deathtokoalas
+larry  yngwie can't play the guitar like al. he sounds like a classical violinist. it's the textbook comparison of technical and robotic playing v. soulful and passionate playing. it's what puts al in his own category - he's that unicorn of a guitarist that has both aspects absolutely nailed.

larry
+deathtokoalas They are not the same person...of course they can't play like each other. I was pointing out they are both technical guitar players. I'm surprised you would call any artist being soulless or without passion...you being an artist as well. Sounds ignorant to me.

deathtokoalas
+larry i'm not sure i'd classify yngwe malmsteen as an artist. he's more of a performer. i believe that a large percentage of his recorded output is music that is written by others. further, it's not exactly an unheard of criticism of his work.

johnProph
+deathtokoalas all rational discussion ends when someone says Yngwie doesnt play with soul or emotion, lol. Dude has tons of feel.

deathtokoalas
+johnProph well, y'know, people have been saying this for thirty years. it's not going to go away.

deathtokoalas
to get back to the point of the post, there's only two people worthy of being in the same sentence as al di meola. you guys got one - john mclaughlin. although mclaughlin is really a very good blues player; he's not in the same category in terms of compositional abilities. the other is allan holdsworth.

larry
+ deathtokoalas Thank you for your opinions bro.Worthy of being in the same sentence? You sound like such a snob.  Do all artists think their opinions are above everyone elses?

deathtokoalas
+larry see, what i'm often fighting back against is this idea that evidence-based arguments are merely opinions. i reject your premise.

when you listen to di meola, you might just hear a lot of really fast guitar playing. really, that's about the only way you can bring somebody like malmsteen into it.

it's often been stated that you can't really appreciate jazz unless you understand it. i'll push back against that; you feel the best jazz, and if you need to resort to an intellectual argument about 13th chords then its just evidence that the music is lacking.

but, with something like di meola, you get a greater appreciation out of it by having some idea of what he's actually doing. it's extremely musically literate. this is a guy that was recognized as a virtuoso at a young age, and did a lot of academic training. and it really comes out in highly creative ways.

there's really only one other guitarist in the history of guitars that has had a comparable skill set. that's not an opinion. that's a fact.

historians will look back at this period and universally agree that di meola was the master guitarist - as they agree that chopin was the master pianist, or paganini was the master violinist. he's really that far ahead of his contemporaries. he's historically relevant in the same way.

holdsworth is the minor figure. the alternative, if you will. the ravel to his debussy.

mclaughlin is the intuitive hack, who didn't know what he was doing but faked it very well.

and just about everybody else (except zappa, who is hard to categorize) is likely to be mostly forgotten.

larry
+deathtokoalas The only one pulling out "evidence based facts" along with your opinion is you. I said they were similar in ways that if you enjoy one you could possibly appreciate another. That's it. I'm not rating them on a scale...not saying they are the same person...it's not a competition dude. I try to accept and appreciate all art...even your "music". It's people like you that have to suck the beauty and fun out of everything that people may find happiness in.

deathtokoalas
+larry it's just a disrespectful comparison. and, the truth is that a lot of the respected guitarists that followed in the 80s and 90s (as well as more than a few from the 70s) will uphold that. di meola is the undisputed master. no informed person has the panache to draw comparisons. one does not simply compare another to di meola - especially not themselves. i can't even list him as an influence; to some way compare myself to him just seems wrong.

larry
+ deathtokoalas Ha ha! Disrespectful? To who...you? Well that's your opinion not a fact. I'm sure neither artist gives two shits about anything you or I say. Once again, you should write a book. I'm sure people would be dying to read it...best seller maybe? You are a critic...not an artist.

deathtokoalas
+larry i do plan to focus more on some academic writing once i get through finishing my uncompleted works. i've been able to get through 1996-2003 over the last year. it hopefully shouldn't take more than a year, unless i get thrown off disability.

again: if you were to ask around amongst 80s and 90s guitarists (and pretty much across the spectrum, from vai to petrucci to keneally to corgan), they'll all tell you di meola is untouchable, go into an "i'm not worthy" wayne & garth impersonation and distance themselves from direct comparisons.

yngwe is famous for his ego. he might be the one person that has the gall to do it. but, it's a function of his arrogance. and, nobody is going to agree with him.

larry
+deathtokoalas I don't know either artist personally. They are people just like us...not some gods that names should not be spoken. I could see how other peoples gossip might lead you to not like someones music. People could easily say that you as an artist, had a shit attitude and a massive ego. Would they be right?

deathtokoalas
+larry no. i'm flamboyant, but i'm not arrogant. it's not my ego that you find upsetting, it's my tendency to voice uncomfortable truths.

larry
+deathtokoalas You don't upset me. I like a discussion... especially with bigots. Your truths are your opinions, just like me. You sound arrogant with some of the things you say, which I'm sure it's not accurate to you as a person. You are obviously intelligent, but you seem closed minded when it comes to art. I find it hard to understand why an artist would be so critical of another artist, when they know how personal it can be. I wasn't telling anyone what to do or how to think with my original post. I was being positive, not creating a negative.

deathtokoalas
+larry do you see the problem with accepting the premise that truth and opinion are the same thing?

just because i'm critical of something doesn't mean i'm closed-minded. in truth, you'll find few people with tastes as wide as mine. sometimes things are really just garbage, and it often actually takes an open-mind and independent thought to reject conforming pressures and declare them as such.

for example, i'm unequivocal on the point - the velvet underground were pretentious nonsense. i upset people when i say that, because the dominant perspective is that they were visionaries. i'll give cale a little more credit than the rest of them, but i think this is nonsense - they were as terrible as the initial reviews claimed they were. and, in today's world, you actually need to be thinking openly to get to that point, because mass media presents a monolithic viewpoint on the topic. yet, people tell me i'm closed-minded for thinking independently. ironically, it's rather ironic.

it was really just a bad comparison. and you're really just egging me on.

larry
+deathtokoalas Why do you care if people think a band are visionaries? Honestly...such a waste of time bitching about things you don't like. I don't care what you like or don't musically and no one else does either. People like to think they are special for listening to obscure or different music. LAME. Your taste or knowledge in music does not make you better than anyone else.

deathtokoalas
+larry again, you seem to think it's an ego issue. in fact, it is impossible to not waste your time, because life has no meaning or purpose. it's a just a choice to waste it that way, rather than to waste it doing something else.

vince
+larry Oh, please... Yngwie is pretty good at what he does but, really, he is a bit of a one trick pony. This album has things like nuance, dynamics and groove, stuff that Yngwie... doesn't really bother with.

larry
+deathtokoalas What is your point? You shouldn't listen to both artists?

johnny foosball
+deathtokoalas I[ll agree on McLaughlin but Holdsworth to me is similar to Yngwie been milking the same old stuff for 30+ years , I was impressed with Holdsworth on a album he did with Luc Ponty years ago , but then heard some recent stuff same ol same ol, just like Yngwie with his never ending neo classical gets boring rather quickly

deathtokoalas
+johnny foosball well, it's true that holdsworth has a defined style. but, what he does on the guitar from a tactical perspective is just without serious parallel. malmsteen doesn't bug me because it all sounds the same, it's more that he's just regurgitating classical music without any emotional investment into it. holdsworth really isn't emulating anything or anyone, and that fact alone is going to necessitate a space for him in the history books in the long run.

Pharaoh Sneferu
+deathtokoalas technical does not = robotic.. a common misconception

Pharaoh Sneferu
+johnny foosball dont tell mozart or beethoven .. classical stuff is boring?? heard it all now. Typical reaction... Just because your ears cant hear the variation and phrasing doesnt mean its not there.. its a failing of your ears.. not yngwie's playing. you need to concentrate harder.. like listening to a concerto, its not always easy listening.

Pharaoh Sneferu
+vince one trick pony....?? like Bach you mean???

Pharaoh Sneferu
+johnProph zactly.. but to the untrained ear or tone deaf its just a lot of fast notes.. people only talk about the fast stuff he does. ignorance

Pharaoh Sneferu
+larry RF fantastic album.. power, grace , feel and composition..

The "oh, its just fast" crowd need to listen harder, just because it too hard for them to grasp, doesn't mean its not any good. Mozart died penniless because of people like that.

deathtokoalas
+Pharaoh Sneferu see, i think the fact that you said "mozart or beethoven" as though they're interchangeable, in context, lets a lot on about where you're coming from because mozart is a great example of incredibly boring technicality, whereas beethoven is very emotionally powerful. it's kind of the classic study in opposites. it's maybe a pretty good analogy, in comparing di meola and malmsteen.

deathtokoalas
+Pharoah Sneferu it may be true that technical does not always equal robotic. but, insofar as it applies to mozart or malmsteen, it certainly broadly does.

Pharaoh Sneferu
+deathtokoalas Well I would disagree with you on Mozart. There is a beauty in the elegance of his solution to the technical challenges of sonata form for instance. on the face of it , yes he " Just modulates" but its the choices he makes whilst doing so that define his genius. To a lesser degree the same is true of Yngwie, he chooses SOME fast runs to move the focus from individual notes to groups that define his harmonic structure ( bit like chords but using individual notes instead.) over a single pedal tone. If you become fixated on the speed, technical challenge of the execution of this approach etc.. you are missing the point. However I am speaking of his early work, The later albums after 1990ish are a just a speed fest I will admit. :-)

deathtokoalas
+Pharaoh Sneferu i'm sorry. what point am i missing?

larry
+deathtokoalas You always seem to be missing the point dude. Lol

deathtokoalas
+larry yeah, it's really remarkable how inept i am, isn't it? i don't tend to get a lot of clarification as to what i'm missing, though.

larry
+deathtokoalas His opinion sounded clear to me. We know you don't agree. Not everything has to be complicated.

deathtokoalas
+larry i don't see what's complicated about requesting elaboration on the point i'm supposedly missing.

and, i might dare suggest that if it is so difficult to articulate this supposed point then it may be the case that it does not actually exist at all.

Pharaoh Sneferu
+deathtokoalas Point One. "There is a beauty in the elegance of his solution to the technical challenges of sonata form"
Point 2. " he chooses SOME fast runs to move the focus from individual notes to groups that define his harmonic structure"

To clarify this point,  by fixating on the technical aspects of the execution you have missed the overall harmonic development. btw because you cant hear it does not mean it isn't there.

deathtokoalas
+Pharaoh Sneferu just because i can't hear it doesn't mean it isn't there. that's interesting,

i wasn't really arguing against the existence of "harmonic structure", i was pointing out that he sounds lifeless and robotic as he's running through. it's the human element.

the high point of passionate piano playing in the romantic era was not beethoven, but rachmaninov. rachmaninov is just pure grit. total emotional release. it's musically very lush, but the key in a good rachmaninov performance is getting a good russian pianist to play it, because only the russians seem to understand the angst. western performances of rachmaninov tend to strip all the intensity out of it, and reduce it to this dead, bourgeois nonsense. if you were to listen to a rachmaninov piece performed by an 8-bit sequencer, you'd be missing out on the dominant aspect of the music. it's all the same notes. all the same "harmonic structure". but, very different in outcome.

malmsteen's work would be dramatically improved if it were to be played by somebody else - like al, for example.

i don't really think you've made any contextually relevant points. rather, i think you have, yourself, misunderstood the discussion.

damned hiccups.

i am not an amphibian.

or am i?

listen, if there's really shape-shifting lizards out there controlling the world, you'd think they'd have hybridized with regular ape-derived humans, and have half-lizard/half-ape hybrids running around that don't realize it. i don't care if you're a reptilian overlord, you still have a sex drive, and "no sex with ape-humans" has gotta be a helluva taboo in their hidden culture, enough to ensure it does happen.

maybe i'll go to the doctor and ask for a dna test..

"listen. i just need you to check if i'm a reptilian hybrid. it's a perfectly reasonable request. how do we know if we don't test?"

so, i'm remembering that i picked the creamy dreamer up when it was wet and hot out, because there were puddles and mud outside songbird. the nature of distant memories is strange and scattered - i tend to remember the weather, for some reason, when i recall certain experiences. and i actually remember looking at the date - aug 11, 1999 - and concluding it was a year old. so, that means it was summer, 2000. that makes everything consistent, as the first clear evidence i have of it's use is summer, 2000 - and i have clear evidence of it being missing from my chain in the spring of 2000.

i'm going to consequently attribute the boost in gain on my distortion that happened in late 99 to a switch in pickups, from the 80s ibanez to the two epiphones rather than a switch in pedals. that also makes sense; one would expect a switch in tone from switching guitars. which explains why i closeted the ibanez...

that clears the cash situation up. i was working as a janitor at wendy's over the summer of '99, often for the late night shift. i remember this clearly in conjunction with book it!, which was the fall of '99. i also remember quitting that job a little before exams, because they wouldn't accommodate for it. so, that gives me the cash to buy the xp-100 a few weeks before christmas, which is now the only thing i picked up in that space. the remaining pedals are really just a moogerfooger and the creamy dreamer, which i can date to the summer or late spring of 2000. well, there's some other garage sale pickups, but these were cheap items. that would mean the bribe must have applied to the summer of 2000, which makes the most sense. i'm still not completely sure where that cash came from. it makes sense that it might have been a tax return, given the dates, but i have no memory of this.

that means i can close period 1 without any further gear additions, and that these are the necessary gear additions to add for the first phase of period 2:

entropy: (dec, 1999)
- whammy
- acid
- sounder

commercial break (jan, 2000):
- soundblaster
- drum kit

gravity's rainbow (mar, 2000):
- no electric guitars
- granulab
- rubber ducky
- audiomulch

curious george suite (may, 2000):
- all digital effects played straight in
- megatrancer & spin cycle
- leaf drums

ignorance (july, 2000):
- whammy
- mxr flanger (eq/distortion II)
- other sequences suggest no creamy dreamer...

acidosis (aug, 2000):
- *moogerfooger
- *ebow
- peavey amp
- *creamy dreamer
- organ
- koan
- aria classical
- piano
- mandolin / marshall
- fender amp

that peavey is older, i'm quite sure. i think it was my sister's amp at some point. but i've generally recorded direct.

no. i remember now that i had a little cardboard box of receipts and it's one of the things that disappeared when i left things in storage, probably because it was left in a flooded shed. i had receipts for *everything* in that box, going back to 1995. there's an off chance it's buried in a stack of books, but i'm doubting that. i should build those bookcases some time soon, too.

i did find the sustain punch box, though, with the serial number and build date: aug 11, 1999. i picked it up in a store, so it's of minimal help. but, i'm leaning towards the summer.

i should listen to those last few 99 tracks and see what i can pull out. i think most of it is very zoom sounding, but there's that little boost that came in, as i mentioned. i think the only song with greg's fab tone was liquify, and i think it was only on one of what is about 20 guitar tracks.

the first thing i can really identify is the digitech whammy xp-100 that comes in on the first track for period 2, "entropy". the creamy dreamer doesn't make an explicit appearance in my notes for another six months - may, 2000. but this is too late.

so, i need to make that choice.

it's just a little disorienting because my memory is normally excellent.

i'm straining my memory, here. hard. and it's coming out incoherently.

all the evidence seems to suggest i picked a slew of pedals up in early '00. but that doesn't make any sense, because i got bribed into going to university by being told i could quit my job. so, how did i buy these effects, if i had no income?

but, if i bought them earlier - the fall of '99 - then why wasn't i using them? or was i using some of them? it's the creamy dreamer that i'm not sure of.

i remember borrowing my friend's fab tone and using it as a boost, and i think that's why i got the creamy dreamer. but it's just very unclear.

worse, i remember going down to songbird and buying them, and in some cases i even remember it being cold out. this does suggest the winter of '99/'00.

but it's just not making sense.

strange truth: i may actually have receipts in the boxes. yeah, it's weird, but it's true. i'll check that out...

i was thinking abut hitting insect ark tonight, but i'm kind of waiting to see if the rain is going to clear up, and even then i'm not convinced it's going to be an exciting show. i tend to prefer punkier types of live shows, due to the higher energy. there's plenty of exceptions, i'm just....still thinking about it.

white lung tomorrow is a for sure.

but this disc is taking longer than i expected, and i'd like to get it moving, too. it's at least all structured, i just need to get the data in.

www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jx8p.php

Jim
I recently acquired a Roland JX-8P. Everything works great except I get stuck notes when I hit several keys, primarily the black ones. The notes just sustain and when I attempt to hit them again they don't don't sound obviously because they are sustaining. When I attach a keyboard controller, I can play without any issue at all. The JX-8P is perfect!! Thus no problems when using a controller keyboard. Key bed has been cleaned. Aftertouch works great! I just get get rid of the sustained notes. I've this is a big problem with the JX-8P and there doesn't appear to be a fix. Any ideas?

deathtokoalas
i picked mine up in early 98 and began to notice a similar problem by mid 2000. i was young and confident at the time, so i figured i could clean it myself. i ended up bending the metal contact. i still have the synth, but i've been using a dx100 to control it ever since.

it's actually rust on the contact - a known issue. in the late 90s, it was something that was easily fixed, if you weren't a cocky teenager. nowadays? well, the rust has probably been there quite a while.

a shop will realize it's a known issue and tell you if you can fix it, or if you need a controller.

sorry for the flood. it's definitely not done, but that's it for probably a few days, anyways.

sorry again, i'm just rearranging the aleph-concept - for the last time. there's going to be a single period 1 disc. it doesn't make sense to split it in half.

i'm really done for a few days, now.

this split shift de-nicing thing again. ugh. goes away in a few days...and i need to make sure this is the last time it happens...

i think that's all the gear from 96-97 that i can think of,or at least all i can remember. like, there was a bass. it was green. there was a kit. it was actually pretty nice; maple, iirc. he kept buying kits for himself, leaving them in my room as an excuse and then never having time to play them, between work and constant real estate speculation and dealing with lawyers and everything else. again: i learned something from that.

there was an acoustic guitar left in there by the same person that left the mxr and the recorder (his name was larry, and he was a bit of a douche. the only person i've ever met that seriously liked bands like kansas. he didn't like me because i was a punk...) in there. my sister had a non-programmable kawaii upstairs, which was meant to be a realistic (weight-wise) sample-based electric piano and had a dozen presets of things like organs and harpsichords, but i only used it on like four tracks and it wasn't mine. i didn't have any computers or electronic toys until after i moved...

i guess the challenge running through 98 and 99 is going to be remembering old 16-bit software.

so, yeah: the last few days kind of sucked in terms of productivity; i had some difficulties staying awake. the next few should be a lot better. i think i can get through 98 today and 99 tomorrow, closing aleph-0 permanently.

yamaha ry-30

i had one of these in the late 90s and it is indeed quite powerful - it's a synthesizer as much as a drum machine, meaning it can double as a sequencer or noise generator. i used to program harpsichord solos into it. it can quantize up to 128 beats per bar and can work in just about any time signature you can think of, which separates it from a lot of other drum machines right off the bat. i used to program entire songs without loops by slowing the tempo down. i was unpleasantly shocked to find out other machines couldn't do this...

that said, the flexibility is memory intensive, and there's not a lot on board, so you want to get a card with it (or make sure you can dump programs via sysex).

somebody that used this machine to great effect around 97 or so was autechre. if you want a really thorough demo, that's a good place to start.

www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/ry30.php

a quick late night jolt in and out of detroit to see speedy ortiz

i'm not so vain...

speedy ortiz was a good show, even if i got a little lost in my head for parts of it. there were some parts that made me laugh, like how the bros in the audience seemed to like the idea of a song about being the boss, completely missing the feminist undertones; overtones, actually. there were some parts that made me cringe, and there were some parts that were just enjoyable to cave into.

i walked in a little uncomfortable with some of the messaging, and walked out convinced that i've been maybe living in a safe spaces bubble as of late. i think i can get how the frustration of playing for an audience that doesn't really understand what you're saying can get irritating, and might lead to some misguided reactions. as they say, every force has a counterforce. i think my analysis is accurate and needed to be stated, but i'm a little more sympathetic than i let on, after actually observing the reality.

that said, sadie also demonstrated a little bit of tyranny, stopping to yell at her visibly perplexed drummer for "trying to tell me a secret that i don't understand". seems to me like a purge is coming...

various shades of truth, from different perspectives; often, there's value in several of them.

this is a band that's been highly touted by the press for quite a while and is the rare act to get this kind of hype that actually deserves it. they're working in a kind of frankenspace between math rock and pop rock that i think has only scratched the surface of what it could be, and could end up being pretty important, in the long run. it needs expansion in both directions to get to a space that few people have really delved into since sonic youth got dropped from geffen. but it really has massive potential.

in the short run, they're a tight band and i do recommend getting out to see them if you get the chance. it's just maybe not the best idea to assume that the riffs bring certain very out of date attitudes with them; maybe, instead, you should listen to what the songwriter is actually saying.

 i wasn't very impressed with either of the opening acts (palehound, alex g).

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/06/04.html

that took longer than i meant it to, but i have the template for inri001 down, meaning the next few should be relatively quick. i need to get groceries and pills some time today; otherwise, this should be a good week-long no smoking project.

i'm still debating the speedy ortiz show tonight. musically, the new record is really quite solid. i'm just sifting over my mind whether or not i'm badly misinterpreting some of the lyrics. i'm borderline old, now, and i need to remember that young people (and university aged people are now "young", in my perspective) are sometimes less precise than they intend to be, and/or overlook things. as a borderline old person, it's my responsibility to be patient rather than contemptuous.

there's a born gold / braids show on sunday, as well. the headliner is purity ring, but they are too poppy for me tastes. i've seen braids a few times, and missed born gold twice in 2011 - once when i was late for a braids show (which was very much not intentional) and once when i skipped grimes at a small bar in ottawa, thinking it was just a bit too poppy and her career probably wasn't going anywhere. if i go to speedy ortiz, i will probably not attend that show.

there's two more shows on the 12th and 13th that i willalmost certainly attend.

right now, i'm actually almost thinking i just need an excuse to make myself look nice and get out of the house for the night, before i settle in for the week. i haven't been anywhere since late april, and i *did* get a relatively large amount done in may. it's maybe time to get out of the house a little.

meaning, i should probably try and get a few hours of sleep in now and decide when i wake up.

thoughts on the new speedy ortiz record

i'm leaning towards catching them in detroit tomorrow, anyways, but it's relatively clear at this point that speedy ortiz is going to be a highly engineered kind of mask and basically a vessel for the singer's ambition - until further notice. it floats at you through what is less a level of abstraction and more a layer of obfuscation. there's lots of music like that. it's ubiquitous in folk, and i can never understand why people find it so hard to figure that out. but the type of indie rock this leans towards (it has plenty of poppier aspects...) is generally about "keeping it real", so the calculated nature of it kind of flags itself.

there's more than a few moments on the record worth checking out, and i expect i'll enjoy the show (if i go). but, the way it''s presented here, that disconnect between actually being an interesting mathy-indie-whatever band and pretending to be a silly pop band is more likely to alienate both potential listeners than it is to build a crossover audience.

i suspect they're going to need another record or two to really coalesce.

the bossy thing is a strange kind of feminism. the way i understand feminism is that it's the analysis of male hierarchy, with the intent of constructing strategies for it's abolition. opening up spaces in the hierarchy for women is a way to co-opt feminism - and the struggle against hierarchy in general - rather than a type of feminism, itself. it's reactionary. in the end, the hetero-patriarchal capitalist system remains in place, and it's effects remain in place, it just has a few women in it to give it an identity politics gloss. it merely takes away an effective argument for reform, and replaces it with this neo-liberal concept of "equality of opportunity". this tactic has actually been successfully implemented in quite a few ways since the 80s. the prime example is south africa. today, the government is primarily black, but the apartheid regime has not been meaningfully altered. the upper class has merely opened a few spaces for black faces, while the mass of the population carries on in exactly the same condition that it has for centuries.

how about "let's get together and replace the boss (whatever the boss' gender) with democratic decision making bodies"?

it kind of gets to what i'm saying about ambition. i'm used to hearing indie rock and punk musicians argue against bossiness and domination altogether. this kind of music is generally paired with concepts of anti-establishmentarianism, egalitarianism and anarchism. it's a part of the appeal. the logic of "if men are dominating then women should be allowed to be dominating, too" exists in some kind of other alien spectrum, where domination is not an inherent injustice - the injustice is an unequal opportunity to be dominating.

a part of it might be the cultural changes that accompanied the reagan revolution; i encountered this kind of chicago school logic when i was organizing with occupy by self-identifying leftists, and basically none of them seemed to understand how internalized this kind of capitalist ideology really was in their thinking. you grow up with certain assumptions, and if nobody challenges them then they just don't get challenged. reality tv shows and dramas like game of thrones are more than entertainment - they're cultural propaganda. and they work at levels that we often don't realize.

but it does expose somebody trying to take over the world...

ambition is not an inherently negative trait in a musician, it's just something that needs self-discipline and a network of friends and acquaintances to put bounds around, to ensure that plans of global domination do not interfere with the quality of the output. the talent here is obvious, and global domination may be inevitable. but i'm guessing, from the results, that those checks and balances are not currently in place.

you're supposed to be able to stream flac by putting it in an ogg vorbis container. which is something that should be done on the software side; there's no good reason to waste that much memory when it's a minor conversion process. it would make no sense for me to convert these to a lossy format to conform to the server side logic that i'm trying to abolish...

i basically have no idea why i can't get this to work and it's actually really pissing me off. it seems like the most simple thing you could imagine, and yet nothing. and i basically can't do anything until i figure it out...

grargh.

i've more or less concluded that this is a bug in firefox - i'm just not sure if it's a bug they're going to acknowledge as a bug, or a bug they're going to wave their hands on. i've filed a bugzilla report and am going to keep building the discs.

i'm not interested in chrome. it's basically toolbar spyware. and i don't even care if it works in ie or not - it's, like, stop using ie....

they won't admit it's a bug, but i've verified this can't work. oddly, there doesn't appear to be an alternative.

this is willful marginalization, from what i can tell. it should be very easy to allow streaming of flac through the ogg container, and just as easy to allow it to work through installed codecs (which is what it does for mp3s). rather, there seems to be a push from somewhere to discourage native lossless streaming. it's easy to blame adobe, but it's probably more a conspiracy of network admins that want to keep down bandwidth.

i actually don't disagree. but there are valid, local uses for flac embedding. and, whomever breaks first is going to see a boost in usage.

facebook isn't letting me edit old posts or quietly post them past 2008 (annoying...), so this is going to flood something nasty, from 1996-2003 over the next few days.

inri036 is going to need a few new mixes, but i've been wanting to add an html front-end to the aleph-discs, so i'm going back to the very start to do that. i'm going to have to rethink the aleph-concept to make space for new mixes, so i might as well do it now. it also means i'm going to begin the process of deleting information from this page, from the bottom up.

it's not this page that's going to take forever, it's the politics page. and, bluntly, that's not the biggest priority for me at the moment, so i'm thinking i'll probably just skip it until i get done the discography altogether. that means this page should be cleaned up within a week or two, and i'll be moved off of it.

i'm leaning heavily at the moment towards merely hardcoding the journal up to appspot, but i'll take a look at some of the other options before i make that choice. i need something that's open to the general public and doesn't run on scripts that hide posts - so it can actually be read like a journal. i'm guessing livejournal is the right option...

again: this page isn't going dead, but it's going to be reduced to a "normal" facebook page that just posts updates - it's the journal aspect that i'm removing. it will look sort of like a cv.

finalizing clarity (inri054)

inri035 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

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

finalizing the wave (inri053)

inri034 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-wave

finalizing jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj (inri052)

inri033 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

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

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

inri032 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

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

finalizing existence (inri050)

no, that was silly thinking...

they're really inaudible in four of the five mixes unless you're listening specifically for them, and they're sparse at that, but i've updated the string mix to be click free. it was mostly noticeable over the end section. i'd have to do this for the chamber mix comp, anyways.

inri031 has been updated and permanently finalized.

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

prematurely finalizing existence (inri050)

inri031 has been finalized without being updated.

something i noticed a few weeks ago (well, i noticed it before then...) was that some of the vstis i'm using are a little crackly. it's more like that i noticed that i missed a few crackles. so, one of the things i'm doing in relistening to the material made since i moved here and started using vstis is to listen very carefully for these little bumps in the final mixes, which can be removed either via digital wave editing or via the crackle remover in cool edit (and i've used both methods). if you open the files up in a wave editor, they're often sharp spikes that can be smoothed by just zooming in and taking the sample down in amplitude. i think it's related to the instrument switching samples, but i'm not totally clear on what's causing these "relics". they almost sound like downsampling errors. whatever they are, i'm going through and carefully ensuring i didn't miss any in bad places.

the mixes on this single have a few crackles. you have to listen carefully for them, but they're there. i actually feel that it adds to the overall sound, here, which is a little bit degraded by design. the choir mix kind of sounds like a handheld hiding in a secret masonic chant, or something, while the string mix sounds almost like an old vinyl.

i was also considering changing the reverb on the string mix to conform to the other string mixes, but the reverb i used in the first place fits the track better - the other reverb is too bright.

i'd also be in a weird spot with this, because the final is a combination of the choir, string and arranged mixes. that means i'd have to change everything, and i'm already happy with the final mix.

so, it's not changing....

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

i'm actually feeling very anxious and distracted right now and not sure why. head is racing. it's probably a culmination of things. the walk in the morning will probably be good for me.

i've been aware for a while that i'm letting something go in finally finishing period 2. these are songs/tracks/whatever that i've been turning over in my head since 2001-2003 - almost fifteen years. if you'd asked me a few years ago, i might have suggested that i'd never actually finish this. on one hand, it feels good to get past it, but on another there's a sort of sense of loss, as it's coming up against a shift in identity. within a few months, i won't be able to say i have all this work i need to get done - because it will be done. it will finally provide me with some closure about a few things. but, it's going to force me to look at the life i have left entirely differently. existential dread, i guess. but, i mean, it's not like i put myself in this situation on purpose, either, it just happened. time moves forward whether anybody likes it or not. i'll adjust, but i'm losing something here and am going to have to go through a process of flux to get to the other side of it and be able to look back on it wih a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment, and be able to really look forward to do something new.

my completed discography is nearing two full days and will pass that hump by the end of the month. that's a lot to permanently let go of, to move out of the "finish one day" and into the "finished" pile. mentally.

there's people involved. bad relationships. relationships gone bad. relationships that evaporated. i think we all think about the past from time to time, but an artist is inherently tied to it, by the nature of the creative process - and the results of it. leaving ideas open leaves wounds open. closing them closes wounds. closure. literally. it's positive, overall - i'm not arguing otherwise. it's just daunting.

and, i think the next batch of material is particularly daunting in that respect. a little drama to foreshadow it. expect a lot in the music. it's necessary...

inri031 is going to require some careful thought, specifically with the string orchestra version. if i update it, it will probably be to replace it.

the weather here was really nice all week, but went to shit last night. the drop in temperature gives me an opportunity to get some compost out tomorrow morning. but i've otherwise committed to zero packs of cigarettes over june - and am absolutely serious about enforcing it. i was almost cold turkey in february, but the weather helped. june is going to be a bit tougher, but i'm not cracking. this should hopefully overlap with the web site push, once i get through this clean-up and push through to completed material up to mid 2004, putting aside incomplete material over late 2003 and 2004 for a few weeks.

i have a final appointment on the 16th and will be mailing my odsp on the 16th or 17th, for analysis some time around the beginning of july. i will either be granted a few more years or have three months to get a reaction. i've already decided to appeal, which will probably give me a few more months. but if i have to do that, i will have to drop the website idea and get back to production, because i will be in a race against time at that point. i've already decided that i don't have a future post-odsp. i haven't decided on an exact path, which will probably depend on the nature of the denial, if it happens.

i'm thinking about hitting three shows this month for sure and a few more are maybes, but a lot of it is going to depend on how focused i am on what i'm doing. i could very well not want to go to any at all, depending on factors like the weather, my disposition and whether i think i can get through it without buying smokes. i've previously prioritized the show and said "i'll quit the next day". i'm reversing that priority. if i'm convinced i'm going to crack, i'm going to stay in.

so, this is an important few months for me coming up. by the end of june, i should get through a lot of loose ends and have an entire period of my music career behind me, and i should have a better understanding of how likely it is that i'm going to be able to plan around disability.

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

inri030 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

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

thoughts on the new son lux single

this isn't the first son lux track where it's like "check the latency, dude". i've been wondering for a while if that's how he's actually getting that glitch effect. i'll wait for the record, i suspect the most compelling material will be buried in there...

finalizing to spin inside dull aberrations (inri048)

inri029 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

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

republishing the intersection of two identical particles moving in completely opposite directions (inri047)

inri028 has been updated and permanently finalized.

===

ok...

so, to understand this piece, it's necessary to go back to 1998.

i was working out primitive sequencer parts for the first inri demo and it just sort of crossed my mind that there was really nothing stopping me from composing symphonies except for a lot of music theory. well, if i could write electronic music without training, why couldn't i write symphonies without training? i mean, the score writing program exists in front of me. it was just a question of experimenting with it. i could do it myself...

...but i actually already had a pretty hefty disdain for music theory by the age of 17. i'd managed to come across a music history textbook that traced the deconstruction of western theory from beethoven through to schoenberg and this, combined with my experiences as a guitarist, was enough to prevent me from taking it seriously. the perception i had was of modern composers viewing music theory sort of like how biologists viewed creationism. i use that analogy fairly frequently. it just didn't strike me as relevant.

now, i've softened a bit over time to a view that music theory is best understood in terms of the underlying physics. this renders the theory useless, but upholds the basic relationships between tones as physical, mathematical realities. the thing is the next step of abstraction is understanding that these mathematical objects can be arranged and analyzed in any arbitrary way, and the conventional theory really *is* a fallacy akin to creationism. so, i still hold to the general thesis. this is actually the first serious example of me putting that disdain for the idea that music should have a theory into real action. i remain adamantly of the view that art is not a realm where theories should exist or be viewed with anything other than scorn. theories are rigid, formal things; art is informal, chaotic.

so, it's 1998. i have a scorewriter and a very basic soundcard and i want to bullshit a symphony out of it. i did this by composing a single brief melody by randomly mashing notes into a scorewriter. i then took that melody and pasted it over top of itself at differing speeds (64th, 32nd, 16th, 8th, quarter, half, whole notes). i then took that, cut it off near the end of the half notes and pasted it over itself, backwards.

that might sound like it's going to sound awful, but it actually sounds quite lovely. one could analyze it quite easily, but it's creation is beyond the realm of any rules of construction.

which is where art belongs.

...excepting the algorithm i used, of course. i suppose it's more reich than schoenberg, but kind of more xenakis than either.

the initial version ended up subsumed underneath a messy noise collage that i created independently and have lost the source material for. that messy noise collage was eliminated from the track for the 1999 version, which was reconstructed by reproducing the algorithm. these are tracks 19 and 20 on this systematic exploration of the theme.

in 2001, i ran the midi file through my soundblaster live!, which as primitive as it is, has a much nicer wavetable in it than the primitive soundcard i used in 1998 and 1999 (i don't remember what it was). this is track 21. i also slowed it down by about 20 bpm and allowed the full file to "intersect", which let it breathe more. i've previously not done anything with this mix other than append it to some mix cds. the guitars on the soundblaster are notoriously bad, so there wasn't a lot to do with it....

why? well, i was writing a lot with scorewriters at the time and was just experimenting with the old file, really. but i was also finishing up what would be the only year i would spend in the math-physics department, and thought it sounded like i would imagine intersecting particles *should* sound like. i was generally interested in finding ways to combine science with music then - an interest that is present in older tracks as well and that has stuck with me. i may explore these themes further in time. one of the ideas i really wanted to accomplish was a physical modelling of the universe, to actually simulate the music of the spheres, as pythagoras imagined it. i think i underestimated the complexity of such a task....

of course, i never expected the music of the spheres to be tonal. and i wouldn't expect the sound of particles intersecting to be musical, either. but, we can take some artistic license. if intersecting particles are to make a sound, it OUGHT to be something like this!

now, the place to work out the actual intersection is rather arbitrary. i had initially cut off the entire section of pure whole notes, back in '98. what i wanted to do in '01 was create a sequence where it's cut off incrementally, creating shorter and shorter pieces. i didn't actually do that then, but i did do it in july of 2014.

as for the piece, i haven't changed it much. i've doubled the guitar with a pizzicato string section, and put it through a better guitar synthesizer (and amp simulator, and effects). the sound fonts are otherwise identical, just updated mildly to a better synthesizer.

a string orchestra mix was added at the end of may, 2015.

i've included the midi files of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own.

written june, 1998. reimagined june, 2001. slightly rearranged and re-rendered at the end of july, 2014. the renders here are from june 1998, june 1999, june 2001 and july 2014. intially released on july 25, 2014. re-released with a new string orchestra mix & finalized on may 30, 2015. as always, please headphones.

credits:
j - programming, digital effects & treatments, digital wave editing, composition.

the rendered electronic orchestras variously include piano, electric guitar, orchestra hit, synth pads, pizzicato strings, violin, viola, cello and pc card.

released june 18, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-intersection-of-two-identical-particles-moving-in-completely-opposite-directions

the intersection of two identical particles moving in completely opposite directions (string orchestra mix)

written one day in june, 1998. re-created on another day in june, 1999. reimagined on yet another day in june, 2001. a failed remaster occurred at the end of 2013. slightly rearranged and re-rendered at the end of july, 2014. rearranged again at the end of may, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/string-orchestra-mix-2

it's starting to look like this chamber works thing is something i'm going to actually do. i'll take hits on pretension for it, but it's starting to shape up as something worthwhile.

i mean, the strings are 100% synthesized. but they sound good enough to compile a record out of them. i've heard plenty of synthesizer-based classical music, but never anything like this; in a sense, it's just taking it to the next level. it may actually be relatively normal in the upcoming years.

for some of it, yeah, i'd rather find an actual string orchestra (there's more than four parts for most of it). if you're aware of one willing to work for a thumbs up, let me know.

i bought a cheap starter electric violin years ago, but never taught myself to play it. it doesn't help for the low parts. and, as i said, it actually sounds pretty good...

i have a tendency to predict upcoming musical trends. it may, in the end, be just another example of my inadvertent tendency towards incredible foresight.

sometimes, i amuse myself by making things sound as terribly as i can possibly imagine. it's always good for a laugh. but, i'm definitely not using that mix. i'm not even saving it...

republishing the symphony of psilocybin induced madness (inri046)

inri027 has been updated and permanently finalized.

==

the core of this was written in my parent's basement in the spring of 2001. planning on going to a rave that weekend, i had previously purchased a large amount of drugs; i was, however, forced to stay in due to having a calculus test that sunday (the rave was out of town). well, my parents were gone for the weekend, most of my friends were out of town and i had a massive stash of drugs...

it is quite literally a symphony of psilocybin induced madness and was written directly into an ancient, hacked score-writing program. while it has been labelled as a symphony of drunken confusion in certain contexts to get around certain social stigmas, this is inaccurate.

around 2006 or so, i took a course in electronic music design that had a recorded component and pulled the score off of my hard drive with the intent of finally recording it properly. the dx7 i had available to me greatly improved the synth patches, enough that i'm willing to let the track rest that way.

i've included midi files of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own.

written in the spring of 2001. lent out for a different project in jan, 2004. reconstructed in the first quarter of 2006, especially over march. released as a one track single on april 1, 2006. expanded with alternate mixes and re-released on july 23, 2014. the vst mix was added on jan 10, 2015 and the two guitar mixes were added on may 29, 2015. re-released & finalized on may 29, 2015. as always, please use headphones.

credits
j - electric guitars, programming, digital effects & treatments, sampling, composition, production.

the rendered electronic orchestras variously include synthesizers, clavinet, kalimba, nylon guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, piano, banjo, electronic drums, pc card, violin, cello, bamboo flute, flute, viola, soprano saxophone, tuba, trumpet, organ and music box.

released may 15, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-symphony-of-psilocybin-induced-madness

the symphony of psilocybin induced madness (backwards guitar mix)

however, it's going to be a backwards guitar mix that will appear on the atmospheres disc. it's a good way to close the ep, with a wash of backwards effects.

==

this is the previous mix, backwards.

written early 2001. reconstructed in the first quarter of 2006, especially over march. this version was rendered from the existing source files on may 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/backwards-guitar-mix

the symphony of psilocybin induced madness (guitar mix) (cut)

i've been playing with ways to get this to work in a guitar-only context for the last several hours, and have concluded it needs to be cut. the atmospheric component of the track is based on overlapping loops that unfold in a process; this is supplemented with a romantic-style piano part and a rising orchestra, along with a number of other loops. separating out the guitars creates something with a "mad" aesthetic, which was the intent. but, it requires the melodic content to actually be compelling to listen to. i've cut this down for 18 to 13 and finally to 3 minutes - it's just enough to get the idea across, without beating you over the head with it.

==

this is a cut guitar-only version. it's cut to ensure that each of the guitar loops is heard, but not to drag the process on. the atmospheric portion of the track is in fact mostly guitars - as demonstrated by this edit - but it was intended to create an atmosphere of jumbled thoughts and general madness, not to be listened to on it's own. this edit gets that point across without dragging it on.

written early 2001. reconstructed in the first quarter of 2006, especially over march. this version was rendered from the existing source files on may 29, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/guitar-mix-cut

rap news 32

systemic racism is systemic. racial profiling. a culture of supremacism. the policies are by design, and the results are intended. it's not a few shitty cops that need further education.

there was a case a while ago when a cop was excluded from the force because his iq tests came back too high, and the court system upheld the rights of the force to exclude him on that basis. smart people are more likely to act independently in the face of clear injustice. cops are literally singled out for their ability to be dumb enforcers, and then instructed to interpret people through a racial filter. it's design.

and, if you understand that the role of the police is to protect property, it's an inescapable necessity from the elite's perspective. it's rational. if you want to maintain the status quo of racial based inequality, you need a system of extreme force to do so and you need it thinking in racist terms.

one of the core issues is the continued existence of prison labour. this is basically unheard of anywhere else in the developed world. a constitutional amendment to ban prison labour would be a huge step forward.

but the only way to really overturn this kind of system is to tear it down.

of course, looting the 7/11 is not a useful tactic. but, the videos i saw exposed an average age of around 17. on some level, these are the people that have the most at stake. on another, they're not old enough to vote.

finalizing j’s adventures in guitarland (inri045)

inri026 has been finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/js-adventures-in-guitarland

republishing the time machine (inri044)

i've added six more mixes to inri025: two techno mixes, three for solo instruments and an arrangement for string orchestra. this was initially a classical guitar piece, but it is unplayable on a standard 19-fret classical and i do not currently have access to an extended board. there is a placeholder for a final performance on a suitably constructed instrument. but, for now, it is otherwise closed.

inri025 has been updated and semi-permanently finalized.

==

regarding this piece, 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 (a specific c# cannot be hit on a standard classical). yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's guitar music. the counterpoint is very guitar.

to further complicate things, i've long wanted to turn the piece into a jazzy idm romp. it has a kind of a jingly feel to it that belongs in the warp records sphere.

so, what is this? a classical guitar piece? a jazzy piano piece? a techno tune? all of the above! as with other pieces from this period, this is presented here in multiple formats: several rendered midi tracks, live guitar versions, a vst version and a "full band" version - as well as multiple remixes.

i have included the original midi file (and sheet music in pdf) as a bonus item in the download, if you want to play with it on your own.

conceptually, the time machine aspect referred simply to the slowed down guitar chords at the beginning of the song. if you play it a certain way, it sounds like time is collapsing in on itself. or, so i thought, anyways. the various versions i have created here have made an attempt to take that idea to it's logical conclusion. it's a mix of the vision i had at the time and a bit of hindsight.

six further mixes were added at the end of may, 2015. two of these are "techno" mixes of the song, three are interpretations of the piece on a solo instrument and one is a rearrangement for a full string orchestra. i've decided to present the material in a way that is really two eps combined together, with the first being arrangements for multiple instruments and the second being arrangements for solo instruments. note that there is a placeholder for the track as it was initially written for a 21-fret classical guitar.

written early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. rendered, arranged and performed over june and july, 2014. released on july 21, 2014. six new mixes were added in late may, 2015. re-released & put on indefinite hold as to status on may 28, 2015 as always, please use headphones.

credits
j - electric guitar, programming, digital effects & treatments, digital wave editing, loops, production, composition

the various rendered electronic orchestras include acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, upright bass, brass section, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, nylon guitar, electric guitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, french horn, trumpet, tuba, trombone, synthesizers, synthesizer effects, harp, music box, detuned piano, piano, bells, flute, hammered percussion, vibraphone, marimba and mellotron. it also includes choir.

released march 21, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-time-machine

the time machine (dirty synth mix)

so, the update is now complete, i just have to finalize a tracklisting.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further remixed over july, 2014 and again in may, 2015. this version of the track was completed on may 27th, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/dirty-synth-mix

it's not. and i'm remembering that i went through this before many years ago. well, it is in theory, if i tuned the b up to an open c, but then i'd need jimi hendrix or michael jordan sized hands, and, as it is, i've met tween girls with bigger hands than mine. they're really freakishly small, it's sort of almost unbelievable, even. if lamarck was right, but alas...

so, i can't close this. but it could be years before i get that 21 fret guitar.

hey, listen - i can do sneaky, acrobatic things that hendrix' hands would get jumbled up in. it forces a specific style, but i can count as many times that it's been a benefit as i can that it's been a drawback. guitars aren't like pianos like that, there's too many angles going on.

the specific problem is that it's written in the third fret position, and there's consequently a lot of bass notes around there that need the hand to stay put - so they can ring. it's *already* kind of tricky, with pinkies stretching out to the 6th fret. if i tune the high e up to f#, i have to move essentially the whole melody up a string, because i need chords to ring through the high e and also to ring through hammer ons (meaning another solution would be to have six fingers). but, because the low g and f# are both prominent, that puts me in a situation where i need to fret from the 3rd (low e) to 10th (b) frets - which is not impossible in theory, it would just require hands much bigger than mine. it doesn't help to tune the a down to g or f#, because i have the same problem with the f# on the bottom string or the g on either of the two top strings - nor the e up, because it needs to ring quite a bit. a seventh string on either side would be another answer, but it's still not useful to me right now....

you know, i'm not sure why it didn't occur to me until right now to just tune the high e up a step. let me take a look at the score and see if that's playable.....

the time machine (updated midi nylon guitar mix)

here is the midi classical guitar mix, with a more listenable sample-based sound font.

i gotta be clear: i don't like doing this. i'm a guitarist. this is a computer. my teeth are grating a little.

but, the reason i moved the track from guitar to piano (and then abandoned it, until this year when i turned it into a jazzy techno thing) is that you need a 21-fret classical to play it. there's a live electric guitar mix - because electric guitars have 21 frets, minimum (mine are 23 and 24). but i just don't have a 21 fret classical. i can't even fudge the harmonic; all i have is a miniature 19-fret thing, and it just can't do it.

but here's the thing: maybe i should have a 21-fret or more classical. and i will, eventually. i'd even go so far as to suggest that, when i get done the discography, classical guitar music may be the only music i keep making. that means i can't permanently close this - in fact i can virtually guarantee that i will eventually add a live classical mix to the ep.

but, i won't remove this one, because it's a different slant on it. so, here it is...

this evening, i'm going to do a full drum and bass techno romp mix with crunchy synths in replace of guitars. as of this moment, i'm thinking it will probably finish this off, but i'll need o give it a good listen before i get to that conclusion. i'm also not entirely sure about the tracklisting yet...

written in early 2001. rendered may 27, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/updated-midi-nylon-guitar-mix

the time machine (updated midi piano mix)

when i initially uploaded this, i had the silly idea that it would be a bad idea to change the sound font, for the reason that it was important to maintain the sound of the piece as i had written it, for historical reasons. but...who wants to listen to a lonely sequenced piano through a budget 90s soundcard....

i've kept the initial files up, because, hey, why not? but, i've updated the font to sound considerably better.

the piano wasn't so bad to begin with - i've used the soundcard for plenty of piano parts, but it sounds a lot better near the higher end of the register, and with a little reverb. it's worth it on an a/b but it wasn't really terrible. i'm going to be updating the guitar part as well, which is going to be a much more noticeable update.

written in early 2001. rendered may 27, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/updated-midi-piano-mix

the time machine (atmospheric electric guitar mix)

written in early 2001. reinterpreted in july, 2014; this version of the track was initially completed on july 21st. remixed to include background atmospheres on may 27, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/atmospheric-electric-guitar-mix

the time machine (string orchestra mix)

inri025 is being overhauled, and almost doubled in length. that's fine, it's why i'm doing this run through.

when i did this last summer, i was thinking less comprehensively than i came to think over the course of the year. in truth, there's quite a few ideas to work out further, and a few that were kind of not the most interesting thing to begin with. this is going to be all digital; the tracks are down and done.

so, this is the second of what i'm thinking will be at least six additions to the single.

i kind of want to get all the "ep-singles" up over 40 minutes, as well. eps are usually conceptual, and subject to different requirements; singles are singles. but i consider the ep-single to be a sort of mini-record. that's what i grew up with - it's what i'd want, as a consumer. the releases are currently priced to sell (*ahem*...hint...), but if i get to a certain number of homemade sales i'd like to press some of them. what i press will depend on what sells - the magic number is 5000, which should pay for a pressing of any specific disc, if i get to that point. so, ensuring these are all "mini records" makes them a bit more worthwhile as possible physical items. i guess it's also worth pointing out that everything is designed for instant printing, should a label decide to pick me up on terms i'm willing to accept...

i don't want to just upload crap, though, either. what's coming is largely based around compilation ideas that actually work. i'm a little skeptical about a chamber works of synthesized string music, but we'll see what comes up.

it's often stated that a song is really good when it sounds good on just an acoustic guitar. i can't agree with that - but i've never been a fan of folk music, either, so it's partially an issue of defining what is "really good".

i think a better metric is "if it sounds good when arranged purely for strings". decide for yourself, i guess...but this isn't going to be the last one of these...

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further remixed over july, 2014 and may, 2015. this version of the track was completed on may 27th, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/string-orchestra-mix

the time machine (percussion & bass mix)

this is a "drum and bass" mix, with pitched percussion for the melodic parts.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further remixed over july, 2014 and may, 2015. this version of the track was completed on may 26th, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/percussion-bass-mix

i'm serious about these being final updates. inri025, inri036, inri037, inri039, inri042, inri046 and inri048 are being further examined.

i will post each record as it is "closed".

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

i've been in the process of closing down my second artistic phase for longer than i'd like, but i'm really getting to the final points on it, which means taking one last run through everything and making final decisions on it. this is the fourth mix i've appended to this single over the last week, but it is now final. closed.

so, behold inri024, which is now a 90 minute 12-track "single" of reinterpretations of this track.

inri024 has been updated and permanently finalized.

===

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.

thematically, the track is meant to orchestrate a feeling of claustrophobia with society pushing down on you too hard. it's meant to transmit a feeling of existential dread. at the time, i really felt stuck with life in general and not sure how i was going to get out of it.

four further remixes were added at the end of may, 2015, which has forced me to move two of the midi renders to 'download only'.

written late 2000 & early 2001. the renders present here are all from after 2013. 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. initially released on june 7, 2014. four new orchestral mixes were added in late may, 2015. re-released & finalized on may 26, 2015. 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, other guitar effects, 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, woodblock, tubular bells, orchestra hit, jazz drum kit, hand drums, melodic toms, orchestral drum kit, hammered percussion, marimba, taiko drum, synthetic percussion 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
 

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (slow string orchestra fade out)

so, as mentioned, i'm going through inri024-inri050 and posting final updates.

this has been added to inri024 as an absolute final update.

written late 2000 & early 2001. rearranged, rendered and faded out on apr 27, 2014. further remixed on may 26, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/slow-string-orchestra-fade-out

my sleeping schedule cycled back around. i couldn't imagine going back to a regular schedule. the last time i tried that (2006/2007), i ended up scheduling myself on 48 hour days - i'd wake up, go to work, go home, stay up all night, go to work, sleep. i did that for months. it was the only way i could get anything besides work done.

nowadays, i tend to live about 25-30 hour days, which means the time of day that i'm awake staggers forwards by a few hours every day. last week, i was doing overnights. this week, it looks like i'll be up during the day. next week i'll probably be waking up some time around noon. and the week after that, i'll be waking up when the sun comes down.

i need to mail a package when the post office opens, and make a few calls at a pay phone on the way back. but, i'll be back to work around ten.

i had put a number of ideas aside for future comps - i need to systematically approach this now, not later. at the least, the comp ideas are finalized, so i can approach this that way. i'll be mildly updating a number of releases after inri024 over the next day or two, until i get back to inri050.

some of the comp mixes have no real option but to be exclusive - they don't make sense on a single, or the single is pushing 80 minutes of mixes already (yeah, i know....but it's what happened...) or the addition is too minor to really justify the addition. but this needs to be comprehensive, because when i push forwards to the post-trip material, i have no intention of moving backwards.

i'm not going to get anything done today, but ive got a few hours while i'm waiting for a doctor's appointment, and i'm scolding myself for being lazy on the ambient works - i should have created a new mix for "fuck boxes", and knew i should have, in fact i almost did, but i didn't want to open the single or set up the files so i said "this is good enough"...

but it isn't. i mean, half the mix fits the right description, but there's nothing ambient about punk drumming and zeppelin riffs. i'm going to have fix that by taking some parts out, and also create a guitar mix for the atmospheres disc. there's really only one organ part, and no synths, so it's largely a guitar collage.

there's really no excuse for that on my behalf. the point of this is a comprehensive, final, complete revision. i will fix that error, take a closer examination at what's there one more time and promise not to cut corners in the future.

i've pretty much settled on combining the techy guitar tracks together into a "tetris", and waiting until the end of period 4 to release it as a 2xcd. i'm mostly done the sound collage - just a few more tracks. but it's going to be split into tracks for a normal cd release, and it's a little short of the 80 minute target. the guitar atmospherics disc is also seeming like it's coming up a little short, so this may actually get moved to a period 3 comp. i'm just a little hesitant that it may end up creating the problem of requiring two more discs - and i wouldn't really want to release a 4xcd of this nature, or release it in two doubles. tetris is something i've been wanting to do for years, and it works as a 2xcd. but a 2xcd of guitar snippets is overkill, and a 2xcd of guitar atmospheres is likewise pointless; this is only interesting when bundled together as an a/b side type thing.

i have a pile of real world things i need to do tomorrow and probably tuesday, and was hoping i could get this done first. i can't put it off, so if it's not done by the time i sleep, it's going to be until at least mid week before it is.

so, i've narrowed this down to one, maybe two more comps.

it seems like i'm going to have a guitar works up in three volumes, similarly to the ambient works - with a spliced together mix tape of shorts for the period one material and a 2xcd for the period 2, with one for "lead" parts and one for "atmospheric" parts.

i'm debating also putting together a drum and bass / electronic jazz disc, but i want to put together the guitar disc first to see if it overlaps.

i've had an idea for a while about a "tetris" idea, which is specifically meant to be techno guitar solos. this overlaps with the drum and bass idea. but, it also overlaps with period 3 and also period 4.

so, i'm contemplating these things. and then that is it - it will be on to period 3.

publishing orchestral works (inri072)

this is inri049 - an orchestral works compilation to close my second compositional period. these pieces are diverse, but the commonality is that they are arranged for the whole orchestra.

==

an unexpected result of the project to complete my discography, undertaken in late 2013, has been the construction of a handful of orchestral pieces, mostly as remixes of original tracks from the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj period. while these tracks were initially written out as scored pieces for expanded instrumentation, they were generally written around the guitar and the expanded instrumentation was largely meant simply for colour. the exception to this is the psilocybin symphony, which was written as a piano concerto from the start and previously completed in early 2006.

the ability to expand these pieces into orchestral works is the result of the advances in vst sampling technology that have occurred since 2003. while changes in instrumentation have been accompanied by extra writing (mostly on the guitar), tempo shifts and other general rearrangement choices, the existing technology makes it very easy to rearrange a rock song for an orchestra, by simply multiplying staves and changing the sound fonts.

the condition i've set for a piece to be "orchestral" is that it must utilize the entire orchestra: it must have percussion, piano, horns, woodwinds/reeds and strings. guitars are generally treated like "first violins", whereas violins are generally not considered to be more special than other similar string instruments. some of the tracks also have prominent choral sections. all of these pieces meet this condition, except the last one which does not have a woodwind/reed section.

my delve into scorewriting ended in 2003; the material in my third phase is more focused on live and manipulated guitars and synthesizers. i consequently feel that this is an interesting summary of my second period, taken from a specific angle that is otherwise largely relegated to single-only remixes.

initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015, except track 2 which was completed in early 2006. final compilation date is may 23, 2015. as always, please use headphones.

credits
j - controller inputs, drum & other programming, orchestral & other sequencing, live guitars, live bass, live synths, effects, sound design, digital wave editing, composition, production.

the various rendered electronic orchestras includes violin, viola, cello, contrabass, electric guitar, nylon guitar, guitar fret noise, bass guitar, synthesizer bass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, english horn, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, bamboo flute, flute, piccolo, synthesizers, mellotron, organ, piano, harp, koto, music box, clavinet, kalimba, xylophone, agogo, mallet, hammered percussion, woodblock, tubular bells, tinkle bells, glockenspiel, orchestra hit, melodic toms, electronic drum kit, timpani, orchestral drum kit and choir.

released april 29, 2003

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/orchestral-works-vol-1

reflections (orchestral mix)

written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed and re-rendered over may, 2015. this render was completed as an ambient mix on may 16, 2015 and expanded to include a horn section on may 23, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/reflections-orchestral-mix

done up to the trip

hey..

this has been a painfully slow process, but i'm finally done up to the bc trip. that's a lot of stuff. like, almost two days of music. now, i need to get to creating final versions of as many of the songs i wrote on the trip and right after it as i can remember...

"refractions" (inri046), "flying" (inri045) and "la la la la" (inri043) are singles of material from "reflections (inri050), which was the going away trip. there's some new remixes on 43 & 46 that you may enjoy, specifically.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/music

j

prematurely publishing orchestral works (inri072)

ok, so i've published this with the ambient mix of "reflections", but i'm in the process of adding some horn parts. these are minor additions that are doubling guitar and bass parts - you'd have to know the track fairly well to even notice. but it's conceptual in getting the comp together, and it *does* brighten up the sound a little.

i'm not expecting to add reed or woodwind parts to this, but i'll have to listen to it on repeat for a few hours to be convinced of that.

for right now, this is basically inri049. i'll post the final update when it's finished.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/orchestral-works-vol-1

inri024 has been updated again with two more mixes - the discussed orchestral mix, and a glitch sound collage that came out of the process. i believe this is the final update.

this process of compiling ideas at the end of period 2.2/2.3 will be the absolute final modification of the material up to inri050.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides

stuck in the middle of an alley with angry googley-eyed robots slowly closing in on all sides

i wanted to check that two outs from the orchestral mix mostly nulled, and ended up with somewhat of a musical - albeit very glitchy - difference file. i created this collage out of that difference file on may 22, 2015.

written late 2000 & early 2001. rearranged, rendered and faded out on apr 27, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may 2014. further remixed for the ambient works on may 19, 2015, again for the orchestral works on may 22, 2015 and a third time for this glitch mix on may 22, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-with-angry-googley-eyed-robots-slowly-closing-in-on-all-sides

stuck with a guitar in the middle of a slow electronic orchestra playing on all sides

for the orchestral works (inri072). the sound font on the strings was modified to sound less synthetic and the live guitars from the original mix were worked in at the slower tempo.

written late 2000 & early 2001. rearranged, rendered and faded out on apr 27, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may 2014. further remixed for the ambient works on may 19, 2015 and again for the orchestral works on may 22, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stuck-with-a-guitar-in-the-middle-of-a-slow-electronic-orchestra-playing-on-all-sides

yeah. i've got a five track, 76 minute comp of orchestral music that is coming up as inri049, i just need to make some adjustments to "stuck". it wasn't in my initial list because it's kind of a punk song, but it turns out "spin" meets my requirements of "orchestral". and i've made an exception for the ambient mix of reflections, which is like....if it wasn't there, the disc would be 50 minutes instead, and who prefers that? it's basically bonus. it doesn't have reed, wind or horn parts but the synth bass sounds sort of like a horn and the choir, when it comes in, is pretty epic. i'm going to experiment a little with adding some parts in, but i don't expect any to stick...

the thing is that there's nothing approaching "orchestral music" in the discography after 2003 until at least 2006. i was more interested in trying to find a drummer in order to start a rock band. some of the stuff may have picked up string parts and whatnot had they developed further, and a few still might, but there's just not anything to put aside the tracks for. if i don't put it together for april, 2003 it will probably never get put together at all.

the other two tracks are the mushroom symphony and the guitar concerto.

first things first: let me take a look at "stuck".

i've been wanting to do an "orchestral works" for a while, it's just that i need to be strict about how i'm defining an orchestral work - because otherwise i end up with almost everything.

i'm going to lean towards horn-heavy tracks as being "jazz" and string heavy tracks as being "chamber". that's going to let me put both of those ideas off until the end of period 3.

an orchestral work needs to have horns, strings, reeds and winds - it's gotta actually be a full orchestra. it also helps if it's a concerto.

i've got two pieces that fit this definition cleanly, and two i want to remix mildly to get closer to the point. i'm thinking this will probably get done for an inri049 release, which will put reflections up to 50 - or 51, if that guitar disc gets built, as i think it will.

so, there's still some ideas to work through with this.

when you need to sleep...

the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj period is now finished. finally. and it feels good.

publishing ambient works vol 0-2 (inri071 + inri035)

i've got the mix tape up which means inri048 is now done...

i've got a number of snippets after about 1999 that i'm not sure what to do with. i'm probably going to just forget about most of it, but some of it will no doubt end up on volume 3, which will be somewhere in the 60s or 70s. so i'll just put it aside for later.

i put aside a number of compilation ideas as i was sorting through the material. i wasn't expecting anything to get a release in this space, but i'm now questioning that. it's largely a process of elimination. but right now it'slooking like inri050 is actually going to be a similarly epic guitar-focused disc.

that said, there's plenty of guitars on this disc, especially in the mix tape. i'll post it when i figure it out...

===

i've taken to splitting my discography into phases, and my hitch-hiking trip to british columbia is a very important separation point - both in terms of the nature of the material that came out afterwards and what is now a substantial body of work that came before it. that makes it a natural point to look backwards and build compilations of intersecting ideas.

a characteristic of my work is that it does not conform well to genre norms. this is not an accident; when compiling a record, i'm guided more by the late beatles' philosophy of vast diversity in a small space than i am by any kind of desire to collect together nice singles, or by some kind of compulsive organizing into categories or concepts. i write psychedelic music. that means something different in 2015 than it did in 1966, but the commonality is that it's necessarily challenging. i want all of my records to do everything at once, and accomplish everything by their end point. that makes compilations of this sort inherently difficult, because every song touches on every compilation idea at the same time. the jazz record would have the same tracklisting as the punk record, the classical record and the folk record - and none would really be what they're claimed to be.

the one exception to this conundrum is how i interacted with ambient music in this period. i very regularly utilized ideas from the genre, but i tended to interpret ambience as something that is necessarily obscure. in this period, ambient pieces are almost always outtakes or b sides. i tended to interpret covers and remixes as ambient pieces, probably because that was unexpected. when ambient ideas make it on to the record, they're almost always for effect: introductions, endings, connecting passages, that sort of thing.

when i began reconstructing my discography in early 2014, i came across a handful of songs i'd written out into midi format and put aside for later. a number of these ended up reworked into ambient pieces, and released as b sides. i also ended up converting some of the material i wrote in this period into ambient sound collages that are more in the style of music i created after 2003.

the end result is enough bsides and remixes to put together two full cds of ambient music. none of the tracks on volumes one or two are on any official record as they appear here; this is technically a collection of remixes and outtakes.

initially written and recorded between 2000-2003 and remixed between 2014-2015. sequenced over mid may, 2015. final compilation date is may 21, 2015,. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon), effects & treatments, bass, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, orchestral & other sequencing, drum & other programming, generative programming (sounder), "projectile synthesis" (audiomulch), granular synthesis (granulab), sound design, electronic and conventional drum kits, sampling, loops, films, voice, digital wave editing, composition, production.

sean - vocal ideas (tracks 4 & 7, disc 1), ring modulator (track 9, disc 1)
jon - background guitar performance (track 4, disc 1)
greg - drum performance sample source (track 5, disc 1)

the various rendered electronic orchestras include synth bass, electric bass, acoustic bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, nylon guitar, guitar effects, guitar noises (fret noises, pick scrapes, knocks), synthesizer, synth pads, mellotron, choir, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, string section, pizzicato strings, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, clarinet, flute, piccolo, mallet, piano, woodblock, music box, xylophone, tubular bells, other bells, orchestra hit, electronic drum kit, melodic toms, drum machine and orchestral drum kit.

released april 28, 2003

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0-2