ok

hi.

i'm still working through in my head what went wrong. not in 2005. i understand that, and didn't really have a problem letting you go, then. we agreed it was a mutual breakup due to different life goals. it's what happened in 2010ish that i can't figure out.

i'm realizing that my memory of our communication between about 2005 and 2010 is very poor. i remember you coming over sometimes. i remember walking in the experimental farm with you. i remember eating lunch with your family up at catherine & bank. i remember fixing your computer. but i also have some fuzzier, stranger memories - like not going to see you when you had amnesia. i don't even know if that actually happened, if you ever even had amnesia or what i was thinking if it did. it seems uncharacteristic. i may have been thinking that it's for the best, but it doesn't seem like to me to think that. and it may even be the answer i'm seeking.

i think a part of the reason my memory is so poor over that period is that my diet was terrible. but i dream a lot, both awake and asleep. i live in my own head. and, i'm consequently not sure what really happened and what didn't. combined, that's a problem, because i may remember things that didn't happen, and i might have forgotten things that did. my behaviour and statements may be glaring contradictions, because i have such a difficulty pulling out what happened and what i imagined happened, during or after it happened.

i have to consequently resign myself to not being able to figure it out, unless you explain it to me. which is all i was ever looking for in the first place.

i don't really remember what i typed in all those emails, either.

standing where i am, now, 500 km away and with little chance of ever communicating with you again, i'm just wishing things turned out better. a little self-reflection demonstrates the point that i'm sort of crazy - i'm telling you that i can't discern between history and fantasy, or remember freaking out, or even realize when i'm contradicting myself, and that's maybe a little unsettling. but, people like me need some support structures, too. you need to take us as we are, or not at all. i've just been unable to process your decision, as i didn't think it was in the realm of possibility. and, even now, i'm still thinking this is temporary - even though it clearly isn't.

maybe it's pathetic. i guess i've just had very few friends. actual friends; i don't mean people you hang out with, but actual friends. in fact, i think you might be the one and only friend i ever had, besides my father. so, i'm sorry if you ever thought i was more than pathetic. again, you have to take us as we are or not at all. not with a level of sympathy, or even a level of empathy, but just with acceptance. and i just can't grasp that you aren't - i'm searching for blocks, misunderstandings, misinterpretations....

i've been compiling data on my earliest musical releases in order to put them away permanently: building biographies, gear lists, facebook timelines - things like that. but when i'm done i'm going to dive head first into the music i created when i knew you. that's going to bring back a lot of memories - no doubt both real and imagined.

i'm not writing this to warn you of a further breakdown. if that happens, i'll keep it to myself. if i felt there was a purpose in talking things through in 2010, i don't feel there still is, today - you've made your disinterest clear.

however, i think that you have the right to read my summaries as i put them up, and to suggest corrections if you feel it's worthwhile. so, i feel the responsibility to send you links to these pages when they're published. it's up to you to decide how to respond.

you will be referred to simply as "sarah". nobody that doesn't know me will know who you are, and people that know me will know you who are, anyways.

i think a part of the reason i'm holding to some of this is that i never completed the recordings. working through complex psychological issues is a part of being an artist; needing art to work through complex psychological issues is a common theme in people with mental illnesses. for years, i put it off to avoid it, and then the shit hit the fan as i was - i should add that, in addition to the instability brought on by hormones, i was working out songs about you when i freaked out.

as i work these pieces out to their final conclusions, i will finally be working through what i need to work through to get to some kind of end point. i think so, anyways. i hope.

my future is not what you may have imagined for me at some point. i live alone. i don't work. i immerse myself in the things that are important to me. i've actually been very stable and very content the last few years; where i am right now is that i don't want things to change. i'll probably live this way for as long as i have left to live....

but, i think i'll stop contacting you when i get these songs down. there's a lot of them, and it will take a while. but that closure is on it's way.

i apologize for being incapable of getting to this end point sooner, for not being able to understand what's happening around me and for persistently bothering you, for many years, to help me understand it.

it'll be done with, soon.

i think. i hope...

j

done. i'm just going to hit a run through the activity log tonight, and then i can get to building the rest of the page up.

if you're curious, the document i'm storing this in is now well over 2,000 pages. that's 2000 pages @ 8.5x11, 12 pt font - standard, except my margins are as wide as you can print them. that doesn't include any posts i've made to google, and only includes at most a quarter of the posts to my political/philosophical ranting page. nor does it include the frequent ranting i posted to cbc before 2011, my facebook group posts (mostly occupy related) or any of my posts to newsgroups or mail lists in the 90s (all of which appear to be permanently lost.). even with these substantial restrictions, this document could quite easily exceed 10,000 pages - and that's just ranting since 2010. i also have a significant archive of rants, theories and analysis worked into a web site i've periodically run, and cleaning this up and publishing it will be the focus of the remainder of my life, once i've completed my discography. the document will be available for download as a pdf when it is completed.

the page is cleaned up to the end of 1999 and from 2013-2015. this is the vast majority of what's been posted, so it's almost done. but, because it's almost done, it makes more sense to just finish from 2000-2013. at least then i can feel like something is completed moving into the essay i need to write on wednesday night and mail on thursday morning.

so, the way this page is going to work going forward is that i'm going to wipe it as a part of my monthly cleaning routine. floors. toilets. facebook page.

i will eventually move somewhere else, but the cost-benefit analysis over how much time that would take makes it unappealing, at least until i get my disability situation cleared up. i was hoping this clean up what take a week or two, not a month or two. but, as i keep telling myself, this is really necessary to create something self-contained, and now is the right time to do it to put this material behind me once and for all.

right now, i need to eat. i could conceivably be done most of 2000-2013 by the time i decide to sleep.

i've now finally cleared out 2014 - and although i'm still irked by what i lost, it's minor in the larger scope of things. i just need to run through it a last time and see if there's anything i need to reconstruct.

i'm going to clear out 2015 overnight because there are some period one updates in there, and plan to finish it. i''m going to wait until i get to the period 2 disc to clear out 2000-2012.

after that, i'll have to finish constructing the front-end for the disc, which shouldn't take more than two days.

i'm going to lose a few this week, though, because i need to get my disability package mailed on thursday, and i have some writing to do.

it's not likely that i'll finish this by wednesday, but i should get fairly close.

as i'm doing most of the work now, the next few aleph discs should not take nearly as long to build front-ends to.

it's not exactly what i want to be doing, but i feel it's necessary to comprehensively close the first two periods. when i do get done, there should be several quick uploads over 2003-2004.

on one hand, i have 1700 pages of writing in this document. on the other, that discussion was useful.

what i'm going to do is "hide" the posts for now, rather than delete them - then go back and delete them in the activity log when i'm sure they're safe.

a little more time consuming, but fail safe.

i kept saying "i'll save it when i get to the end of june". i could have. then it crashed. i don't know if i can really blame myself for a power outage, but i could have been more attentive.

i sent an email to facebook data recovery but it's a long shot...

ugh...

i made a lot of progress in working through 2014 today, but then i lost a lot of it. word crashed on me a few hours ago, which cut out a good deal of february. that means the comments to the beginning of "stuck" are lost. then, the power randomly went out a few minutes ago, which cost me a good chunk of june. i haven't checked the damage yet, but i think it's mostly discussions about performing the time machine.

this power surge happens from time to time; i turned the heat on for a few hours over night (it's been too cold to open the window, and yet the air is just punishing - there's not another option, besides shivering.), and i think the idiot upstairs woke up and throttled the entire unit by cranking his air up quickly. keep that up. blow your fuse.

i'm not yet at the point where i'm willing to turn it up to 30, but i'm not far from it. the weather just won't stay warm. every time it seems like it's just about warmed up, we get two or three days with lows around 10 degrees, which mean i have to turn the heat back on. well, i should clarify - if it weren't for the air cranking everything out, i wouldn't have to. i might even enjoy the cool down. but i've had a very hard time getting the heat higher than 22 this year - and keep in mind that 22 with the "air conditioner effect" feels a lot colder, closer to 17 - which means that any cool down outside is running up against a total lack of stored heat.

the ritual this year has been that i take my sweater off when i go out and put it on when i come home. there's been days when it's a beautiful 30 degrees out and i'm stuck wearing a sweater inside :(.

again: i need the space right now, for the gear. but i'm out of here as soon as the work is complete. unless he dies before then. that would be preferable, because i hate moving. but i can't handle the air. it brings back a lot of childhood trauma, because my shit for brains stepmother used to do the same thing. but, she was just conditioned to working in a lab, not dangerously obese, and she was never this extreme...

it would have maybe made more sense to copy files over on this laptop, because it's immune to power losses. but, my frontend is on the other machine.

so, i'm going back to it on that machine. i'm just going to have to adopt the annoying convention of saving between every cut & paste.

for now, i'm both wired and frustrated, and i'm going to try and get a few hours of sleep rather than get angry.

accessing deleted page data

jessica
hi.

i have a have facebook music fan page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Murray/41134747113) that i've been posting to extensively over the last few years, to the point that it's overloaded with data. when a user tries to scroll down the wall, posts are missing - and eventually the operation sort of times out by producing empty posts. i've come to the conclusion that facebook is not an ideal site for this kind of high volume journal posting, and am in the process of migrating the data into a scriptless html file to host on my own site.

i've been copying posts into a word document for short term keeping, then deleting the posts on facebook. unfortunately, i suffered a power outage between saves and i lost a significant amount of data.

now, everybody knows that data is archived, but you don't offer the ability to download page archives. there must be a way to get the data through request.

it would actually save me a significant amount of time if i could just get the whole thing in one chunk, but i'm specifically looking for posts made between january 1 and july 1, 2014.

facebook
Hi,

Thank you for contacting us to make a data request. You can access your data on Facebook in several ways. First, you can access your personal data from your account (ex: on your timeline or in your activity log). Second, we provide a tool that allows you to download a copy of your account data. This tool is available from the Account Settings page.

For more information, please visit:

https://www.facebook.com/help/405183566203254

To learn more about your data on Facebook, please read the Data Policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/

This policy describes:

• Categories of data being processed by Facebook
• Personal data that Facebook receives from Facebook members
• Sources of this info, if known
• Reasons for processing this data
• Recipients or categories of recipients to whom Facebook members’ personal data may be disclosed

To access the self-service download tool from your account:

1. Click the account menu at the top right of any Facebook page
2. Choose Account Settings
3. Click the link at the bottom of the page "Download a copy of your Facebook data"

Note: We have several measures in place to ensure the security of your information, and will require you to confirm your identity to complete the process and access your account information.

Your downloaded file may contain sensitive information. You should keep it secure and take precautions when storing, sending or uploading it to any other services.

You can also access the personal data held in your timeline any time by logging into Facebook.

If you can’t access your account or don’t have an account, please follow the link below to complete a form and request your data:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/166828260073047

You may be required to provide additional information to authenticate your identity. 

jessica
i'm sorry, but i feel you didn't understand my request.

i have a have facebook music fan page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Murray/41134747113) and am looking to download data from it that i accidentally deleted.

(pause)

hi.

i sent this a few days ago and got a response about downloading profile data that misunderstood the request. not to be rude, but i'd appreciate it if the request was read a little more closely, so i could receive a coherent response.

i have a have facebook music fan page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Murray/41134747113) that i've been posting to extensively over the last few years, to the point that it's overloaded with data. when a user tries to scroll down the wall, posts are missing - and eventually the operation sort of times out by producing empty posts. i've come to the conclusion that facebook is not an ideal site for this kind of high volume journal posting, and am in the process of migrating the data into a scriptless html file to host on my own site.

i've been copying posts into a word document for short term keeping, then deleting the posts on facebook. unfortunately, i suffered a power outage between saves and i lost a significant amount of data.

now, everybody knows that data is archived, but you don't offer the ability to download page archives. there must be a way to get the data through request. it would actually save me a significant amount of time if i could just get the whole thing in one chunk, but i'm specifically looking for posts made between january 1 and july 1, 2014.

facebook
Hi,

Thanks for your email. Unfortunately, we don't currently offer support for this type of request through this channel.

You can find answers to many common questions, learn how to report a bug or other issue and get more information about Facebook's products and features directly in the Facebook Help Center:

http://www.facebook.com/help/?ref=cr

jessica
is there a channel i can try?

this isn't really considered a musician's tool, it's more designed for playing back midi files, and by that one would have to deduce the intent is specifically for classical music. it's really meant as a finale or sibelius plugin, to get more realistic sound fonts for music teachers or geeks that just like listening to midi music.

however, i spent most of 2014 converting midi compositions i'd written many years before into finished pieces, and this proved to be a very valuable tool to me in converting programmed notes into usable sounds.

i specifically downloaded it for the drums, because i find the idea of mapping drums to be highly anti-musical. the staff isn't arbitrary. drum notation is a real thing. when i notate a snare, i don't mean a turntable scratch. the lack of attention to this reality by drum machine programmers is really upsetting, and i'm not sure why professional drummers haven't pushed back on it. i should be able to put a midi drum file through any plugin and have it hit the relevant sound fonts. i mean, imagine a plugin that triggered the wrong pitches and a culture that says "well, map the pitches then". it's a combination of ignorance and idiocy.

so, the fact that this is a general midi sound card replacement that understands music notation was very key in choosing it as a drum machine. it has some limitations, as everything general midi does, but they can largely be dealt with through production. and, frankly, i tend to produce my drums not just with reverb but with various types of distortion and some pretty heavy equalization. the key thing, for me, was just getting the notes to map correctly out of the box, and it does that quite while.

it turns out that some of the other sound fonts are quite usable, which i just took as a bonus - but beware that some of them are also quite awful.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may06/articles/nibandstand.htm

to create realistic midi renders for the midi files project, i needed a realistic guitar sampler and, after a little research, decided this was really the only option. technology moves so fast that this may no longer be true, a mere year and a half later.

what i found was that the other options either come with baked in effects or were broadly generative in nature. baked in effects are great if you're basically a piano player and want the guitars to conform to a genre style. so, you see these libraries with guitars categorized with terms like "pop", "blues" or "rock". for a lot of people, that's really enough, and that's fine.

but, i needed it to be as basic as possible, so i could shape my own signal path through guitar rig or whatever else. i wanted the cleanest, most bare samples possible - just the most basic DI sound of picking a completely clean guitar. and, for me, that's actually true, broadly.

it has some issues - it can be a little choppy, and it's maybe a little bit *too* realistic in some ways. alternate tunings would be useful, if they don't want to let you pick notes that would otherwise be impossible to play.

keeping in mind that i'm going to play live guitars for virtually everything out of principle (because i'm a guitarist), this is of such limited value to me that it's not really worth my time to find something that fixes these limitations. but, as a specific tool for the specific project i used it for, i was very surprised by how good it could sound through some effects.

http://www.musiclab.com/products/realguitar/info.html
https://www.musiclab.com/products/reallpc/info.html

it's been a year since i've updated my youtube posting schedule. the alter reality has already run from fall, 1996 through to fall, 1997 and is now approaching the beginning of 1998, when i started making synthpop. the next year of posts will take me through the first inri demo and begin to open up into more abstract and professional-sounding recordings. but i need to stress that my adult phase will not begin until 2017. the trolls that listen to forty seconds on the front page written when i was a teenager and think they can measure my entire output by it are in for a bit of a surprise. that's fine; i designed my roll-out that way - to stress the evolution in sound, build an audience up from the start and confuse and distract passive listeners. i'll post another one of these next year...

running through some files on my other page, i've determined the precise point where the strange characters appeared. it was the post right after i indicated i was going to london, ontario. the totality of evidence suggests that i'm probably under suspicion for being a terrorist, because i happen to have a concept of morality, and am consequently critical of american foreign policy. indicating that i was leaving the city probably set something off..

listen, cia, we need to talk...

first, i'm from canada. so, take off, eh?

second, i was going to london for a doctor's appointment. you can check my facebook messages over nov, 2014 to verify that. it's all very transparent. and everybody understands that you're incompetent. but, now that i'm pointing it out, go ahead and look and see.

so, if you can get rid of those annoying characters, now, that'd be nice. i don't even care if you continue surveillance - it's the internet. it's facebook. surveillance is the purpose of the internet. privacy on the internet is impossible. i get it. i'm not utopian on he point. so, if i'm ever going to plan a terrorist attack, i'm going to do it without using the internet. it'd just be nice if you did it silently.

alright?

this is taking forever, and i have a lot to do, still.

so, i'm restricting this to actually cleaning the page, like i did for my main page. creating a new page is going to take another month to set up. that means that i will continue to use this as a journal for the foreseeable future, it will just be cleaned up periodically.

ugh. i'm trying to remember when i bought certain things, and coming up pretty blurry, so i thought access to bank statements would help. now, i actually kept all my statements for years, but they disappeared in storage (they were probably flooded in the shed). so, i went into rbc to ask for statements.

$40/hr. not $40. $40/hr.

i'm not sure what that even means. it's almost like a pricing system from the 70s, back when things were stored physically and people had to go through boxes of data and pull things out and copy them - which may have taken some time. probably not an hour. but some time.

nowadays? it's just a question of access to the database. it should take about three minutes to open the file and press "print". but, no corporation is going to reduce their prices on services - no matter how absurd or out of date it may appear. and, frankly, a lot of people would just pay it.

needless to say, i didn't pay the $40/hr. but, i'm rather convinced that i have the right to access these files, and they can't be charging me for more than paper. as in, putting that kind of price tag on access to my own files is actually illegal. at most, they can charge me for paper.

so, i'm going to have to piss them off until they send it - out of principle.

for now, i'm going to leave approximate spaces in the walk through and fill it in when the statements get here.

i forgot to eat yesterday, though, and need to take care of that first.

well, i got the disc done up to 2000, which is the bulk of the adds. now, i just need to clean the page up a little over the second part of 2013, and the first part of 2014. i wanted to do this anyways - it's actually why i jumped backwards. but, it's going to be another day or two.

i have an appointment tomorrow. it's late enough in the day that i don't have to worry about getting up early, but it's going to cut off most of the day.

right now, i need to eat.

re-publishing ambient works vol 0 (inri035)

i've split this off from inri048 into it's own release, inri017. this required shifting the previous inri017 down to inri016, and so forth, to inri001 - which is now inri000.

==

when i sat down to make the ambient works, i wanted a "mix tape" style cd-r of ambient fragments that ran from 1996-2003 as a volume 0. but, when i sat down to actually make it, i ended up with a 90 minute actual mix tape of material from 1996-1999. it actually split itself fairly cleanly into an inri period release, but a number of factors made it a pain in the ass to actually place it there.

i've decided to flip-flop on this, mostly due to the desire to keep the period 1 disc self-contained. i couldn't release something like that without this on it.

what i'm going to have to do is rename the first 17 releases by taking them down a number - so, inri001 becomes inri000, all the way up to inri017, which will allow me to insert the ambient works into that space.

that's going to require a lot of typing this evening which will slow me down another day, but i think it's the right choice.

so, here is the new inri017.

initially written and recorded between 1996-1999 and remixed between 2013-2015. initially released as part zero of a three volume set on may 21, 2015. split into it's own release on june 14, 2015. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitar, effects, bass, pick scrapes, tapes, metronome, synth, electric piano, drum & other programming, sound design, cool edit synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, loops, sampling, sequencing, sound raider, digital wave editing, production, composition

released december 31, 1999

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

pj’s was not the best venue for white lung, as the sound was reliant on an in-house tech that didn’t get it

i've been to lots of bars with disengaged sound techs, and they end up flagging themselves. it's less as a place to avoid, and more as a disappointment that the band you like is playing x rather than y. you deal with it.

pj's is a different animal, as it seems to have an *over*-engaged sound tech. i have less experience with this phenomenon, but it seems like it's a greater concern. a disengaged sound tech lets the band make it's own mistakes, which at least gives them control of their own presentation. but, an over-engaged sound tech can turn the band you've gone to see into something else entirely.

white lung is a band that thrives heavily on the guitarist's upper range. he's not a lead player, he's just a very talented punk guitarist. this plays off heavily with the dramatic and generally harsh vocal delivery, which is more in the mid range, and the busy but metronome-style drumming. generally, you get a fairly clean split - bass on the bottom, guitars up top and vocals in the middle.

so, to hear the sound tech drown the guitars in bass and bury the vocals altogether is to have him make sound decisions that really aren't in his realm to make. he seemed to interpret them as some kind of doom/metalcore act, rather than as the very melodic hardcore punk band that they are. what makes them special is that detail in the upper range. so, it kind of sucked to hear it almost entirely drowned out by flooring the bass - as one would mix a modern metal band.

the singer was visibly and vocally perturbed that people weren't getting into it. but, we couldn't really hear it. all we could hear was that muffled bass. i mean, imagine people showing up at a dance cub and getting a triangle beat instead of a big bass, or people showing up at a folk festival and getting metal riffs. you'd expect it to foster a disconnect.

i knew the songs well enough to fill them in mentally, but the content just wasn't cutting through the mix. and, i've seen enough youtube clips to know that this isn't a general problem on their end.

as for the band itself, i think they've hit the point in their career where they need to make some bold moves. they had a good groove going on with sorry, but it's started to turn into a formula. you can only write the same basic song so many times before it starts to seem unnecessary - i'd argue that sorry is a developing classic, but what that means is that there's not any really good reason to listen to another record (or three) in the same style. that's going to piss some people off, but the other option is people slowly tuning out.

i'm left to conclude that i need to be careful with this venue. but, i don't want to dissuade people from checking out the band. at the very least, the aforementioned record is very notable and something very much worth looking into.

ironically, obliterations were better live than i had expected from sound samples - largely because the mix was better, with the vocals turned down and the guitars given some more chunk. see, the tech made the right choice with these guys.

i mean, the mixing decisions didn't relieve it of it's boneheadedness. but, they softened it to the point that it made me think more of a modern take on soundgarden or pearl jam than yet another converge-influenced bro-rock band - which is what i was expecting.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/06/13.html

so time consuming...

i'm done most of the way through '99, but i'm going to stop for the night. it should be done tomorrow, unless i get stuck in detroit overnight.

to be clear as to what i'm doing: inriℵ0 is being revamped into a combination flac/mp3 disc that houses every single thing i did in the 90s: mastered/unmastered versions, outtakes, remixes - everything. the official releases are in flac, while the rest is in varying quality mp3s. some of this stuff i only have in like 56 kbps mono; it would be pointless to convert it. there's several versions of most tracks. what i'm doing is building an html front end on top of it, so that the files can be navigated. it's a chronological browser, with hyperlinks flowing all over the place. and i code by hand, so...

this is going to be the complete end of this period, which i'm doing now because i'm also closing period 2. it's everything there is from the 90s, on one disc. and then that's it.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/period-1-2

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.