i can't find an exact model of the ibanez, which is annoying to me because i'm trying to determine if the rx40 is really a replacement for it or not.

in terms of guitar hierarchy (that is, marketing bullshit), it isn't - the model i had was entry, but it wasn't bottom of the line.

it looked very similar to this:

...but, the annoying locking bridge was more like this one:

you'll note that the allan keys in the second picture are triangular, and the ibanez' was triangular. the thumbscrews in the second picture are very close to the ones i had.

but, it had a three way selector like the first one, and, yes, it had a whammy that i used twice. it was also hsh, like the first one, i think - not just a fat strat. but, see, the first guitar is basically a strat copy; the second is more like a prs (and more like my weird black epiphone, which thankfully doesn't have the awful locking mechanism). i had a strat copy, with the hardware more like the prs copy. maybe it was an upgrade, even - which is ironic, given that it was defective.

i mentioned that the ibanez had a warp in the neck - a nasty knot. it was a factory defect, and wasn't playable at places. you couldn't bend around the 8th fret. i would have never ended up with it, otherwise. and, i probably wouldn't have sold it otherwise, either. but, i got to the point where i understood it was a bad guitar and traded it in...

so, is the rx40 a replacement for this?

again - i know the roadstar is a more expensive guitar, but the one i had was defective, so keep that in mind. i'm trying to replace what i actually had, not what i might have had, in theory.

the big differences are:

1) the roadstar had far more expensive hardware, but i'd rather not have the locking mechanism, so i'd prefer the rx40 because it doesn't have that feature. i actually just left it perpetually unlocked! i don't use whammy bars, which is the reason you have these locking mechanisms, and not to stay in tune for normal use. and, i needed weird tunings for, like, soundgarden songs...

2) the roadstar was hsh and had a three way selector switch. the rx40 is hss and has a five way selector switch, which is standard for strats. so, the last two selector switches are a little different - the roadstar had a humbucker in the neck position (which gave it a beefier, gibsonier sound for solos), whereas the rx40 will have a thinner, stratier sound for solos. but, what makes more sense, if you think about it?

i remember my guitar teacher (his name was terry, and he worked at an actual music school. he was mostly a progressive rock and jazz fusion guitarist, running the gamut from hackett to santana to di meola) looking at the guitar and not understanding it. he was a japanese fellow, but a jew ought to ask this question:

"why would you put a single coil in between two humbuckers on a three way selector?  if you want to play chords, you do one humbucker; if you want to do leads, you do the other. what do you do with the middle coil?"

if you think about it, what you get with the three way roadstar is:

- the second position combined as a bridge humbucker. sort of.

- the middle position, which nobody uses.

- the fourth position, combined as a neck humbucker. sort of.

so, you're cutting off the first and last positions, really....which means you're eliminating a lot of the point of owning a strat. 

what that means is that the roadstar was really just another prs style guitar, just another sg copy, and the middle pickup is just for show - and just to suck your tone by creating noise on the circuit.

in a useable sense, you can create a humbucker in the fourth position on the rx, without losing the fifth position. and, you still get the humbucker at the bridge, which is where you want it on a strat-style guitar. if you want to play a gibson-style guitar, then get one.

so, the roadstar is maybe an example of a design trying too hard to be comprehensive, and instead just coming off as half-assed. they seem to be expensive nowadays, though - although mostly as hhes or as hsses.

i'd rather have the five-way fat strat than the three way selector.

regarding the neck, the rx is plenty fast - which was part of the logic in getting it. and, the neck on the roadstar was broken...

so, yes - i'd consider this a replacement, and a sidegrade, if not an upgrade due to the fact that the roadstar was a defect. i'd rather do away with the locking mechanism, and i'd rather have a five way hss than a three-way hsh. out of all of the combinations, hsh seems to make the least sense to me. as it is, both of my epis have independent humbuckers (and the sg has independent controls), so i don't have any reason to want a strat-like guitar with a humbucker at the neck. that said, i'll take one with a humbucker at the bridge, and one with out it - and that's enough.

that is the next entry in the mega post, and i need to finally figure that out tonight.

so, i guess the epiphone is really a prs-style guitar, isn't it? it just clicked. i mean, i'd seen a prs before, but i never made the connection. it's the same pickup placement, even. i guess ibanez also did that kind of thing, but it's the shape prs is most known for - ibanez is more known for their weird locking systems and other odd innovations. it might be an ibanez body, but if it is then it's a fairly old one. that's probably what the person that built it was going for.....

so, i've got

main guitars:

- custom built prs style guitar with coronet batwing neck, epiphone branding and two open coil independent humbuckers  <----lead/jazz guitar with heavy strings

- slightly small epiphone sg with two humbuckers  <---rhythm/punk guitar with slightly less heavy strings

side guitars:

- ibanez rx40 fat strat copy. ibanez has been around a long time, and they've built lots of guitars, but i've always seen them as primarily a manufacturer of strat copies - almost all of their guitars are built like strats (and the ones that aren't are built like prses). i have yet to fix the wiring. <-----was intended to be a lead/blues guitar with skinny strings. now, it will probably be used more for rhythm/blues parts.

- mini squier sss strat.  <----- this will become the lead/blues guitar

- mini hohner classical  <--- i've recorded classically stuff on this

- full size epiphone electro-acoustic <------this is my one acoustic

if you look at the discography, you'll note there weren't any tracks recorded in the blues style over period 2, except the ones i used my old ibanez (i now think it was an hsh roadstar II, as they have the thumbscrews i couldn't find elsewhere) for before i sold it before i left. all lead parts since 2003 were recorded with humbuckers, and just eqed if i want it to be sparklier. but, there are points where i struggled, and i hope that fixes it. there will definitely be parts in period 3 that need single coils.

what's missing?

guitars to find:

- if i could find an absolutely bottom of the line telecaster copy, i'd grab it. i had one for years, and i don't think i ever used it (it wasn't wired right). <---lead/electro-classical guitar (i play with my fingers, but i don't play redneck music. this is where a tele is theoretically useful to me.)

- i'm looking for a basic paul shape, to put p90s in it. pre-installed is even better. i picked an sg over a paul because i liked the less chunky sound of the sg, and humbuckers were the right choice. but, a paul works better with p90s (and vice versa) because it cuts out some of the low end. i've never had p90s, and it's not a sound i wrote around much in the past, but i realize it's the sound i want for much of period 3. <----amplified rhythm parts

- a jazzmaster or jaguar shaped guitar with jazzmaster pickups. <---effects work

- can i find an affordable midi guitar?

- a couple of cheap electrics for weird tunings, etc.

and, i'm still trying to find a way to get a 21 fret classical guitar, preferably one with a cutoff and a pickup in it.

so, that's comprehensive. i think. that's what i need to find. and, no, i can't afford all of it - until i get a settlement from sobey's, which may be relatively soon.

today has been frustrating, as i've been unable to differentiate between the smoking coming upstairs and the smoke coming from the fridge, which has allowed them to smoke with impunity. and, i may have to actually reclean this space from top to bottom. we'll see.

but, i'm now familiar with everything up in the region on kijiji, and have put aside things i may want to pursue.

the marantz came in quick. i think the flute cleared customs, too.

as mentioned, i'm going to be mostly focused on cleaning that fridge for the next several days. but, let's see how much of that post i can finish...

so, what's the update for today?

i was up earliesh, actually, and got to finishing the meal that i barely started last night. by the time i finished it, i had to call my doctor - and i got him to do essentially everything i asked for.

- virtual scope

- standing order (we'll start for aug 1st)

- all requests for blood work

so, that's about ideal.

my landlord knocked on the door minutes before the scheduled call and asked to replace the fridge, so i had to ask him to come back, and then ended up waiting until after 17:00 - which largely blew the day. then, when he got it down here, i realized it completely reeked of second-hand smoke.

it's easy to get conspiratorial about this, but i think it's more consistent with the guy's lack of general competence. i mean, i've been bitching about this for months - it could be a real dick move. that is, if i thought he was able to really think it through. more likely is that he just bought a cheap fridge and didn't ask. now i'm stuck cleaning the fridge.

that's fine - i'll do it. but, it's going to take some time, and prevent me from setting things back up. fuck...

it's just another thing to take note of, if this ends up in a court room. in the end, it's a large amount of labour and time wasted. but, asking for compensation is difficult, until it becomes necessary - then it becomes overwhelming.

the one other thing i got done today was the purchase of some gig bags. i went looking for a 38" bag for the new mini, expecting to spend around $20. in the process, i found a deal on a fancy out-of-the-house bag ($18) and a decided to get a back-up back ($11), before finally finding a decent 38" bag (for $14). this was all through walmart marketplace, which i'm using instead of amazon because they take paypal and amazon won't.

i'm going to need to stop soon, but let me try another run on the scrubdown for the fridge. it's probably going to take at least a week...

here's where i am with the shipping and stuff:

this is what i've purchased already:

- one person coffee maker

- backup fan

- big bookcase

- new broom

- new computer keyboard

- 4 gb backup ram for 32-bit pc, 1 gb backup ram for 16-bit pc, 2 gb of ram for 90s laptop

- micro orange crush 3w amp

- vox ac30 headphone plug

- all four tanktops (one blue, two pink, one purple)

- behringer umx61midi controller

- fender squire mini strat

and this is what is coming:

- micro cassette recorder <---shipped

- the bottom of the vox combo + pignose + circuit for strat?

- a wood flute to replace the one my aunt bought me in 1998, and since just broke due to being old. that flute was used on several recordings, actually.  <----shipped

- sennheiser replacement headphones  <---stuck in customs

- marantz microphone

- 3 gig bags

wait. no...it shouldn't be that hard to rewire the mini jazzmaster after all...

i'm not going to do this tomorrow, but it's an idea.

i suppose, i could get another cheap strat and put alnicos in it. right?

i used to have a very, very cheap tele copy but it disappeared. it's not a priority.

but, if i could ever find a jazzmaster copy with alnicos...that's the last type of guitar i'd be seriously interested in, but it's not feasible, and i know it.

unfortunately, fender put humbuckers in the jazzmaster minis, which makes it hard to rewire them.

so, i spent the day running around (technically, walking and biking around) and now have the following in my possession:

- the two purple and pink tanktops came in the mail

- i picked up the behringer umx61 this morning. mine is grey, with some mild yellow staining, presumably from being near to an ashtray for an extended period. i had to play through some pops (indicating it hadn't been used in a while), but the keys all work, and, if anything, they're a little hyper-sensitive. that's fine.

it cost me $95 cdn, used.

this device has two major purposes for me:

- it replaces the keys on the jx-8p, which were stuck. it's a common problem with 80s rolands, and i just never fixed it. but, my 49 key dx100 is just a little lacking. i guess i never counted it - i though the jx had 88 keys. it turns out it has 61, too. so, if anything, i'm getting two extra octaves with the behringer...

- it will finally give me access to a control surface, if a minor one. i'm probably not going to go all knob-twiddly, but it is useful for tactical use to be able to physically turn a sweep, and i've really never been able to do that. the jx has a control surface, but i didn't get it in the package, second hand. it's just something i've never had in front of me...and something i've long intended to rectify..

i'll go over this in more detail later in the megapost, but i consider this to be a replacement purchase and a sidegrade.

i'm going to need to spend tonight finding a way to get it to hover over the jx. many years ago, i used to have a sideways bookcase that had the jx on the bottom and the dx100 up top. nowadays, i have them lined up on two tables that adjoin at right angles. the behringer is about 5 kg, which isn't much more than the dx (3  kg), but is roughly twice the length, which distributes the weight differently. i fear a flimsy option may be disastrous. so, the obvious thing to do is get a keyboard rack, but what does that actually cost?

- i also got a fender mini squire for $200 cdn total (including tax):

(mine is red and doesn't say hello kitty)

now, why would i buy myself a guitar for a child? because i needed some single coils, and i know that a guitar with single coils is never going to become my main guitar. i have two epiphones with humbuckers, and that's my usual sound and i'm actually totally happy with it. but, i'm looking for variation, here - that's what i'm doing this month, filling in tonal options in preparation for a recording stage.

i don't have hundreds or thousands of dollars for something more pro, so the question becomes why you'd spend 2-3x as much on a full range squire, or some other fake strat, and then play it twice a year.

i also have exceedingly small hands, so the things this guy is complaining about aren't relevant to me....

i'm also not intending to play much like he is. as i bought it for the thinner pickups, and i'm more of a blues guitarist than a metal guitarist, it's intended use is more for a jimi hendrix, mark knopfler, srv or early corgan type sound. i'm looking for that "sweet strat tone" - or, at least, for the physical characteristics underlying it, to warp mbv-style. 

remember: jazzmasters had single coils, too.

i bought the guitar used, but the frets make it clear it's never really been played. minus the cosmetic scratch on the backplate, it's really a brand new guitar, for about $80 (cdn) less than retail. so, i didn't just get a cheap guitar, i got a good deal on a cheap guitar.

i've plugged it in and it works...

this item does not replace a previous one, because i've actually never had an s-s-s strat. the ibanez rx40, once fixed, will replace the defective ibanez hss (or hsh? i don't remember|) that i sold in 2003.

now, let me eat...

the other thing i have to point out is...

my guitar tone never gets cheesy or cliched. i'm very conscious of this. i just don't do it.

so, this recording combination - an antique altec 683b + a flat marantz condenser mic + tertiary line-ins when possible, all while using mini-amps as a source - should both give me the tones i'm imagining and give me a unique quality, just a je ne sais quoi that i try to integrate into most of what i do.

that is really the reason why i'm more interested in sticking with the altec, at least to start.

i mean, i've been using it for years, and i have no real complaints about it. i'm just trying to make sure i have all of the option, right this minute - these are decisions that will be binding for the next 10 years.

this is the frequency response for the marantz - the mic is totally flat, which is what i'm told i'm supposed to want.

that means you get everything and have to eq it, which is fine - i'm going to do that, anyways. i'm more concerned about the mic missing shit than the mic picking too much shit up. i know how to go in and dial in ranges...

i can't find a similar graph for a dixon md1178, but i suspect it's a more flat response in the high end than the altec, shure or sennheisers - which makes sense, as it's a vocal mic, by design.

as i'm going to usually be recording guitars, the next question is whether a sennheiser e609 is worthwhile, and if i even want to look at a 906, instead.

this is the frequency response of a shure sm57, which i'm going to plug the altec in for instead (because it's less muddy on the bottom end, and brighter on the top):

looking at the graph, it's actually easy enough to understand why these mics sound like shit when recording distorted guitars - they roll-off before the fucking d string. all your power chords are getting attenuated - of course they sound like shit. like, is this a joke? it's not - i know it's not. but, it cuts around 150 hz, stays flat around the rest of the range of the guitar and rolls up after 3 khz (which is strictly the realm of harmonics, distortion, and effects, to a guitarist), then wobbles a little and crashes somewhere well beyond anything you can realistically hear as anything but noise.

this is the e906, which has three presence switches, and is quite similar but doesn't have those cuts at the top, as much:

watching reviews, i noticed that the e906 sounded less muddy and more clear than the sm57 and you can see why - it actually rolls the bass off even more, cutting the mud created by a putting the mic an inch from your amp out (you have to let low frequencies expand first, kids - otherwise you just get mud), and tweaking the presence so it's more relevant for guitar distortion frequencies. it's still flat over most of the spectrum of the guitar (although it starts a little later...), but it hones in the boost where a guitarist really wants it. so, the benefit of the e906 over the sm57 is that the e906 should sound sparklier at the top because it picks up more of the harmonic parts of the distortion - and it does. clearly. sort of. the 906 also has a presence cut that lets you flatten it out almost entirely. but, if you don't want that - if you want your guitar to sound like it's going to kill somebody's mom - then the shure is probably still the meaner, more evil option. you can scare your kids with it...

is that worthwhile to me? well, the 683b likely already does that for me, even if i can't find a frequency response. the mild difference in the 683b v the sm57 sounds like the difference in the above graphs.

so, i should not just stick with the 683b as an improvement over the sm57, but should hold to it as a primitive version of the same improvement made by sennheiser.

now, look at the 606 over the 906, though:

the 609 comes in far earlier - letting you decide if you want more bass or not by eqing it out later. it's more suited for a guitar, in that sense. further, those harmonic distortion frequencies peak high and fade more slowly than the 906, even opening up space for a frequency space that could only be occupied by feedback and hiss. this mic will pick up the good parts of your guitar tone and the bad parts of your guitar tone equally, and force you to deal with it in the mix stage.

i'm going to be recording with small amps that have small speakers and for that reason will produce more usable bass at closer ranges.

i'm going to wait for the marantz to get here and experiment a little, but i've decided that the 609 is the one i want, if i feel i need a better choice.

i'm looking at a shure sm57 for recording mini amps with, an top of the condenser, which...i like bright, sparkly guitars. i like my acoustics bright and sparkly, i like my rhythm parts bright and sparkly and i like my lead parts bright and sparkly, too. i'm really not interested in this dirty, chunky metal sound. gross. give me floaty and airy, not mean and dumb. i don't want my guitar to sound like it's going to steal your lunch money, or something, and i don't really know why so many people do, other than that it's some kind of compensation for being uncomfortable with their masculinity.

.....which is why i want to amp the parts in the first place. if i just wanted that chuggy sound, i could get it from an amp sim and an eq. i want to capture the sound of waves vibrating in space, which is mostly a high end thing. putting a mic a foot from a guitar amp and then cranking the lows doesn't even make any sense, physically - you want to put that mic on the other side of the room, so the bass can expand. and you want a few of them. if you're going to put the mic a foot from the amp, you want to crank the highs, not the lows.

but, the only guitarist i know of with a physics degree is brian may, and i suspect most of the ones responsible for defining famous guitar tones didn't do so well in high school....

so, frankly, i'm finding all of the demos i'm hearing of the shure to sound rather dead - there's no presence. ever. at all. it's easy to grasp when you think it through, as it's probably not what most of these people want, but is definitely not at all what i'm seeking out.

so, should i just put a condenser on there and that's it? should i do away with doubling via dynamic microphone at all? how can i test it?

see, i have a secret weapon, when it comes to mics. i have an altec 683b, which may have been one of the first cardioid mics ever made. i've generally found it sounds pretty good, and used it for micing everything from the time i got it for pennies at a garage sale (2000ish) to when i stopped micing things, up until about 2007. but, i've never actually compared it to other mics - i've never really understood what i'm actually using.

these are the specs, which are....the same as a shure sm57. almost exactly.... 

http://www.lansingheritage.org/html/altec/specs/mics/681a-682b-683b.htm

and, listen to this, which has the shure on the left and the altec on the right:

http://www.preservationsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/SM57L_683R.wav

that's about what the altec's always sounded like, and the best shure demo i've heard, yet.

so, if they're the same mic, why have i never found the altec to be bassy or lacking in high-end response? are all these guitarists (some of them fairly pro) on youtube just rolling their treble off, on purpose? are they that clueless about physics? stop doing that - you don't hear that on good recordings, and it doesn't sound good live, at all. the guitar is a mid range instrument and should be miced like one. if you want to play bass, then buy a fucking bass.

so, i don't think i need a shure sm57.

i think i've been using one for years, without realizing it.

so, let's start with that as a double then - marantz condenser + altec 783b dynamic. and, if i think i need something better, i'll take it from there.

i'm still down here, i've just been hacking through the retard upstairs all weekend, and looking at filling out options for recording. 

so, it's been a slow posting weekend, but i've got a stack of gear decisions being made regarding things like amps, mics and extra guitars, and i'm working on a post that walks through that.

i've been looking at alternative mini tube amp options, 21 fret piezo-equipped classical guitar workarounds for cheap, ways to get access to single coil pickups, potential alternative tuning guitars, mics, 12-strings, electric mandolins, mini ukes, replacement organs and even a few drum machine and synthesizer choices.

the decisions i've made are only that 

- i have purchased a second-hand 61-key behringer control surface (which is something i skipped in 2008 because i couldn't find something that made sense to me, for the price), which will be the third keyboard in the apartment (after the dx100 and the broken jx-8p). i'm finally going to need a more tactile synthesis option when going towards the end of period 3, specifically the cycles/second project, and the intended heavy use of programs like audiomulch and reaktor. if this works as intended, it could render the dx100 obsolete, but i don't like to sell gear...

- i have purchased a marantz condenser mic to record acoustic guitar parts with, as i will be recording acoustic guitar parts this month. i've never had one before.

there will be many more decisions coming in the next few days, but i'm still working things out.

so, like, what if i buy a cheap electric/acoustic and put nylon strings on it, then?

so, if i wanted to get a 21-fret classical guitar, how could i do it?

and, the answer appears to be a line of ibanezes, but i don't want to pay $350 for one. or, at least not just right now.

but, they do make them, and i need to keep an eye out for them.

replacing the electric mandolin is likewise of low priority, but i should keep an eye out for sure.

and, i'm also looking for some mini tube amps in pawn shops and haven't found anything yet...

so, i stopped to do this last night and fell asleep halfway through eating. where was i?

  

so, the camera i used to record it with is clipping. lol.

i'm going to upload it, anyways.

i also spent some time tonight trying out my mini amps directly, and i've got some files uploading...

i've had the marshall for years and i know the overdrive is pretty good on it, but i guess i didn't realize that it's probably something like a tube screamer with a speaker - it's less a mini amp and more a stomp box with a speaker. it's actually a relatively decent overdrive sound, but i've never been a big marshall fan, and i probably wouldn't have taken the thing if it wasn't free.

the orange has a much creamier, thicker sound, which is what i bought it for, but i was also able to get some very nice clean blues/jazz tones out of it, which i wasn't expecting from the reviews. the conclusion is that the people doing clean tones through the orange in their reviews largely really didn't know what the fuck they were doing, which is something that was also largely obvious from watching them play. if you set your pickups up properly and you play with a little bit of a soft touch, it actually sounds great.

so, yes, the speaker does clip if you drive it, which...it's a fucking orange. c'mon. but, if you turn the volume on your guitar down a little, it doesn't clip at all. this admittedly required a little more attention than the ms-2, but that's a benefit.

i decided i needed to upload some evidence to counter a lot of the clueless reviews, as people reviewing the device seem to either fall into the category of "looking for overdrive and don't care about clean" or "looking for clean and don't know what they're fucking doing". hopefully, i can help fill the gap of a clean guitarist knowing what they're doing. but there's some dirty chords, too...

so, i'm happy with this, but i'm going to get the pignose anyways because it's not quite giving me that tubey sound, although it got a lot closer than i expected it to.

so, i went to determine if i missed any calls when my box was full, and i realized that 

- the bone place never called back. i left a new message.

- my doctor called. i called them back, and they couldn't tell me why. i think it was about the amino acids.

- my bank called

my bank called? when?

right when i was supposed to get the security transfer last week when i was trying to do an e-transfer.\

so, i tested it and it worked. great. now, i have a micro cassette recorder coming, too.

so, to recap, this is what i've got already:

- one person coffee maker

- backup fan

- big bookcase

- new broom

- new computer keyboard

- 4 gb backup ram for 32-bit pc, 1 gb backup ram for 16-bit pc, 2 gb of ram for 90s laptop

- micro orange crush 3w amp

- vox ac30 headphone plug

- two tanktops (one blue, one pink)

and this is what is coming:

- micro cassette recorder

- the bottom of the vox combo + pignose + circuit for strat?

- a wood flute to replace the one my aunt bought me in 1998, and since just broke due to being old. that flute was used on several recordings, actually.

- the two tank tops  <---shipped

- sennheiser replacement headphones  <---stuck in customes

inri088 & inr092

i've uploaded a series of snapshots of xenophanes from 2004 to 2007, which is the last mix as of now.

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

i've also got a cleaner mix of the interplanetary isomorphism up, that i believe is the base of the 2011 mix.

i want to sort through some alt mixes of the front part of the track before i upload them.

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/interplanetary-isomorphism

so, first of all, i've got a very temporary mix of the last section of the trivial group lp up, which fills in a gap hat's been gaping for far too long - and is hopefully very temporary.

but, i expect this to take some time to fix, still.

what i've done is cut the first three or so minutes off of the 2007 version of the lost symphony, because that three minutes represents the sprawling half hour epic, xenophanes, which took me from late 2004 to early 2007 to mostly finish and put aside - and is really just the first three minutes of the basic version of the track

that twenty minutes is composed of multiple sections, and each one could very well end up dramatically expanded when properly recorded, which is imminent.

hopefully, it will be obvious why i needed to buy some amps when you listen to the track in sequence. i'm hoping that the little ac30 really opens up the sound in the jangly parts of the track, and that the orange really crunches out the rest of it. this was not recorded using a pod - it's an american big muff driving a 15 watt solid state amp, and sent in sequence to a zoom 1010 for chorus effects. it doesn't sound very good, but it's enough to get the idea across.

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

so, i was offline all day today and i got a very large amount of filing done in the process, which was a bit out of order but a productive act, nonetheless.

so, i'm going to try to upload some temp mixes of the interplanetary isomorphism, as well as some temp mixes of xenophanes tonight.

so, i unexpectedly got the ac30 plug in the mail today.

i was expecting to get a "searing lead" plug in the mail yesterday, which doesn't seem to have shown up. i was only expecting to get the ac30 plug some time next week. but, they only seem to have billed me for it once, so maybe they caught the problem.

great...

i'm going to wait until i get a response from vox before i open it, though. and, the bottom part of it should be at long & mcquade, soon. i am going to get a pignose when i go down there and grab it, and i'll see tonight if i want to ask them to look at the board in the strat or not, too.

i have received two of the three clothing orders i purchased - a blue tank top that's a little shorter than i hoped (and not quite as sparkly blue) and a pink cami that's about what i expected it to be. there's two more tanks coming, in the same style as the light pink tank in many of my videos, but purple and a darker pink. that pink tank is almost done, and the company is apparently out of business, so that's some replacement items.

i need new stretchy jeans, but i'm going to wait until the second hand stores reopen, if they haven't already. i have to try jeans on. but, i have no interest in shopping in a face mask, and buying groceries isn't the same thing as buying clothes. i'l wait the stupidity out.

i also bought another usb keyboard yesterday...

so, that means the following is left on the way here, for now:

- the bottom of the vox combo

- a wood flute to replace the one my aunt bought me in 1998, and since just broke due to being old. that flute was used on several recordings, actually.

- the two tank tops

- sennheiser replacement headphones

when i was in yesterday, the long & mcquade guy suggested $30 as a minimum base rate to fix some wiring.

i can get a soldering iron - which i should have, anyways - for about that amount. 

but, i haven't soldered anything since....grade 12? really? i'm trying to remember what the last thing i soldered was...

my dad had a soldering iron, so what basement is the last basement i can remember soldering in? it was a blue soldering iron, i can remember that. and, i remember making somewhat of a mess, but i don't remember what it was.

let me look at it a second time and determine if i'm confident about wiring it myself or not.

ok.

logically, i need to  fix my strat before i can look at cheap tube amps.

right?

yeah, it's just a smidgeon too much for me unless i need it right now, and i don't.

this is my wish list, though - somebody find me a little tube amp for $150. i don't need a lot out of it, i just need the warmth of it. and, i just need it loud enough to mic it, too.

ok, let's get back to the next thing, then, which was making some phone calls....but it's the end of the day. ugh. tomorrow...

sorry, i forgot the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUMYgohG-KA

well.

instead of the pignose, i could get this. it's relatively cheap - much cheaper than anything by any of the more well known brands. 

this is actually behringer, though, which isn't an unknown manufacturer, by any means.

it's not that i'm changing my approach, here - i'm still going to record most of my parts direct. but, i need that bright tube sound, and i'm not convinced i'm going to get it...

hrmmn.

let's put these ideas aside, rather than buy it all right away. i've got two new micro amps already, and i need to finish the filing first, as well. let's see what the vox sounds like, first - and then let's see if i can get the sound i want from some combination of these items.

and, if i can't, i can take a look at some combination of these other choices.

one way to guess if we're dealing with a model or not is to see how close the controls are. models are notorious for making knobs up.

the thing has three controls: volume, one, gain.

the original model had two controls, plus a number of separate tremolo channels:

https://www.stevesamps.co.uk/?page_id=287

further, the item has tremolo switches.

i have to ask. i wish i didn't, but i do - so i have to wait. i hate that...

i keep talking about the pod..

of course i have modellers in guitar rig, too. i really don't need more modellers, i need a couple of little speakers with real hardware to mic.

so, i think there's probably two good guesses on what the amplug2 actually is:

- it could be the same chip as in the modelling amp or

- it could basically be a rebranded version of one of their stomp boxes

The amPlug 2 AC30 amp features 100 percent analog circuitry. Thus, if you do not like digital modeling technology, the Vox amPlug AC30 might suit you.

that was my logic, here - not because i don't like the modeling, but because i realize it's limitations.

but i sent them an email...

actually, let me think this through more carefully.

the amplug2 is marketed as having "analog circuitry". that would suggest it's not a modeler.

but, if it is a modeler, and i'm buying one model, i'd be better off getting the amp, obviously. 

it's less that i'm worried that i bought one setting on the amp and should have bought the amp and more that i'm concerned that i bought a setting on a modelling amp and wanted a dedicated circuit.

if it's just a setting, i don't want it at all...

so, i do really wish i could get a little mini fender tube amp for $100, but the only options are modelling amps, and what's the point of that? i have enough models, in the pod. likewise, i could get a vox pathfinder mini3 g2 for a bit more than the same price as i paid for the mini ac30, and that would probably be a better choice for most, but it's not going to get me the sound i actually want the way the mini will, i don't think.

given that i now know that the fender mini is a tubescreamer with an amp, this isn't that different than it, but it's also a more usable, distinct sound. i mean, it'd be great to get that late 50s fender tweed sound - really. i'm better off with a modeller, though, this, on the other hand is more real, and i'm going to grab it as the last purchase, to replace the fenders i was thinking about.

i'm not going to bite on this myself, but the ts7 does have a slightly different chip in it than the vintage ts808s and ts9s, and if you really want the original chip, those fender minis might actually be the cheapest way to get one.

you won't find a vintage tube screamer for $70, canadian.

i had to run out to get the mini orange yesterday, and spent the evening grocery shopping and fighting with the rain. by the time i got to bed, it was actually a relatively long day, so i slept in a little bit. i'm now superstocked for months, and stocked on fruit & veggies until at least the 20th, probably longer.

it's useful to be able to get out once a week and get a few things, rather than do everything all at once on the first of the month.

the ram for the laptop also came in, and it's definitely not giving it the boost i hoped for, but i can continue to experiment with that and hopefully get something a bit better.

so, we were talking about the fender mini and i found this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GuitarAmps/comments/g3j43g/fender_57_mini_twinamp/

it seems like the devices are actually little mini tubescreamers, but with an apparently poor design, according to this guy. i'd guess the twin is essentially the same thing, even if the wiring and/or chip is slightly different.

so, this is a better representation of what you're actually buying (excluding the fact that he's playing though a vox amp, and you're not getting a vox amp with your fender tube screamer copy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSCNxCj_V0c

i have a ts7 already and don't see the value in getting another one wired to a 1" speaker.

ok.

so, that's decided upon.

when i was kid, i frequently watched a film called the princess bride, mostly because it was a favourite of my stepmother's. within the film, there is a stereotyped spanish character that was in search of the one-armed six-fingered man (a crude fugitive parody), and who repeatedly stated the following line:

my name is inigo montaya. you have killed my father. prepare to die.

while the film presents this man's plight in a romanticized sense, he is truly the most contemptible sort of barbarian, carrying out the most barbaric type of blood feud; this man has dedicated his life to the death of another, and has no apparent purpose or aim to his life, no goals, no other reason to exist. one presumes that he could happily expire upon enacting his revenge, with no other thought in his head at all. and, he travels the world seeking the opportunity to actualize it.

it is no doubt some kind of warped concept of "justice" in this man's mind, but that is a thought process that must be alien to any civilized creature. that's an utterly barbaric concept of justice.

the united states has created an entire generation of inigo montoyas in afghanistan, and that is what the song was about. these inigo montoyas will not give up upon american withdrawal, as they have no other reason to exist. they are operating under a code of honour that can only be abrogated in their own suicide. there is no other option for them.

so, we can kill them now, or we can wait for them to try to kill us later.  and, the more inigo montoyas we kill, the more inigo montoyas we create.

there is little chance they will succeed, but withdrawal is not a solution - it is an escalation in total violence.

the only way forward is to wipe them out before they can create further generations. and, that is a harsh lesson, but one we must learn.

a society rooted in the pashtunwali should not exist in the modern era. so, call it genocide if you want, and offer it as an example of one that is justified in the name of the broader expansion of peace and human rights.

at the end of 2003, i wrote a song called like divine amoebas that warned that the result of the occupation of afghanistan would be the creation of a generation of radical islamists bent on enacting their revenge against the west.

that song may have been misunderstood.

badal is the word for revenge in the pashtunwali, the pashtun code of honour, which is what orders the tribal society in the region, more so than any concept of islam. nonetheless, it is the vicious application of the horrors of islamic law that await the society on the resumption of taliban rule. and, our solidarity should be with the people fighting against the barbarism of sharia law.

here we are, almost 20 years later, and those children have grown strong and want to fight.

we must take no pleasure in it, and we must realize that it is a consequence of our own mistakes. but, we need to annihilate them - without mercy, and without shame.

regarding the mini-fenders...

i'm totally tempted, still, and i'll pick up the orange tomorrow, so i could still bite. but, the fact is that the pod is probably good enough for most of what i need to do, and i'm totally wary about these noisy twins and thin little tweeds....

the mini twins are suppose to be 65s, but they don't have reverb. the pod emulation has reverb. the 57 tweed may be more real, in that sense. but, they're both solid state, and i'm trying to get a tube sound. the vox actually has a tube in it!

and, what about the jazz chorus? when i got the fender twin, i really wanted a jazz chorus, it just wasn't financially possible, even with the microsoft money. i should point out that the twin was a new reissue, and i've never seen a real 60s twin. nowadays, i run almost every patch i build in the pod through the jazz chorus emulation - it's what i really wanted. i've got a little art tube that i use to warm it up, and then i can put whatever else in between, but almost everything recorded since 2009 has that roland jazz chorus emulator at the end, on the way into the mixer. i have no complaints about it, either. so, there's a kind of counter-intuitive answer with this - you'd think if you love it, you should get a real one, right? but, i don't need it. and, it makes sense that the emulator works best on the solid state sounds, too.

what i need is better ways to get live tube amp sounds, and the vox should hopefully mostly fix that, at least for clean sounds. i'll have to chew on the little 57, but i'll probably pass.

so, as i'm about to get back to period 3, i need some more live amp options for recording. the pod is great for cleaning up signal chains at the end, but it's not the bestest for direct live amps, and i'm going to need that, now.

i don't have a real guitar amp, and really never have; i've spent my whole life playing through headphones or into recording interfaces. really. i still have the little cheri practice amp i got with my first hondo when i was 12, and i have this old fender bass amp that was purchased for use with synthesizers (and i find is too bassy, oddly enough). that peavey i used to have has been gone for years; i think my sister decided it was hers.

i had a medium-sized marshall for a short amount of time, but i actually ditched it because i didn't like the sound of it (i exchanged it for an electric mandolin that disappeared years later). i bought a fender twin years ago with microsoft money and brought it back a few days later because it was so dirty sounding (it may have had a blown speaker, but i couldn't convince the snobs at steve's of it, they just claimed the line was dirty and "it's supposed to sound like that"). i never replaced it...

it could be that my preference for clean signal chains in recording studios has simply predisposed me to levels of amp quality that i just can't afford. but, i need a way around it..

i have a little ms-2, though, and i actually like it better than either the twin or the marshall. and, it got me to wondering about it....

....i can't afford a pile of old amps, and i need something better than emulation. can i get some mini amps? what's out there?

what i wanted to look at was the following:

- i have an ms-2, and a jmp-1 drp-1 as well. this is a good mid level overdrive sound.

- can i get a great clean amp, like a vox or a jazz chorus?

yes -  i just bought one of these:

- can i get something a little chunkier, like a jcm or maybe an orange?

yes - i just bought one of these:

i was also looking at a mini fender twin, but...i just expect to get the same result.

these three classics, along with the pod, should get me all the tones i need, i think.

so, i'm up to 777 posts and still have hundreds (thousands.) left to go, bhut i got the heavy lifting done for the part of the discography which was redone the most number of times, which is the part from 1996 to early 1999 (the first two demos and subsequent first two lps).

https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/

that means you can do things like search for i did your mom on the side panel and get all versions of it, now:

https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/search?q=i+did+your+mom&max-results=20&by-date=true

it's time to stop to eat last night's supper.

so, i've been rebuilding that releases archive again all night and listening to a few things. i've got pictures of all the places i lived at up (i think this is relevant.) and the places i went to school at (i'm going to have some essays posted there, too), as well as most of the original release cycle back to 1996. i want to get that done before i stop.

i really ruined a bunch of my mixes around 2007, and the interplanetary isomorphism is one of the mixes that just got demoed. this was built in cool edit, and shouldn't have been. i thought perhaps otherwise, but i'm going to need to rebuild it from scratch...

so, i just finished my first normal monthly cleaning in several years.

let's get to the alter-reality for the day...

...and there's every reason to think things can be back on track for monday.

so, it's already friday, once again.

i'm going to finish the cleaning first because i'm now inside for probably the next two weeks, straight. but, we're back to the alter-reality tonight - and potentially into the schedule for monday.

if i really want to replace the 440-IIs, it's going to cost me $750. minimum. i'll probably never have that.

i was hoping the 449s could replace the 440-IIs, but they never will. it's not even close.

they're alright through a big amp, but they need to be driven rather substantively, or you get that underpowered bass-heaviness. i can barely even tone them down from the alesis. so, they're just shelved...

that said, it's been a few years now, and the magnets might have dulled a bit. it's worth another try. soon.

if that's the case, and i can make sense of them, i may want to get a pair of 559s as backup, while i can. i can replace the cord in the 559s; i can't in the 449s.

yes - the 449s will sound better through a stereo amplifier.

but, that fact doesn't help when i'm walking around town looking for strawberries. 

well, i found a pair for $30 on wish.

let's hope that's fine for another 5 years.

i bought 449s and 201s at about the same time a few years ago, and i put the 449s on the shelf because the bass response was way too high. the 201s sounded way better - like, it wasn't even close.

so, i'm looking at a 559 and i'm concluding i'm going to have the same problem as the 449s.

i still have the 440-IIs and will use them for mixing. but, i want a flat pair for walking, too.

this is frustrating.

i've got some cash, so i'd like to buy some new phones to replace my beat up 201s, which i like precisely because they don't have an exaggerated bass response. i don't listen to bass-heavy music and don't want bass-heavy phones. it just ruins the mids, mostly - which is where most of the detail in the music i like is.

maybe i can try to find some 201s for now, but i understand what the problem is - people listen to everything on mp3, so the phones are designed to compensate. and, that's the market, now. if you want to listen to a flat signal, you need to pay for it.

https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/sennheiser-hd-206-review

so, i'm finally stopping here until next week.

i've worked backwards on the main bandcamp page to the 12/2013 journal, meaning the next thing in the list is the warning ep.

i've also filled in a skeleton of all of the inri numbers, from inri000-inri081 + expected completed releases until the end of 2005.

so, there is a very real shape here now, even though i still have thousand of posts to fill in. that means i can put it aside for now.

https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/

so, i'm up to 500 entries here now and it's definitely taking on more of a shape, although i still have thousands of more posts to get through.

https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/

i got over the hump i wanted to get over, but now i'm sleepy...

so, i'm enough of the way through this now that what i'm doing should be more obvious:

https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/

that's what i did all night last night and have done all night tonight, too.

if the detail surprises you, it should go to show why i'm irritated at facebook - i had a very granular, detailed site that just got washed away underneath ui changes i had no control over. that should never happen at the blog, so i should never have to do it again.

and, i can back it up and upload it, hardcoded, if it does.

nah. 

that would just be obsessive compulsive, in the end. i'd be adding 8 versions of the same track on to the end of a download-only outtakes ep, so i could post a link to a blog.

on second thought, i'm going to just leave it the way it is, and i just won't have a direct link to this particular version, which has been deleted. that's fine.

so, i'm going to have to tack on a little mini permission single to the end of inrijected.

it's just something that got overlooked, and needs to be addressed. it won't take long...i'm just uploading it...

so, i woke up today to an almost clean apartment for the first time in years and i'm excited to make july the most productive month of all time.

the last thing to do is remove a fair amount of material and get it to the recycling depot - broken appliances, lightbulbs, batteries, etc.

tonight, it's back to work on transferring the facebook page to this blog:

https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/

and, i went and bought all of that ram i was talking about.

- the 90s laptop only has 256 mb of ram in it, and that's not enough to run an html5 aware browser (which is required for youtube, nowadays). it can take 1 gb. so, i got 4x512 gb (to max it + a backup) for $10 a piece. and, then i'll have my tv back, along with a phone.

- i got 4x128 gb of sd ram as backup for the windows 98 pc. $10 each.

- 1 got 4x1gb of ddr2-800 as backup for the windows xp pc. $10 each.

so, that ended up being $120 + $20 for shipping. i had to pay the $20 shipping regardless, so it made sense to get it all at the same time.

and, hopefully, that's enough old ram to last me for the next 20 years...

it's a one-off thing and i've got the cash now so let's do it.

so, i'm finally done the meta-cleaning in here...

the big bookshelf will come in on friday (hopefully) and i need to do some running around before i settle in for july and do normal monthly cleaning. but, the headache of spring cleaning is finally done with and i can focus strictly on working, now.

so, the next thing is getting back to filing my drive. i think. let me double check that. i think i put it aside about a week ago to do the sealing.

see, i wanted to finish filing first and then do the sealing after, but i was running out of time to do it, so i had to do the sealing first, and now it's taken about a week to finish cleaning. the last music post was june 23rd.

so, yeah, that's right - now i need to get back to filing. but, i actually want to take a good run through the facebook page first and see if i can build the alternate releases blog up. so, i'm going to fast forward the alter-reality to today and then we'll do the running around on friday and saturday.

so, i should just focus on finishing the clean for right now and get to doing things on friday.

i mentioned before that it's just a handful of papers left. really. then i can get back to a normal once a month cleaning routine...

so, i spent friday sitting down and posting to the releases timeline blog (https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/), and in the process rewound back to late 2017. i'm going to do a little more of this before i put it aside for next week.

what i spent saturday doing was finishing the cleaning i started on wednesday night. i've now got most of my books out of boxes and on to shelves for the first time since 2011, and the same is true of most of the cds. the last step is to cut some wood for the shelves, and i should be able to do that as soon as this annoying month-long rain storm passes. i have enough wood in the space for two shelves, and i'm going to need 6. that should be cheap.

getting the books and cds out is a step towards resuming the alter-reality (i know.), and a step towards the place being clean and normalized again. so, it's huge progress, even if it seems silly.

the rearranging and reordering in this place should be more or less done by the afternoon, which will let me sit back down and refocus.

so, i've got two fixed mixes from the art show demo ep up on the isomorphism ep. these mixes were normalized when burned in 2004, and i'm going to leave them that way. but, these are the original mixes:

1) file actually from 2003 (nulls with art show demo rips, after volume adjustment):

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/into-oblivion-art-show-mix

2) this was built yesterday morning from 2003/04 source to null with volume-adjusted cd rips, except for clipping in the initial track (from the normalization):

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/planetary-isomorphism-art-show-mix

that will probably be inri084, but i'll be sorting through that over the next few days.

so, what having a rebuilt version of the isomorphism from late 2003 means is that i can salvage a demo version for the single when it comes up. it's the same version as on the art show demo, but it's not normalized (which makes combining the three tracks i cut it into back into a single track very difficult).

mid 2004 was my first re-release phase, so i've now come to the first point in the discography where i started to look backwards and consolidate. while i didn't realize it then, i had made it through the second period of my discography and was starting the third period in earnest. to an extent, i was processing the process that sent me across the country on an absurd trip with no purpose; in that sense, period 3 doesn't really start until june of 2004, but it leaves that year (may of 2003 to may of 2004) as a lost space, where i was both finishing period 2 and starting period 3. the ftaa material that closes in june, 2004 is really period 2; the trivial group material started in late 2002 is really period 3. so, this was a transition period...

the re-releases will appear in the grid as stubs, and i'll try to be as comprehensive as i can be. i'm also going to want to put together some kind of compilation that collects the edits i created in that first moment of looking back, as there are enough for an ep, at least.

further, there were a number of mix cds created at this time that i tried to pass around in novel ways, such as exchanging for cigarettes (i got you to take my cd, didn't i?). i'm shooting darts in the dark with this stuff, and i've known it for years. they could have releases, as well.

but, the next serious release will be the isomorpshism single as inri084ish, so lining this up (which is what i did tonight) will set me up for any potential remixes that are coming.

so, i'm finally lining up the core part of the isomorphism in cubase tonight, from source files initially pasted together in cool edit.

this will release in mid 2004 and is essentially done, i just need to file it first.

so, here's my shortlist on period 3.1, which i'm currently filing for the night:

inri075: re-record list of acoustic demos that is tbd

inri076: audiomulch noise collage

inri077: finish demo version of lost symphony left stranded on tape (not final version)

inri078: all versions of lost symphony, including a new 2021 version to be started imminently

=========================

inti079: no further edits. done.

inri080: no further edits. done.

inri081: no further edits. done.

to recall.

record #1 (06/1998): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3

record #2 (01/1999): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriched

record #3 (12/1999): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous

record #4 (11/2000): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything

record #5 (12/2001): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

record #6 (12/2002): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2

record #7 (05/2004): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa

publishing inri081

this is a big deal - the 7th record is now released.

and, i'm up to mid 2004 in terms of the rebuild structure.

i need to spend the night filing.

==========

when it was released in the summer of 2004, this would have been my fifth official recording, after inri, inriched, inridiculous and deny everything. sarah and i moved into a place for the beginning of may; she was working overnight (22:00-6:00) in a diner, so it gave me time to read and record. things seemed like they were starting anew, so i took the time to sort through the discography and reassemble what i actually had. 

a decision was quickly made to unpublish the first three records in favour of a zappa/keneally-style disc of cut-up guitar shorts that i called inricycled, and start seriously at deny everything. the written music that now exists in this space only existed in the form of completed scores, during this period. so, the only other things i had were the rabit is wolf demo, the recently completed reflections ep, some classical guitar stuff and a bunch of these noise demos. this was consequently the extent of the truncated discography, in mid-2004: inricycled (as it was then), deny everything (as it existed then), the rabit is wolf demo, reflections and a 5-track version of this ftaa disc. 

now that i have republished the three inri demos as instrumental recordings, stripped the deny everything lp of samples and converted the rabit is wolf material into two instrumental discs, taking this project to it's final conclusion becomes the process of removing samples from the 2004 demo, and converting it into my 7th completed original lp. 

the ftaa project was supposed to be a combination of political poetry and sample art projects that presented a vaguely "anarchist" political messaging. my concept of anarchism in 2004 was mostly economic, and mostly about presenting an alter-globalization alternative to the rising tide of "free trade" blocs that focused more on local worker control than on the outsourcing of cheap labour to countries with poor labour standards, which is what this term "globalization" actually means, in an economic sense. so, it was supposed to be about syndicalism, and it was supposed to be a *very* noisy and very abstract project. 

but, then 9/11 happened at about the same time as i was starting with this and the entire anti-nafta left just evaporated, as the war took over the popular movements and the more socially conservative aspects of the union movement dissented against the backlash and started looking elsewhere. we seem to forget that the real origins of the shift to the right amongst unionized workers is really cultural, and comes from a disconnect that developed in the anti-war left after 2001; a very large number of workers felt the country had been attacked, and wanted to respond with force. 

i kind of came in somewhere between. i was certainly opposed to the war, and for the right reasons, but i also felt that globalization was a bigger problem and deserved more attention. i think a lot of organizers on the left kind of got tricked by the size of the anti-war protests, into thinking there was more of a path in opposing the war. and people just kind of forgot about the trade issues. and, i also felt that the civil rights breaches that the government was ramming through were bigger issues than either the war or the trade protests. 

so, the record kind of shifted along with the realities around it's construction into something that retained a broadly anarchist ideology but was really more about reacting to the onset of fascism in the united states. so, the initial 5-track release included a track with a poem about the war in afghanistan, a sample collage about the incoherence of using more trade to undo the problems created by trade, a sample collage decrying rights lost in the 9/11 attacks, an instrumental noise collage raided from the then unreleased (and expected to remain unreleased) curious george suite and this sprawling 25-minute exploration of the collapse of liberal democracy into statist authoritarianism and cultural fascism. 

but, as with the other recordings, the samples have been removed to leave an almost entirely instrumental recording. i have retained the poem in the first track because the track is much stronger with it, which is an unusual decision for me. 

however, the initial intent of the record is salvaged on inri067, spoke: 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/spoke 

now, if you want to hear the record exactly as it was initially released in 2004, you'll need to take a look at the aleph disc, as you would need to do in order to hear the initial pressings of my other early recordings, as well. this is intentional as i believe the record is stronger in it's current incarnation and want to present it that way as final. 

i have added instrumental versions of atom's and taught to twist the affected so low as bonus tracks to the lp in order to make it comprehensive. that is, the lp now has the strongest versions of all of the ftaa material. 

these tracks were written and recorded from 2000-2004, mostly as throwaway experiments over the course of an afternoon. the counter-example is the seventh symphony, trepanation nation, which was reconstructed repeatedly over the years 2001-2014. this record was initially constructed in this form (minus the last two tracks) in june, 2004. reconstructed and resequenced in theory (but not in fact) at the end of sept, 2019 from parts that were rebuilt over 2014, but not actually reconstructed, resequenced and uploaded until june of 2021. finally re-released on june 20, 2021. audio permanently closed on . finalized as lp025 on . this is my seventh official record; as always, please use headphones. 

released june 1, 2004 

j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, vocals, electric mandolin, live drums, drum sample manipulation, drum programming, piano programming, noise generators, granular synthesis, ring modulators, sequencers, sampling, sound design, digital wave editing, composition, production 

greg - drum performance sample source on track 5 

sean - ring modulator on track 5

yeah, i must have saved the source file for this as an mp3 and decompressed it.

for this particular track, it's so noisy that the artefacts are almost a positive addition.

yeah, that creative software acts like spyware. you can't get it off the machine. that wasn't a problem before because the drivers for the older card (which didn't support asio at all) were integrated into xp. so, i'm just reinstalling immediately.

all i need to do is line up the sample in harry to take it out and the 7th lp releases. finally.

and, then i need to finish sorting through the drive.

...and i had two copies of my h2o driver....oops....

i had to take a nap...

i needed to get two phase inversions done this afternoon. one was easy and the second doesn't want to line up, but the creative card wasn't syncing right with cubase. so, let's try again with it removed from the machine.

so, the recording machine has been a bit more stable recently, until i did two things:

1) switched the asio driver

2) searched the big drive

i just proved that the soundblaster appears to not properly work over asio, so it's of minimal use to me anyways. it's coming out right this minute.

and, i suspect that xp may have problem with drives larger than 1 gb, which i'm going to try to deal with by repartitioning the big drive.

i don't like sleeping...

i wanted this build of my 7th record done last night, but it's just a few more bits.

so, if you want the instrumental version of the renaissance piece that starts like divine amoebas, it is on the single. 

but, unlike everything else in my discography except stress, this is a vocally driven conceptual work and not a piece of pure music and i need to leave it that way.

broadly speaking, i've removed vocals from these records because i'm not comfortable with them. i rebuilt most of the inri-era vocal tracks for a series of singles, but they are broadly hard to listen to, so leaving them on the singles is the right way to do it. deny everything only had one vocal track to remove, and that was the right choice, partly because i had the electric folk version, which appears on the 5th record as the only salvaged vocal piece for the official lps. the 5th and 6th records were both built in 2014 for the first time, without vocals. and, the trivial group 2xlp will have vocals removed because they're mostly cringey, too - but left on the singles. 

unlike the others, i can't argue that that the vocals for like divine amoebas are cringey or hard to listen to. they don't interfere with the music, which was built around it. rather, i'd be separating the sound from it's content in a way that ultimately doesn't make sense.

so, i'll uploaded the 2021 rebuild for it. that's the right answer.

and, i'm going to replace some files on the amoebas single so they flow a little better, then, too.

a part of me is resisting the idea of removing the vocal mix from the ftaa disc.

let me chew on it  a bit, first.

publishing inri080

so, inri080 is done up to finalizing...

====

as mentioned below this, inri080 is now released - and this one's done to start. 

i needed a way to release an updated, corrected version of this tune, as i'll be removing the vocals from the 7th lp, which is set to release imminently. the version on the art show demo is normalized, but i'm leaving it like that. so, this fills a gap that opened up. 

the first part of the track (quantum psychosis) was written on heather's acoustic guitar in sarah's bedroom one night when i was there by myself and recorded directly to four-track tascam at the same time. several electric guitar overdubs were added either right away or very shortly. i digitized this in 2004 and do not know where the tape went; it is presumed lost, in 2021. 

the second part of the track was constructed more or less all at once in january, 2004 for the purposes of creating an art show demo. i had just finished reading a couple of books on afghan history, and had imagined this idea already, so i just implemented it all in one go. i haven't altered the recording substantively, since. 

the demo doesn't appear to have found an audience in it's initial presentation. 

the track itself is pretty esoteric. if you're not following the lyrics, it's a summary of the history of afghanistan, starting from the period of persian hegemony. afghanistan used to be a wealthy and buddhist place, but it was utterly demolished by the mongols in the 13th century and has yet to recover. it climaxes in the bombing of what is left of an afghan family, and then sputters out into a 14 minute transmigration of their souls, as they split apart and rejoin the ancestral soul pool. well, it's about a historically buddhist region; the victims might be muslims, but their ancestors would no doubt forgive them for it. 

this is a comprehensive collection of the different versions, as of mid-2021 and i don't expect to expand it further. 

written and recorded from 2001-2004. all versions here constructed over early 2004 from sound written in 2001 (the piano part) and/or recorded in late 2003 (the vocal quantum psychosis folk section) or early 2004 (the transmigration section). compiled and uploaded on june 19, 2021. as always, please use headphones. 

released february 1, 2004 

j - electric & acoustic guitars, effects, drum programming, vocals, noise generators, piano programming, noise generators, digital wave editing, composition, production 

special thanks to heather's guitar, which was just sitting in the corner minding it's own business before i picked it up to jam a bit.

so, that means inri079 is now properly filed on my archive drive and i need to build inri80 after...breakfast. 

so, i can't create a comparable instrumental version of "like divine amoebas" because the track would lose it's purpose. it's two tracks pasted together - an acoustic guitar tape experiment & a weird piano + drum machine freakout that's meant to represent two souls dividing from each other as one dies (like amoebas).

if i just phase reverse the vocals out, there'll be this awkward gap in the track - which was really constructed around the vocals. rather, i'd have to fade the tape experiment down or something, but then why not just put  the whole thing in there? the dramatic "amoebas" loses itself...

and, then, if i'm going to do that, i need the amoebas single after all with the following:

- the full vocal mix in the best way possible (the version on the art show demo is a little bit corrupted)

- the instrumental mix for the ftaa (with the full tape experiment)

- the version on the art show demo, which was normalized in the burn (and left that way in the upload)

i'm also going to include a base mix that i have, which is unfinished but interesting, and a cut version of the symphony of psilocybin induced madness, which utilizes the same piano part.

so, that's inri080, which i'm going to date to feb 1, 2014; the ftaa demo is next, and will be dated to inri081. i need to stop to eat...

a few loose ends so they're written down...

i thought about releasing an alternate lp that included the following 2003 components, which are basically comprehensive, in sequence:

1. reflections

2. all you need

3. into oblivion

4. like divine amoebas

5. interplanetary isomorphism

...in some combination of vocal and instrumental tracks but everything's worked out already.

- if you want the full pieces with vocals, listen to inri074, inri076 & inri079 in order.

- what about without vocals? well, like divine amoebas only exists instrumentally on inri077 right now and all you need doesn't exist instrumentally at all. so, i made a decision to put an instrumental version of all you need (along with the pending noise intro) as a segue between reflections and isomorphism on the first side of the upcoming trivial group 2xlp. in that space, into oblivion is remixed and segues directly into isomorphism; in fact, they're combined into a single, epic song. further, isomorphism then runs directly into xenophanes. so, there's nowhere to put amoebas, except right after all you need, and that's not sitting with me well, not for the least reason being that the track is released on ftaa. so, should the version on ftaa be stripped of vocals, then, to place the instrumental version on a record? then, i'd have to move the vocal version to a single. of the major records (inri, inriched, inridiculous, deny everything, jjjjjjjjj, jjjjjjjjj^2, ftaa), the only vocal track is stress - everything else is discarded as singles. so, this would only be the second retained vocal track. do i really want that, or do i want a vocals-only single for amoebas like the others? is that too much overlap? 

- so, i was looking at a divine amoebas single, which is another way to do it. if i do this, i'll need to date it to right before the art show demo, and push the ftaa up inri081.

-  i'm going to explore the idea of splicing the end of all you need with the end of a transfer for the record, though.

- that said, there will be a vocals-only compilation released at the end of period 3 with all of the vocal tracks from periods 2 &3 (post-inrimoved).

the update for june 17th is coming soon, and it needs to be the completed version of ftaa record - my 7th lp, finally.

we'll see if i stop there or keep going.

so, the period 3.1 post for june 16th was the art show demo, inri079, which i uploaded as is some time ago and dated to early january, 2004. there will be a number of historical demos released over period 3 that contain half-finished music because i circulated them that way; it's really a relic of the period when cd burning was easily accessible and everybody listened to music that way.

what it is is an unfinished mix of the interplanetary isomorphism symphony, with the track "like divine amoebas" inserted into the middle. "all you need" had already been dropped by then, but the symphony is simply not yet complete.

so, i mean, it's a historical relic, but it's also interesting for what it is - as an alternate lp.

the bulk of this will appear on the trivial group lp in completed instrumental form, whereas "like divine amoebas" appears largely as is on the ftaa ep. 

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/art-show-demo