it like a robot to do it. guitarists - even very good guitarists that are much better than i am - are actually sort of notorious for not being able to do this well. we don't spend hours of our childhood doing this like violin or cello players do because the instrument cycles around bits of syncopation. we even tend to put down guitarists that play perfectly in time by telling them they lack feel and have no soul. but this needs to be perfectly, mechanically precise.

i've done this before. it's something i'm capable of. you've just gotta give me 50 takes to do it...

specifically, it's because we don't count in our heads like orchestra players do, we just feel the timings. it's really the wrong way to play from a classical perspective, but it's a blues instrument, and if you're sitting around counting you're going to sound really dull. i mean, there's counter-examples. i bet fripp counts. but that's kind of my point - fripp sounds like a robot most of the time.

but i have a math degree, so i'm certified to count to 8.

i'll get this....

part 3.....

we all google ourselves sometimes. it's a proven fact.

i am proud to report that i have now officially made it to the advanced internet status of being the topic of random 4chan babbling.

incorrect gender notwithstanding...

uploading to spin inside dull aberrations to the scratchpad

ok, so i think i've got the bass for the first two minutes done. i know, i know - but i'm neurotic, i'm sorry. i actually ended up neutralizing the headphone buzzing by swapping the earpieces out. right-brain/left-brain discussions are not science, but my right ear is definitely stronger, so i notice the buzz less by placing it on my left ear...

i'm still apprehensive about it, though. so, i'm going to ask a favour of the 36 of you. if you could head here and download the track (it's just a file) and play it through as many systems as you can looking for a buzz or rattle in the bass, and then post the system you used to find or not find the buzz or rattle, that would help me chill out a bit.

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

on second thought, it's not going to be a double :P

it's going to be volume 1 and volume 2, with volume 1 sequenced at the end of 2001 and volume 2 sequenced at the end of 2002. the writing period for volume 1 will be jan-nov 2001, whereas the writing period for vol 2 will be aug 2001 to nov 2002 (roughly). this will also allow me to continue with a "one record per year" output formula until '03, where the writing focus shifts to larger works for a few years.

official full lengths are therefore:

1) inri005 (1997-1998)
2) inri007 (1998-1999)
3) inri016 (1999)
4) inri023 (2000)
*5) inri033 (2001)
*6) inri0xx (2002)

the *s are the two jjjjjjjjjjjjj releases, although i may rename the second as it is going to mostly consist of instrumental outtakes and remixes coming from the cynicide/rabit period and the mostly unnamed and uncategorized outtakes that were left unfinished directly after it.

i could see releasing it one day as a double (i could see releasing inri005 and 007 together, too), if i can convince somebody to distribute it. but the conceptual differences are actually quite large and not worth maintaining for the chronological value. vol 1 is mostly "classical" music in the modern context of being infused with jazz, techno and noise. it really only has fragmented, vestigial bits of rock structuring. vol 2 retreats back to a more fully modern leftfield industrial combination of rock, techno and noise and is transitional into the splicing of industrial and post-rock that followed afterwards.

that means the song i've been working on is going to be on volume 2 and the last piece of volume 1 will be the atonal choral piece i'll be working on two further pieces from now. the tracklisting on volume one will remain; the 14 minute choir will just be added to the end, which conveniently takes it right up to almost exactly 80 minutes.

sequencing the fifth record (inri052)

so, the main aim of what i've been doing since february is completing what works out to be my fifth full length record, out of material that was written over the course of 2001 but never completed to my liking due to deficits in the technology that was available to me at the time. i had suspected from the beginning that this would probably be a double and have come to the conclusion this morning that it absolutely must be.

that means i've expanded the scope a little to make the project more encompassing. 85 minute doubles piss me off. if you're going to do a double, fill up both discs! not with filler!

i kind of wanted to do this anyways. the guitar project is now officially aborted, and it really leaves the two remaining tracks as conceptually and musically similar to the other ones. there's also the 9-minute vocal epic, stress, which, while a little different, fits the overall theme of the larger works. it would be incomplete of me to compile this material without including it.

the first half of this is now completed. this is final, in relation to the first disc. the cut-off point is july, 2001 which is only coincidentally the halfway point; what's more important is that it splits the year in half over the summer (with school on either end) and separates a very solo period from a more collaborative one.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj




1) 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. sequenced on sept 9, 2014. 


2) recorded in the first part of 2001. final editing on september 9, 2014.


4) written and recorded, 1999-2001. this file has not been altered from the original.


5) recorded in the first part of 2001. final editing on september 9, 2014.

yeah, it's going to be a double and more comprehensive over the scope of the 2001 material. i'm going to try and avoid redundancies, but a lot of what i've split off is split off for conceptual reasons.

i just won't be able to fit this on a single lp.

and, you know, looking at the material, it's going to be a hell of double, at that. the average track length is going to be something like nine minutes. one of those kinds of doubles...

actually, no. there's a lot more to do than i thought. i'm going to have reconstruct some of the tracks from source. there's a few where the vocals are integral, but there's a few where the vocals are just overdubs, and i'd like to reclaim those. i should stick to the sequence. but i'm more clear on the chronology, now, anyways and how i want things to come out.

so, back to inri029...

in particular, i'd really like to reconstruct an instrumental version of "clarity", which wasn't initially created as a rabit track. the vocal version is interesting in it's own way, but in some ways the vocals are kind of getting in the way.

i think the others are mostly set, but they weren't really started until 2002.

publishing give ‘em hell, harry / strung out (inri051)

i'm jumping ahead just a wee bit, so i can get a better handle on the shape of things to come. this was an idea i was working out in the fall of 2001. inri032...

--

i don't have an exact date for these files, so i'm picking november 11th. as others were, i was concerned about the president abolishing the magna carta after 9/11 and congress doing little more than helping him do it. however, this was meant to be a more encompassing project that combined harsh noise with political sampling that was pushing an anarchist agenda. the name of the project (ftaa) was chosen as a pun - it could either be the free trade agreement of the americas or about fueling true anarchy in the americas. i ended up dropping the sampling aspect and just focusing on the noise for the project's completion (which is the ftaa release in mid 2004: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa ), so i'm going to upload these two pilot tracks (with the sampling in tact) as an introductory single and place them in this more topical chronological space.

in hindsight, i think there's something profound about juxtaposing the fair trade movement with the 9/11 attacks as, looking back, it really sucked the life out of the movement.

created in the fall of 2001. resequenced and rereleased on sept 7, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:

j - noise generators, cool edit, sequencers, guitars (electric, nylon, acoustic), mandolin, effects & processing, digital wave editing, sampling, production

released november 11, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/give-em-hell-harry-strung-out



1) this one was built up out of the sequencer/sampler in cool edit, which allows a user to create a melodic passage out of harsh noise. if the sample is particularly harsh (as this is) the sequencing can get a little messy, which is a bonus.....

the spoken word part at the end is some free trade protester on cbc. created in the fall of 2001



2) so, the pun here is that it's a lot of guitars going off out of tune, representing how the government is stringing us to dry by taking away our rights in the (not so) chaotic aftermath of 9/11. one of the samples is william de la hunt; i did not record who the other person is. created in the fall of 2001

re-uploading most of thru (inri070)

1) written late 2000 & early 2001. initial instrumentation and render completed mar 7, 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. final render completed on april 27, 2014.



2) written early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. final render completed on july 4, 2014.



3) written early 2001. this render is actually from may 13, 2001.



4) written june, 1998. reimagined june, 2001; the render is from june 18, 2001.



5) written late 2001. this render is actually from sept 22, 2001; it was very mildly edited for continuity on october 1, 2014. note that it was put through some reverb at that time.

so, i'm going to run through the rabit stuff this morning fairly quickly. inri029 is still in progress, but there are some reasons why i want to jump ahead a little, to get a better handle on how things are going to end up presenting themselves. i think this is likely going to be a relatively quick push through to about early 2003, with a few loose ends for me to get through over the next few months. so, it's going to flood a little...

1

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/me-myself-and-the-time-i-thought-this-was-a-good-idea-2

the cynicide is running longer but it won't be more than another week - i just need to add bass parts that are already written, mix (that's the length) and write a fade out. i'm not going to add much further commentary (which is the reason i'm sending these links out, as an opportunity to allow you to request changes) to what's already here, so i'll be taking jon out for the remaining rabit updates.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations-2

j

publishing me, myself and the time i thought this was a good idea (inri049)

i've been hard at work on a very vertically complex piece for over a month now and am taking a bit of a break this morning to jump ahead just a little. this is next in the list. it's the first track to come out of a project i shared with a singer through the end of 2001 and the first part of 2002.

none of the versions here are final, it's just a lot of demos, but i find all of them worthwhile in their own ways.

----

rabit is wolf arose accidentally from the cynicide project (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations) but produced far more material in the end. what happened was sean and i showed up to a few jam sessions and the guitarist (jon - it was his band) didn't, so we started writing some material without him...

initially, the intent was to include rather than exclude jon but he quickly developed a disinterest due to a variety of obvious if never fully articulated reasons. i was playing guitar parts on the demos, which he couldn't deal with. we were doing joy division songs, which were outside of his sphere of interest. we were writing without him, which made him feel unimportant. we were talking about songs without drums, which he wasn't interested in at all. etc. however, he did record a guitar part (that i wrote) that was never replaced.

this is a collection of demos from the first month of rabit is wolf, which includes multiple versions of the title track and a joy division cover. in the end, none of this would be released in the form it's in here (which is only available for download), but it creates a cohesive (if short) introduction to what follows that is self-contained in a historical context. stated differently, this is the first (post-punk) incarnation of rabit is wolf.

written and recorded in the fall of 2001. compiled on sept 6, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - bass, guitars, synths, writing
sean - vocals, writing

jon - guitar performance (6)

released october 15, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/me-myself-and-the-time-i-thought-this-was-a-good-idea



1) sean suggested the bass line ought to sound like this, from which the track was built. sept 1, 2001.



2) this is the first bass & vocal demo, recorded the day the track was written. sept 1, 2001.



3) i built this up on my own the friday night following the sunday it was written, in preparation for the next sunday jam session. sept 7, 2001.



4) as our guitarist was a no show two weeks in a row, we decided to do a joy division cover rather than write new material. i've left the track without drums to better fit the feel of the recording, as none of the renditions on this single contain drums by a very conscious choice to not include them. sept 9, 2001.


5) the song is thematically about somebody launching themselves off a bridge, so i thought it would be an interesting idea to produce a walk passage. this idea was never well received, as there were concerns that the synthesizer sounds too synthetic. but, i mean, it's a synthesizer, what the fuck do you expect it to sound like? sept 22, 2001.



6) the initial demo was a temporary mix to get some ideas across; it was realized from the start that the guitarist would want to do the guitars and the synths would need to be less rough. i didn't expect him to play the part i wrote, though, which was just a weird thing. in the end, this reconstruction did not end up being a final mix (i took most of the end out, which was only ever there on the insistence of the guitarist in the first place, and added an extra guitar part). oct 13, 2001.

the vacuum didn't work either. it's really stuck in there. i've got it on deep bass therapy, and am going to let it boom overnight. if that's not successful, i'll have to mix the bass down with the cheaper phones.

i'm going to lose most of the day tomorrow as well, as i have much running around to do.

sennheiser talk pt 3

jessica
hi sennheiser. me again..

i've got this stubborn hair stuck in there, giving me a buzz on the lower frequencies, as stubborn hairs stuck in headphones tend to do.

now, it's been happening for years, and it's never been much of a problem - quick tweezer run over over a quick vacuum gets the dirt out. it's just something that happens to headphones and that headphones people have to deal with.

but this one is deep in the drivers and all attempts to get it out have failed. i'd probably need to use a tool that is something like a surgeon uses to get in there to pull it out, and it's too stuck for the vacuum (or loud bass music) to get it out.

now, i know you can usually take newer phones apart to do this but the way these ones are made suggests to me that the only way this would be possible is by twisting the top and, again, i don't really want to do that until i'm sure they can actually be disassembled. so, can i get in there without breaking them or do i need to call a surgeon?

those are the out of production 440-IIs, to jog your memory.

sennheiser
Hello Jessica,

It is possible to take the 440 apart.

I used to do it all the time. Use caution, however, since there are no more spares for this model, and if an accident happens, you're SOL! Twisting is not necessary. The baffle is held by a series of claws. Slip a fingernail between and pry gently. Easy does it.

To get the capsule driver out, gently pry up on the black tabs, and be careful not to disturb the connecting wires. They are exceedingly fragile and will not respond well to attempts to reconnect. Use both hands.

If you're talking hair, you might need tweezers, but for dust or other particles, a squirrel hair paintbrush will usually do. DO NOT brush hard!

Any wrinkles put on the diaphragm will be permanent.

Note orientation of the capsule driver to the baffle. It goes in one way only!

You mentioned using a vacuum...be careful with that! It's possible to suck the voice coil right out of the gap with force like that.

jessica
thanks again.

i got my $1 guitar fix and put it all together and got nothing but hum out of it.

strangely, there's no ground on the input. so, the circuit isn't completing. but, it completed in the store.

i made an error: i took a walk down the street, and then didn't plug it back in when i came back. who knows what they did. i think they may have ripped the ground out. it would have taken two seconds.

see, the thing is that it shouldn't have worked in the store without the ground - the ground was there when i plugged it in, and it wasn't when i took it home.

it's not expensive to fix, i need a soldering iron anyways, but why do that? it's just upsetting that some people can be that disrespectful.

like, it's not that the ground is loose.

the ground is gone. no guitar can work without a ground. but, it did work.

somebody ripped it out....

either way, that's that for the day, let me take a look at those headphones.

it sounds crazy to think somebody would do that.

but the only other explanation is that somebody was sitting around the corner mimicking my open strings, tricking me into thinking it worked. that's even crazier.

it's just impossible that it could have worked without the ground. but it did. and it was entirely gone when i went back.

ripping a cord off a board like that could create other problems, as well.

but i have a circuit diagram, and it will be very east to fix if there's further damage.

so, you'll have to add $1 worth of solder and $1 worth of wires to the fix price. a soldering iron is going to be around $20, but it's not fair to work it into the price because it's something i need to get anyways.

deathtokoalas
the rx40 is the absolute bottom of the line ibanez strat copy; i picked one up in a pawn shop today for $40 (including a case and a strap). i got a deal because the pawn shop owners didn't realize how simple putting a nut on a loose input jack is, and felt the need to mark it down due to it being "broken". however, they're generally going to sell for under $150 nowadays.

looking into it, it strikes me as a sort of ponzi scheme set up by ibanez. $100 is probably what they're worth - so you can get the 40s at a bit more than cost. ibanez then increases the price dramatically by slapping on different models while changing the guitar rather minimally. the upper end rxs sold for around $800. i can't find any real difference between them and the 40s that isn't merely cosmetic. and how much is that strat actually worth when you strip out the bullshit? a whole lot less than you paid for it...

the guitar is solidly constructed. smooth neck. that's more than can be said for a lot of newer strats; vintage strats are incomparable, but the difference in build quality between a modern strat and an ibanez copy is pretty much negligible. in some cases, they may have been made in the same factory.

the electronics are built to sound like a strat, and they do. that's my next point. for now, note that if you want a good strat body to put your own pickups in, you want to be thinking about the ibanez copies.

what this video really demonstrates, though, is how meaningless the guitar input is in the face of modern processing. that's a beginner guitar for people with a budget, but do you think a $3000 strat is going to sound better through the same amp simulator and the same dozens of  effects? it's not.

when you break it down to the physics nowadays, you're combining sounds out of a type of pickup. the pickups will have defined properties. that's all you're really looking for: body shape and pickup type.

José González

basswood body?

deathtokoalas

you're not going to hear a difference on a double blind a/b between maple, alder and basswood through an amp simulator, and you're going to destroy the guitar's characteristics at the equalization stage of the mixdown, anyways. you'll hear a difference in pickup combinations.

José González

set dimarzio andy timmons on the rx40 and a tube amp?

deathtokoalas

that's not the tone i'm looking for, i'm an experimental guitarist that's looking for a way to get some single coils through a long effects chain on the way into a firewire computing interface, mostly to get a "skinnier" flanged and chorused sound. i use humbuckers through preamps for lead parts.

but i would argue that this model is a good base to start from if you want to put your own pickups in.

yeah. the pickups on the rosewood are a touch hotter. you can tell because it's not just the guitar tone, but the fuzz tone.

well, i lost the day, but i gained a guitar and a vacuum. there's still a touch of rust on the pickups, but i'm going to leave it there. i'll get the spring, nut and strings on tomorrow - for around $10 total. but i'm going to lose most of the day tomorrow, too. for the moment, i'm hungry and sleepy....

haven't vacuumed the phones yet, will wait until tomorrow.

caulking gun

jessica
hi,

i'm just wondering if i could borrow a caulking gun. there's no urgency to this, and i'm going to want to wait until we get a dry day with low humidity so i can caulk with the windows open.

it's september now, so the weather is going to be cooling down a little. i didn't have to turn the heat on last year until very late in the fall, so i'm not planning on turning it on any time soon. but, last year you sort of explicitly told me to just turn the heat up to whatever i wanted - and i did. i'm going to be a little more aware of the electricity costs this year, for obvious reasons.

there was really a substantial draft heading under the window in the kitchen last year, and all the hammering upstairs has crumbled the plaster a little so i'd expect it to be even worse this year. i really think it's an easy thing to do that will make a big difference.

i still have some of your caulk under the sink but i don't have a gun, so i'm wondering if you'll let me borrow yours. the bedroom and bathroom aren't drafty, but i really think the two windows in the kitchen should be sealed around the cracks to try. it'll both keep costs down and make the air a little less dry, due to the heaters not needing to work as hard.

the landlord
I have a caulking gun there, I will be around and I will check in with you

yeah, so the loose pickup was a triviality.

you see that spring? it was gone.

well, one of them was gone. the other was under the pick guard.

i'm going to put 9s on this (which is very skinny for me, but it's a strat), so i'll head down to long & mcquade's tomorrow.

current estimated projected cost to fix the "broken" guitar:

one washer - $0.50

one spring - $0.50

total: $1.

how does that even happen? well, clearly somebody tried to swap out some humbuckers. either they couldn't figure it out and fucked it up or they swapped something more expensive out before they sold it and didn't bother to connect it properly.

the pickups appear to be unmarked.

i had a washer around. it's keeping the jack in place, but it could benefit from a nut to lock it in.

there's nothing else wrong with this guitar...

actually, i should just go with 10s. i have 12s on my jazz guitar and 11s on my punk guitar. this is going to be my alt/gaze guitar - no need to go that far down. if i ever get a three sss strat or a jazzmaster or a tele, i can go to nine there. i can't see myself wanting less chunk, though.

the jazzmaster is a beast of it's own, and i'll probably never be able to afford one.

access to single coils is really closing a hole in my arsenal that i've, up to this point, used all kinds of effects processing and equalization tricks to try and get around. believe it or not, i've never had a single coil guitar - since i started playing in about 1990. and this is actually my first new (electric) guitar in almost fifteen years.

actually, that's not true - some of the garage sale pickups i've been through over the years have been single coil, and i guess that means i have bought new guitars over the last fifteen years, but they were all under $10 and never used for anything besides ridiculous tunings and noise generations. which i guess produces some continuity. but i plan to hang on to this one, it's a more serious addition.

actually, it seems like the unit doesn't have a special carpet head. it's a eureka "pet lover" with a dual use head. i kind of thought it was probably something like that.

$150 before it was discontinued. gotta love pawn shops...

so, i went searching through the streets of windsor for an affordable vacuum, and came back with a beat to shit strat.

i couldn't resist. i've been meaning to pick up something with single coils (this is an h-s-s "fat strat") for a long time, but haven't run into the opportunity. it's a lower end ibanez copy, but it's solidly constructed. i focus almost entirely on necks and body shapes when i'm evaluating guitars. the rest can be modified. but, the truth is i never do, because the main sound source for what i do is the computer. i'm going to plug a $3000 strat through the same effects loop, and it's not going to be all that easy to tell the difference in sound. it's honestly not worth the cash. if i was more interested in gigging and i wanted a better connection to the amp, maybe....but i don't....

what's important is playability. ibanez are known for their "fast necks", which work well with the strat design.

but it's the single coils i wanted, and that i will put to good use in open chord passages.

it needs some work. it's full of rust. while i was able to verify that all of the pickups work, one of them is very loose and the jack needs a washer. but i honestly think it's a ten minute job.

for the price ($40, including a case), i can't complain much - even if i end up ripping the pickups out altogether. the neck is good enough to build up with.

i did get a vacuum, as well. the first shop i went to had a nice little unit for $25, but it was missing the carpet head. after taking a look around, it's the best choice immediately available. i can probably pick up a head one day on ebay or something.

gah.....

buzz is in the phones. in the back of my mind i knew it all along. i've been fighting with dirt in there for months, and i know there's a hair deep in the drivers because i can see it and can't reach it. i've been putting it off because the rattle was so much weaker on the other tracks and i was just mentally compensating...i couldn't imagine it was really the dirt....

but my cheaper phones aren't rattling. here's the thing: i'm not 100% certain it's rattling due to the dirt, it could be rattling because the studio phones are reproducing it properly and the non-studio phones are squishing the fuck out of it.

at least i know now that the track actually sounds good through consumer grade equipment.

the thing is i need the deep compression, and it's rattling it to the point that i can't mix it because i can't tell if the compression is actually distorting or the speaker is rattling.

so, i need to find a vacuum as a top priority this morning. i tossed the one i brought down here - it was older than my mother is, and just wasn't working.i can't mix with the other phones, it sounds like i'm wearing earplugs...but if i can't get the hair out, i may have to mix the bass separately through them...

see, the phone is sealed. it's probably why the phones have lasted 30 years. but it means i can't get the hair out with tweezers because i can't reach it...

you just can't overstate the value of high end phones like this. it would cost upwards of $500 to replace them with something comparable, and i don't have that. and i WILL tell, because i've been using them so long that my ears just won't accept anything less.

so, these basically have to last forever, sort of thing. the vacuum worked last time.

digitech bass squeeze

this pedal is actually great for recording through the mixer out - i use it as a di box, with a lmb-3 in front for extra limiting, and then run it through tape simulation and reverb effects when it gets in. the caveat is you have to want a smooth, sustained tone (i play a lot of bass parts with half or full notes and i want them to last) with basically zero dynamics, meaning it works better for orchestral styles or electronic music than for rock or funk, excluding punk - it also works well for fast punk picking...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzb_Lrj3-O4

ok, these parts sound considerably better. i think the compression pedal is buffering the signal a little, which is helping the limiter even when it's off. i also plugged it into a regulated power supply, which may have minimized any background. and i turned the low eq pot down a bit on the way in. it's still buzzing mildly, but the clippiness is gone.

i'm sleepy. but i have every reason to think this'll be done tomorrow.

two things to take note of.

first, boogeyman just became #2 to hit 1000 hits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gTfycvt1VU

second, evil just became #2 to hit 300 (which remains youtube's designation of "popular") without being featured on the front page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haUlXmRA-A0

gah. no.

just a little out of tune, bloody microtone, so i need to redo the bass parts. but i have a better understanding of how to lay them out, now, and what i want them to sound like when they get in, so that's going to guide the input signal.

i'm going to want to route the pick parts one way, with heavy limiting, and the finger parts another, with heavy compression. that should minimize noise on the way in, and give me what i need to process.

gonna eat first...

ok...

neurotic bass freakout transcended. you want it to drive anyways, jess. relax.

that means i could very conceivably have this finished before i sleep next, or at least have the first section of about 6:40 finished. i'm thinking it's going to be around 20 minutes in final form, with the twenty minute version appearing only on the single and a roughly ten minute version on the disc.

but i'm also thinking doubles again, with the length of this. we'll see how that goes....two or three more tracks before that's done, and then i sit down and figure it out....

i mean, i do want the full version on the record.

but i don't want a 90 minute double. if it's going to be a double, it's going to be at least 140 minutes.

i've got that guitarland stuff, too, which sort of fits the theme.

i wasn't initially planning on doing a single for the choir, but now i'm thinking i want at least two versions. that's a possible level of thematic unity.

i'm also kind of thinking of sequencing the 2001 midi files into a separate record. the idea of splitting out the vst mixes is completely redundant because they're just the final versions minus overdubbed guitars and minor rearrangements (i didn't realize the differences would be so minimal when i started), but those old midi files have a chiptune vibe and consequently offer something a little different.

i mean, i could see a specialized market for the raw midi arrangements, specifically.

yeah. but if i do that, i'm going to want to push it forward to early 2003 to encompass some further midi tracks.

the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj thing really closes at the end of 2001, but the midi approach carried on to further ideas.

so.

1) jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj double record, maybe, end of 2001.
2) thru single record, probably, early 2003.

again: i'll have to see how much there is and how it sequences. for now, i want to finish this song....

i should note that the flurry of mostly completed tracks ends around 2003. from 2003 to 2007, there's a lot of very big ideas that are barely demoed out and they're going to require a large amount of recording to finish. the three or four hours i have down for that period is going to balloon to ten times that, at least. after 2007, it's even more sparse, as all i really have to show between 2007-2011 (when i lost my studio) is that 18 minute proverbs track (which took two years to record) and a few barely articulated ideas. between work and school i just didn't have the time. but, the proverbs symphony will be the length of a full record when it's finally done. from 2011-2013, i was basically homeless and focusing more on rethinking my life than writing, and i may end up homeless again in mid-2015 if things don't work out. that's why i'm doing this: however long i'm able to sustain current conditions is probably going to be my last chance to finish things, so i want to make sure as much gets finished as i can get finished. wherever i leave off is likely going to be where i leave off. forever...

as much as the social conditions may be less than enviable, i admit i'm in the enviable position of having a lot of material that was written in the height of my creative years (my 20s) and that i'm finishing in a more reflective and mature age. so, it combines the immediacy of youth with the reflection of age. composers used to have that ability to look back and reinterpret, nowadays everything is pumped out and finalized when it's first thought up. i think it's going to create a lot of more substantial sound than i would have been able to create at the time, and than i may be able to create entirely now.

if i can find a way to keep the studio up until i'm done my old work, i'm going to be pushing 40 by the time i write new material. and i'm sure it will be quite different...

i mean, i'm not going to be one of these old people trying to hang on to their 20s. i'm going to mature into writing styles that are more reflective of my age.

i always want to take these aging pop stars and grab them by the neck and ask them "have you ever contemplated the idea of writing music for people in your own age and peer group?".

as much shit as i give the boomers, it's best talents - the gabriels and the bowies and the fripps - mostly figured that out. some of them died before they got old. some of them tried to deny reality. but they'll be forgotten, while the ones that matured won't be.

gen x musicians have seemed hopelessly unable to keep up with their audience. reznor has shown flashes of maturity. he's really the *only* one that has.

(actually, i think you can put sonic youth and swans in the "aged gracefully" category (minus thurston moore's recent midlife crisis), and the mt zions are a late gen x band that was already a cut above and has kept growing, but the overriding theme of gen x musicians is "arrested development". and i shudder to predict the future....)

i have every intent to learn from that.

proverbs (first movement)

i was just sorting through the source files for this (which is 40 gb, yes, it is THAT intricately constructed.), which is the last thing i did with live bass, to see if the source on the bass buzzes, and sure enough it does. i guess i just dealt with it.

but, you know, every time i listen to this i'm overwhelmed with pride over how elaborate it is. my symphony of psilocybin induced madness is really something else in the way it merges romantic music with electronica, but it's always been more of a proof of concept. this is only the first part of an incomplete work, but it's really my opus.

and it is a legit opus. headphones, please.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/proverbs



it's really an electric guitar concerto when you break it down.

uploading bass fx jam to soundcloud

this is actually a bass guitar. it's through a high octave pitch shift guitar effect that i initially programmed as a noisy grunge fill, but the bass takes it down to a more acceptable octave range and, due to the thickness of the strings, allows for the creation of reedy, woody and brassy sounds. then there's that ghastly reverb. dunno what i'll do with this (it may end up in the crash symphony), but it needs gongs and spooky synths and stuff...

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/02-09-2014a



as an aside, that means i've isolated the buzz to a frequency issue, as the bass sounds fine when pitch shifted up a bit...

switching the active switch on the pod seems to have helped enough. i'm sort of being silly in looking for a crystal clear pick tone, because it's coming up against a wall of fuzz and i'm probably going to end up fuzzing it as well. that makes sense for the pod - it's designed to take a passive guitar in, so plugging an active bass into it is a very loud signal. that should have been obvious from the start.

it makes less sense to me from the mixer, though. the things i've read have suggested to me that the extra power from the active pickups should minimize that kind of noise because you don't need to turn the volume up as high. i mean, i get it - it's more power, and it's overdriving it. it should be connected to a di. but the gain is at 75% just to pick the signal up at a decent level. the only other approach would be to take it in at like 50% and floor it when it gets in, but then...

...well, maybe that's just it. maybe you'd have to turn the passive down so far to get the same results that you'd be losing it. maybe you still need the active low, but not as low, so you can get more of the performance.

i think i'm happy with the pod with the pad on through the pre-amp. i'm going to try mixing a bit of it and see if i can get it to sound right....

yup.

no improvement with the mixer.

dramatic improvement with the soundblaster.

so, if it's humming, the soundblaster is getting around it. good enough...

...but i think it's asio. let's see if i can find evidence of that...

i know i can get around it by compressing the hell out of it because i did it once before, which is fine for finger parts, but i need a pick attack for this and don't want to compress it out.

the only other thing i can think of is that the active pickups are too loud. maybe if i try recording at a very, very low volume.

actually, i have a switch on the pod to try for that, too.

the limiter didn't help either, indicating it's not actually clipping. it's buzzing around 100 hz, and there doesn't seem to be a way to deal with it except dropping the eq - which is no good, because that's where i want the bass to be.

next thing i'm going to try is directly plugging it into the mixer. those active pups might be pissing off the pod...

if the mixer clears it up, i know it's the drivers on the pod - which, to be fair, are made for guitar frequencies. guitar starts at e2. i'm playing between e1 and f#2.

if the mixer doesn't clear it up, it's either an asio thing (which i suspect is true) or neither input can deal with the pickups.

step three will be testing it with the soundblaster to see if i can create the same problem or not, determining if it's really asio or just the bass.

i need to be clear that it isn't buzzing on the monitor, so it's a capture/driver issue with the pod. but i think it's asio because the initial line in was through the pod to the mixer. i'll find out in a few minutes...

of course, i could also be getting a hum at 100hz that the di box would in theory resolve, but you'd think i'd hear it on the monitor....

the pod didn't help much, it just changed the tone.

even better, there's a pre-amp in there. hadn't used that before. popped it through a bass cab and a bit of compression and it sounds solid, hope this works...

actually, the sample rate idea is not going to work unless i reroute it to my maudio card. the mixer and pod both have 48 max. it's only the maudio that can go up to 192, but i never use it for recording because it only has one old-fashioned red/white in. it's purely for playback. it's an idea, but it would be easier to just use the soundblaster. still, i'm curious as to how much better it is through 48, just for the bass.

i should just use the pod through a bassman. if i direct usb it in, i can't overload it.

easy.

i wanted to avoid that because i wanted to shape it in the daw, but i don't think the clips are otherwise avoidable without killing the dynamics. i'll have to experiment to see if it's workable, but i think this is the best approach.

actually, it could be that it's clipping due to the sample rate. just, empirically: i've never had bass clip when recording to tape, which takes a continuous signal. it could be clipping as certain low frequencies with long waveforms get cut in the sampling, which may be more pronounced through asio than through whatever my soundblaster is using.

it doesn't clip on monitor, only in record, telling me it's something to do with the capture.

i stick with cd quality when i'm recording. i know there's a lot of people that will argue against that - they say to use 24/48K as the standard. there's no technical reason i don't do this. it's just that i want to mix it the way i'm going to hear it. i've experimented with it a bit, and i find that that extra bit of "headroom" is just fucking up the mix because when i eventually mix it down to 16/44 there's aspects of the reverb and whatnot that don't sound as pronounced. i'd rather spend the time mixing it the way i want it to sound at the quality level people will listen to it at, which might mean turning the effects up a bit more or doubling them or whatever.

but one solution to this may be to take the bass in at like 192 and then downsample.

i have the battery, i'm going to replace it now and i'll let you know what i end up doing. i know this is a solvable problem, it's just a question of getting the answer.

i'm not really getting a hum, which is what the dis are usually good for. it's clipping from playing dynamics and the in being too sensitive. not the right solution.

it's a limiter/battery/compression/volume issue....

i mean, the box might give it more headroom, and it might help, but it's going to be easier to restrict those spikes - for picking parts, anyways.

no. it's an unbalanced out. i'd need a box to convert it to a balanced in; it will either not work at all, or not accomplish anything. i don't feel i need that box yet, but i'll put the idea aside. sun's up, let me find some batteries...

i didn't realize that bass has no passive out on it. the last song i finished with a live bass part was late 2009, which means that that battery has been sitting in there for at least five years. i couldn't even remember if i took the battery out or not. i assumed whatever was in there was long gone...

nope.

but that means i recorded parts with a five year old battery...

the clipping-bass-through-electronic-equipment problem is very well established. it's a complex thing with a lot of causes and a react-as-they-occur type solution set. the easiest thing is to use analog technology, but it always has to be a last resort (i haven't had to use it yet). the two key things are limiters and compressors, but you also have to deal with technique, source, volume, eq.

the last time i had this problem, i was forced to deal with my mixer because my old soundblaster wasn't being read. i've fixed that, now. the soundblaster didn't seem to have those problems. it's tempting, and it may be what i do in the end.

first, i'm going to swap the battery out when the sun comes up, but i'm actually ok with redoing the picked parts with a limiter, which should mostly resolve the worst clipping. it's the finger parts that i'd rather avoid doing that for and that i'm hoping i can just fix with compression & eq.

i'll have to hear how big a difference the new battery makes before i make decisions about that.

i could also always try micing it if i have to. i have a very large roland keyboard/bass amp that gets very little use. i'm not the biggest on the tone of the amp, though.

it's kind of too thick. but it might work for this track.

it may be that the soundblaster is actually a direct input ("DI"), or something closer to it. it's one of the live drive boxes from the mid 90s. i've done tons of recording with it, it really is a great little box for what it is, it's just that it's not asio compatible so i can't record in with cubase. i'd have to do the parts separately and paste them in. but it's a minor annoyance if it clears the clips.

that's it here. it connects to the soundcard with an oldskool pin connector. most of the recording i'm doing nowadays is through usb (the pod) or firewire (mixer).

http://www.hardware-one.com/reviews/platinum/images/LiveDrivePanel_big.jpg

i could also always just get some di cords. the mixer has multiple direct ins, i've just never used them due to not having the right cords...

actually, i can feel the a/c now, maybe he just got home. i want to wait until it gets down to 26 in there.

it's just barely, but it's increasing...

again: i expect to barely hit it this month, too, and hopefully push a bit further next month. as you can see, the july curve was quite steeper than a natural curve would be....

uploading to spin inside dull aberrations to the scratchpad

i'm also re-upping that last temp file, to fix the levels.

it's all sequenced, but that's it for the day. it's very hot in here (i think buddy upstairs with his a/c is away for the long weekend) and i don't want to lose another hard drive. considering that what happened to the last one was that the motor seized. whenever i hear the fan click in, now, i get paranoid.

i had that machine on for years straight without any problems, and in an apartment hotter than this, but the older they get the more likely they're going to bust. these drives are on borrowed time. i'm backing up regularly now, but i don't want to fuck with fate.

nah. i'll split it into three...

i combined some of the string and synth parts that were routed through multiple signals, but this is otherwise pretty comprehensive - minus that bass part and any extra lead parts i decide to throw in.

that was easier than i thought...

hope this is legible. it's without the bass parts, which i need to compress and import.

lol...

so, i bounced everything too quietly. i thought the guitars sounded weird and i just couldn't figure out what the fuck it was...thought my amp was maybe going on me....

i knew to turn the effects off, but i have the master at -1. so, it came out around a decibel down. i've verified that i get the right level if i rebounce with the master at 0.

that means, i'm going to have to go back to the file before i bounced (i saved it at that point), rebounce everything and then reintegrate the parts i've added later. that might take all day.

i'm going to take a different approach, though. what i had done before was bounce multiple parts down into the same file, but i figured out halfway through that it's really just an effects issue and i'm not really clearing up processor space that way. what i basically want to do is just run the different files through the effects i've got set on them.

the other thing, is i watched my track count go down, which made me a little sad. this'll keep it back up where it ought to be.

so, deep breath. ok, go...