moving to the next basement...

first basement:

- mid-sized keyboard amp

- e609 mic to upgrade the altec, maybe.

second basement:

- if i find an affordable ry30 somewhere, i must get it. not a priority.

- but, in the short run, something like an akai mini would give me access to velocity sensitive pads, if i can find one for very cheap. not a clear priority, for now.

- plastic recorder (or wind controller?)

- i've added a picture for fake strings to sept 6, 1997 because that's the oldest attempt i have at creating a string section that's designed to sound like strings (rather than a synthesizer), probably actually due to an influence from a canadian band called the tea party, and which is something i've struggled with for years and years. i'm going to be seeking generally approaches towards creating different sounds as i try to plug in production holes that i know i can't do well with sampling. i have an electric violin with a bow that i got for $50, but i've never set it up because it hasn't really ever made sense to do so. it's kind of a toy. that would be the obvious answer for high strings, but it's actually the low strings i generally want to reach for. i've used e-bows in the past (something that shows up in the next basement) and still have one. but, i've recently purchased an audio-to-midi converter that will let me track guitar parts directly to midi. with the aid of a sample library, an ebow and an actual bow, i wonder how close that will get me to what i need. but, it's an open question, and something i approach on a track-by-track basis.

third basement:

- the dan electro fab tone i used on liquify and the day inri messed the world up was not mine, it was borrowed from a friend. i have many distortion pedals, but i would grab one in the metal case (not one of those plastic ones...) if i saw it cheap enough. that said, i'm going to claim that the rocktron metal planet that i have is an effective substitute/upgrade for this (they're both based on boss metal pedals, but the rocktron has a less compressed sound than either of the other two, which is useful because it lets you control the amount of compression....), but you can never have too many distortion pedals:

i used that pedal as an extra gain boost on some of the parts for proverbs, along with a guyatone sd-2 and a marshall jackhammer.

i'm not a metal guitarist, though, and i don't generally use high gain tones like that, except as niche effects. i prefer a dirty overdriven sound to a high gain metal sound. 

but, like i say - you can never have too many distortion sounds. you never know what you'll need to get the sound you're imagining, and i've found that just having as many combinations as is possible is the best approach.

- i still install cool edit pro.

- by dad bought himself a nicer drum kit around this time, that was meant for communal use but ended up banished to my bedroom by my stepmother. this was the kit used for deny everything material. my solution for kit replacements is my dm pro kit:

that was the last of i think three kits that he bought, and i never saw him play any of them.

- there was a marshall amp in the living room for a while that was purportedly given to me as a gift, but it never functioned properly. i don't know where he got it from exactly, but he did a lot of garage sale shopping, and i'm guessing he picked it up from somebody's garage for almost nothing. i'm guessing he thought it was worth a lot more than it was actually worth. again - i'm not convinced i would have ever picked a marshall practice guitar amp over a fender bass amp, when the two are sitting side by side like they were; broken speaker or not, i don't think i ever recorded anything at all with it, and am not sure i plugged into it for more than a few minutes. yeah, i know - i've got a marshall amp on a table in my bedroom, and i don't even plug it in. i'm sorry. i had a di on the soundcard, and a bass amp for recording pedals...together, they were far more useful to me than this cheesy scooped marshall with a midrange speaker. my dad didn't get it, either.

i traded this marshall for a half broken vintage 50s electric mandolin that i fixed up and used on several recordings before it disappeared in 2011:

do i need to replace this, then? well, i never used it! and, i swapped it for a mandolin. i definitely need to replace the mandolin...

if i need to record guitar parts, the mini amps are more useful to me. i could never make any functional use of a 75 watt amp, in this space - or any space i'm likely to inhabit in the near future. and, really, the thing that replaces this is the pod:

so, i'm comfortable with leaving that as it is - although i've decided that i'll get a cheap modelling amp, if i find one, too.

the pod through a flat keyboard amp is a better idea than a cheap marshall, though, if it comes down to it.

- i've been saying this is 120 watts. it's actually 160 watts. it showed up around this time, and was meant as a bass amp. i still have it...and i may try to use it as a cab for the mini orange and/or vox...

i have used this periodically for recording heavily effected guitar parts through complex effects chains, specifically when i want a low frequency response. but, it's just so damned loud...

i mean, that was the point - it was parked beside a drum kit. it had be loud, and was purchased for the volume. but, that's not real life for me, and hasn't been since i was 20.

- i still have the creamy dreamer, and still use it

- from previous post dated to june 8th:

i picked up a morley pro series wah around this time for pretty cheap but i found the effect to be a little more subtle than what i wanted. i mean, i was hardly interested in doing 80s hair metal whammy dives, but, after playing with direct x filters in cool edit, i wanted a much more dynamic instrument that i could warp like a dj or sound engineer warps filters with their hands, but in real-time with my feet, and found this was really designed to be the opposite of that. there was no doubt a mental disconnect between the world this was made for (southern rock guitarists) and the kind of sounds i was imagining (warped sound effects from contemporary experimental techno, like download). i mean, i knew better, but i guess i didn't. that said, i made some sufficiently demented use of it in the climax to "entropy", as well as in the intro solo to  "ignorance is bliss" before i swapped it for a digitech xp-100 a few basements later. the pod has a couple of wah sounds in it; it wouldn't make sense to try to model this in a daw, unless you have the right kind of controller. so, you need hardware here, one way or another.

so, i'm happy with the pod as a replacement for this, and also for the digitech.

- i can still install the aipl spin cycle plugin as a direct x effect, but i've mostly put it aside. there are leslie-like effects in guitar rig. likewise, the hyperprism and north pole effects are there, but i never reach for them anymore.

- i still have the 90s pc and pretty much every important piece of hardware in it still works flawlessly.

- pi warp is a weird effect and i absolutely still use it.

- sounder does not work right in xp, but i'm hoping to get it running on the 90s pc (in windows 98)

- i've dropped acid. the program, i mean. discarded it. i was actually hoping to use it for samples (listen to entropy to hear my intended use), but i just keep going back to basic midi. the old scorewriter is just the most useful way for me to write, always has been. so, my replacement for acid is noteworthy composer, but there's nothing you can do in an old version of acid that you can't do in a slightly less old version of cubase:

- i posted the imaginary trumpet and imaginary sax because i'm looking at getting pocket versions for use with the midi controller i just bought. you can get mini saxophones for cheap and i'm on the brink - as soon as i finalize the operation transactions.

- there was a baby grand outside my door, which....i can use a vst effect. that's fine. if i find a million dollars, yes, there will be a real piano. but, it's not even on the radar...

- i now have two mini classical guitars, and they're really both functional replacements for the aria, in any meaningful way for how i used it, which was never intended to be as a performing guitarist at a church or something.  i want to keep one of them. but, i need to get a 21-fret classical guitar with a pickup in it relatively soon.

- i still install audiomulch. 

- granulab doesn't work will in xp. it seems that there's a vst version. but, the granulator i used most often is in the hyperprism suite (see xenophanes for a good example)

- i still have the rubber ducky setup files, but i don't recall the last time i ever used it.

- i still install leaf drums, but i couldn't imagine myself writing that way anymore. it's actually a useful program, and i'd recommend it as a basic drum machine for noise music.

- i stil have the mxr flanger & distortion II boxes, as well as the ibanez eq.

- i cannot find a downloadable version of megatrancer

- koan does not work in xp. but i can try to update it and should.

- from june 8th:

i picked up a mooger fooger mf-102 ring modulator that spring, hoping to drive it with the morley and get that dramatic foot driven techno-oscillation filter, but it didn't actually work; it just didn't convert to an expression like i hoped. i never got another expression for it. guitarists kind of have their hands busy, so this became an expensive trick item. that said, it is used extensively as a bass (acidosis) and vocal (trepanation nation) processor over the next few years, before i cashed it in as having done it's purpose. it's also become very expensive ($600?), but isn't any more useful than a freeware vst plugin - it's expensive because it says "moog" on it, and likely of little actual functional value to you, unless you're doing very modular synth work. just about any old ring modulator with a carrier signal should be just as good.

i wish i could find a demo with the expression pedal plugged in like i wanted to set up, but what this demo (not posted) does is really demonstrate how kind of useless the thing really is.

the pod has a collection of synth and ring mod effects that are quite frankly more usable than the moogerfooger, which i really was quite disappointed in - but it had a lot to do with the fact that i just didn't have a foot controller for it. i'm going to pencil in a generic ring mod, but the pod is really probably more than good enough.

- i've long wanted to get or make a theremin and never have, so i'm going to pencil this in as a project.

- a ukelele would be a useful utility sound generator, but it's hardly at the top of the list of priorities.

- i don't know exactly what happened to my old electric mandolin, but i definitely need to replace it. the electrical was a little funny, but i would have hardly discarded it over that. it's in a small list of items that just kind of disappeared. i don't imagine the item was worth much, and i'd probably benefit from upgrading it to something newer. but, i got it for almost nothing and am sad it disappeared.

- likewise, i've decided to replace my bontempi with a bontempi. they do show up on ebay, but i don't really want to pay shipping. i was looking at melodicas as a replacement and it's probably going to be roughly the same price. but, i still may decided to go down that route. we'll see.

- i still have the e-bow.

ok, let's get to the next basement, then.

 i would have preferred william gibson to sweet valley high, but i didn't know he existed, at the time.

shouldn't i have been reading contemporary kids' books from the 80s and 90s, though?

well, i did eventually - and went with the king.

but, i just finished grade two, here, and i'm consequently somewhat at the mercy of the adults around me. i was frequently gifted books, and i read most of them. nobody reads every book their grandmother gives them...

but, i'm just googling "tween books from the 80s", and it's predictably a bunch of pornographic smut. i wouldn't have gone anywhere near that stuff.

the one thing i remember trying out briefly was rl stine, but i decided pretty quickly that i was well beyond it. there was a tv show with goosebumps adaptations, but it didn't have the character depth of a king novel, which was a big part of what i liked about reading king. the attempt to get into the head of a rabid dog, or a kid that can't stop themselves from lighting things on fire...that's what kept me coming back, rather than the plotlines, exactly. and, again - i expect to realize the criticisms of king, but there was still a giant gulf between these king texts, which were written for less educated adults, and these stine texts, which were fully intended to be kids' books.

i never really liked being a kid...

so, i mean, that's my answer - i quickly deduced that all of the texts being marketed to me as "young adult" were just empty, pornographic trash. and, i'd hold to that view now, too. i wanted something more substantive than that...

and, let me say it clearly enough.

was asimov a great writer? 

he wasn't, no. that doesn't matter.

what i actually liked about asimov was the (often times naive) exploration of various scientific hypotheses. but, i was, like, ten years old. i found the gaia hypothesis to be fascinating, for example. could the earth be a living thing? well, if you're tripping out into that as an adult, you need to take some basic science, but it's an intriguing question for a kid to try to work out.

as it was with king, it didn't matter to me that he didn't excel at the specific literary devices that an academic analysis will key on. i mean, i get the criticism - and i expect to roll my eyes.

these are good kids books, though, whether they were intended that way, or not.

but, yeah - i know i'm going to cringe, and i'm ready for it. but, expect the reviews to largely gloss over it...

So, when I was eleven, it occurred to me that if I wrote my own books, I could then reread them at my leisure. I never really wrote a complete book, of course. I would start one and keep rambling on with it till I outgrew it and then I would start another. All these early writings are forever gone, though I remember some of the details quite clearly.

i'm not sure how many people realized it at the time, but the man was a damned troll.

so, i'm going to start with this on pdf, if i can't find it at the goodwill shop.

actually - and i had decided this once before - i should read it in this order, then fill in the gaps:

this is based on the ordering suggested by asimov, except i'm strategically adding in short stories collections to fill it out.

i am ignoring asimov's later forays outside of science fiction, altogether.

(i did not read any of the lucky starr series as a kid, and i'm skipping them in this reconstruction. but, they would plug in first)

the early asimov (short stories) <----added

the complete robot (short stories) (1982) + robot dreams + robot visions

the complete stories, volume 1 (short stories) <----added

buy jupiter and other stories (short stories) >----added

the martian way and other stories (short stories) <----added

the bicentennial man and other stories (short stories) <----added

caves of steel (1954) 

the naked sun (1957) 

the robots of dawn (1983) 

robots and empire (1985) 

the currents of space (1952) 

the stars, like dust (1951) 

pebble in the sky (1950) 

prelude to foundation (1988)

forward the foundation (1993)

foundation (1951) 

foundation and empire (1952) 

second foundation (1953) 

foundation's edge (1982) 

foundation and earth (1986)

==========

asimov's mysteries (short stories) <----added

the winds of change and other stories (short stories) <---added

the end of eternity <-----added

the gods themselves <--------added

honey, i shrunk the fantastic voyage II: destination brain <-----added

nemesis <----added

there are some asimov texts published after 1990, but not many. i'll have to skip them, altogether.

or maybe not.

1992 silverberg additions:

- positronic man

- ugly little boy

- nightfall

should i start by talking about asimov's role in the perpetual, cosmic war between religion and science? asimov is known for aggressively promoting rationalism, liberalism, secularism and atheism in and outside of his literature. should kids really be reading this stuff, or was he just out there corrupting the youth? 

the reality, for me, is that my parents were not just both atheists but that they conscientiously raised me as an atheist, so asimov didn't undo anything because there wasn't anything to undo. i want to get the point across on that: they didn't raise me to dislike this or that religion, or to have a disdain for the faithful (that came naturally...), but rather purposefully raised me without an active belief in any sort of god, and, when it came up, simply expressed skepticism as a matter-of-fact in any situation that my subconscious considers important enough to still remember. basically, my parents were of the view that a child shouldn't be pushed into a belief system; that's not a deduction, i specifically recall hearing both of them say, independently of one another, that it ought to be up to me to figure out, and not up to them to direct, although i'll admit that it may have been driven by laziness, on both of their respective behalves. belief in god isn't embedded in our genome and doesn't come instinctively, without instruction; if you don't foster it, it doesn't develop, and that's really the actual truth with me: nobody ever told me i ought to believe in god with any conviction or persistence and, as a result of that lack of persuasion, i just never did. the result is that, unlike most adult atheists, there really never was a time in my youth when i was naive enough to believe in any sort of god. there was no break with faith, no rejection of the church - i've just always been an atheist, by default. so, i was an atheist child reading books by an atheist author; in that sense, asimov was appropriate, for me, in the same way that a christian child reading christian authors is appropriate, for them. asimov shares my extended family's belief system; he's a representative and a member of my tribe. conversely, it would have been weird for my atheist parents and grandmother to give me religious books, given that they were not religious, themselves.

so, i mean, maybe asimov wouldn't be right for some kids, but that concern wasn't an issue, for me.

but, what that means is that i just didn't have a perspective on this conflict because science was really the only thing that i actually knew. i actually had to learn about religion from the other kids, and that conflict had to develop in my mind over time, as i aged and became more cognizant of it. at the age that i'm starting this with, there just wouldn't be much of a conflict to resolve - all i knew was science, and all i knew was atheism (in the sense of it being the absence of religion). i didn't really know the traditional christian stories or narratives, so i wasn't aware that they contradicted the science, and i didn't know there was any reason to push back on them. it's hard to imagine an alternate history of yourself at such a formative age, but i'd like to think i'd have pushed back against the religion, if only i knew that there was a reason to. instead, i naively allowed both ideas to exist side by side, oblivious of the intellectual inconsistency in doing so, although the only thing i ever spent any actual time actually thinking about was the science.

so, i'm not going to be pushing this point much in this journal, because i wasn't really aware of it at the time. rather, i'm going to try to present my own perspective, as best as i can remember it, which means that religion wasn't much of a factor, because i didn't really know very much about it. i liked science, as best as i could understand it; i wasn't even cognizant of what religion was or was about, in any meaningful sense.

that said, my stepfather was religious, and that's something i'll need to talk about.

my mother was uncomfortable with his religiosity, and it ultimately ended the marriage. he "found god" shortly after they got married, and she went along with it thinking it was a phase, but ultimately rejected him over it, although there was a point where he got violent with me over nothing, and that was the actual cause of the break-up. she wouldn't have identified as one, but her religious views were roughly comparable to that of a laveyan satanist. i think she would have identified as some kind of vague deist, but her concept of god was...it's an old testament god. it's a mean, vengeful, retributive god. but, it doesn't follow the rules in the old testament. it's really a pagan concept of god.

my father's religion was hockey. he didn't take it seriously. i don't think he'd have identified as anything, and if you brought it up, he'd have changed the topic. i guess that qualifies as agnostic, but it was a kind of a "i don't have time for this" agnosticism. if there was some vague notion of deism, he never really articulated it. and, he was a libertarian in his concept of religion; so long as they didn't bother him, he didn't have a problem with them. years later, when my stepmother started going to church, he would drop her off and go for breakfast with me, instead - and then make it home in time to watch the nfl game. but, it was just disinterest more than anything else. he was a big zappa fan...

so, it was strictly because of my stepfather that i spent some time in a methodist church around the time that the journal starts, before being banned from sunday school for asking too many awkward questions. if you think catholics are fucked up on specious guilt, you should spend some time with methodists - they make catholics seem moderate, in comparison. it was around that time that i picked the bible up and read it all the way through, so that should probably be one of the book reviews. but, i've pointed out before that all it took for me to do away with christianity was to read the bible. it was just obviously just a bunch of nonsense. and, i remember being baffled at the premise that there were adults in the world that were dumb enough to take it seriously.

also, i did attend a catholic school until the end of grade 13, but my mom only enrolled me in the catholic school system because it started at four-year old kindergarten, and the public system started at five-year old kindergarten. so, i was going to have to skip a year, otherwise (i had been in pre-school starting at age 2); it was really just a pragmatic decision to avoid having me skip a year. i was subsequently baptized at the age of four strictly to facilitate it. i distinctly recall my mother being mortified that the priest would molest me, and ordered me not to go anywhere near the church to prevent it. the cynicism underlying the process is truthfully actually another demonstration of the strictly non-religious environment i was raised in.

these minimal and temporary influences aside, the reality is that religion was really not a part of my upbringing, that i was always strictly interested in science, and i'll consequently be approaching the issue from the perspective of a strictly atheist childhood. but, i want to double down on what that means: if it's not pointed out by adults, it's just not obvious to a child that there's any sort of a contradiction between science and religion, and so a child wouldn't reflexively choose a side in the debate. when they send you to sunday school, they don't bring up theological discourses surrounding the big bang, or at least they don't do it on day one. it takes time for the inconsistencies to unfold and for the need to pick a side to become apparent. eventually, after so many trips, the contradictions start to pile up, and there was never any question in my little mind as to which set of ideas had primacy. the moment i became cognizant of the conflict was the moment i picked a side and the moment i intellectually turned against religion.

so, i won't admit naivete, but i'll admit some ignorance. i think some ignorance at the age of eight or nine is forgivable. for me, the ignorance was of the conflict between science and religion - i was not aware of one, at first, or of the necessity in choosing one over the other. and, i realize that many religious people will argue that there isn't a contradiction, but i reject that, as an adult - and did, eventually, as a ten year-old, as well. 

so, i'm going to actually approach the asimov as a blank slate, regarding the conflict between science and religion. i was simply not old enough to be aware of the struggle, and simply had little awareness of religion. however, my biases throughout are going to be towards science, and that position will be dominant when conflicts arise and will win outright, in the end.

just a note on the asimov reviews, before i start on them...

i'm going to be more or less comprehensive. of course, i hadn't read every asimov text by the time i was ten, but i'd read a good deal of them. that's not important. this is a mechanism - it reflects reality. you want to take the idea seriously, and allow for tremendous artistic license in the details, although i am going to try to be as specific as my memory can allow for. the details are admittedly a little blurry, more than thirty years later.

so, no - i didn't read every asimov text in order.

but, i am going to review them that way.

as i want to speed this up, i'm going to try to get four of these texts done over next weekend, but i don't know if that's feasible. these are 200 page books in large fonts that are written for teenagers; i don't know if i can do two or three per day, but i should be able to do more than one.

but, i have to finish cleaning, first.

i updated the theme link and put it at the bottom of the template:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10tPlsE_lBPc9t_Bq8-m5J0K-35m5usws/

that is probably final. updates are related to the colour of the text, which is now a pencil grey.

again - the theme works exceedingly well in terms of actually lining the paper up, but some care is going to be required in ensuring that the size of the posts is not too large. it looks like a floating point error issue to me that's baked into the html rendering, and you're never going to fix that. but, i've forced it to recalculate frequently, and that's the best answer that i think is available.

so, we've got post #2 up at the alter-reality.

i'm going to try very hard to actually stick to this. and, i should start some reviews for next week, time permitting.

https://thejournalofj.blogspot.com/1989/07/maybe-ill-keep-doing-this.html

so, i got my mini tele in today and it plays very well. all the electronics work, as well.

unfortunately, the eye holes ("ferrules") on the back need a regluing (somebody tried to tape them back on...), one of the springs on the bridge needs to be replaced and somebody put some stupidly tense strings on it and otherwise set it up rather poorly, as well. this is either coming from an adult that tried to turn it into a grown up guitar in a silly way, or a dad that didn't know what he was doing.

that's fine - these are minor repairs, and i can fix that fairly easily.

it's otherwise a pretty nice little tele.

so, i thought my melodica was $4.00, but it was just the mouthpiece and i had to cancel it.

xylophone sticks are still coming.

i spent the last few days building the gear part of the releases blog for the basement on hilliard, and will have a "replacement" post coming soon.

i had to catch up on sleep today. it happens, when you don't sleep.

but, bleach run #3 on the fridge seems to have worked, so i should be able to get things back in order, starting tonight.

i was able to confirm the orchiectomy for this month, but i don't have an answer regarding who can pick me up. they can't legally release me alone until i'm no longer on drugs (like i'm not used to stumbling around on drugs, right?), and they can't keep me in the hospital due to covid. i don't know anybody in toronto at all. so, i'm kind of fucked.

they suggested hiring a nurse...to drive me to the bus station. it's absurd, but it's the rules, and i get it.

so, i'm going to look at the bus schedule. if the unavoidable fact is that i'm out of the surgery in the afternoon, and the train doesn't leave until 19:00, i really have a choice between sitting at the hospital and sitting at the train station. i mean, that's reality - i could hire a nurse to drive me to a train station or i could sit in the hospital for a few hours. there's no other option. let's pick.

so, that's what i'm doing tonight.

first, i want to try to open up some space on the floor to vacuum some of the dust off.

you know, i even think he may have recorded me playing.

i completely forgot about that...

i found a number; i have no idea how useful it might be.

it sort of just clicked. why didn't i think of that before?

i'm guessing he'd be around 70 or so. it's a long shot, but there's a chance...

actually, you know what?

i think he photocopied some of my crazy scrawled over pieces.

can i contact this guy?

i had a hard time finding information about the guy that briefly taught me classical guitar, so i'm going to post this here.

it's from a glebe newspaper article from 1993. and, that is indeed his wife, cathy. i took lessons from early 2000 to about mid 2001.

a different rollins band than you were expecting, perhaps.

i spent forever trying to figure out how to clear the demos to reuse the memory, and you have to take it apart...

this is a good demo.

i used the pitch banks quite a bit, because i wanted a good harpsichord sound.

what he doesn't point out is that the layering on the drum triggers, while polyphonic, is limited by a number of things, including available memory. so, the demo songs sound great, but two or three tracks like that, and you've run out of memory.

i need to keep going with the gear replacement before i move on to the next thing. we'll split these into by-basement posts.

the thing i'm still missing from basement #1 is a medium sized bass amp that i can use for bass, keyboard or amp simulation. although, i do still have a 120 watt fender combo amp/cab that can be used for that purpose, so it's not much of a missing item. the problem is it's too loud, so i'm not going to get an "amped" sound from it unless i piss off the neighbours. it has an exaggerated bottom end, as well - it's a bass amp. a smaller keyboard amp would be far more useful to me, for recording - which is why i bought all these little amps. i'm pretty sure it was a kb60, but i'd actually rather take it down to 30ish. i'm very seriously looking at that little vox amp for this, although i wish they made it in lower wattage options than 50. 50 watts is pretty loud, and the point is to crank it most of the way.

i was also looking at a sennheiser e609 as a potential mic upgrade, but stopped short because the altec is probably pretty similar.

so, this is basement #2...

- the ry30 is an irreplacable item, in any reasonable sense, except with itself. there's really no hardware drum machine that does quite what it does, at much of any price point. but, when i had sold it, the truth is that i'd grown out of it because i started writing longer, more complicated sequences in an actual score writer...or found it easier to do repetitive, simple loops in basic software.

so, this is my ry30 record, which is an example (not comprehensive) of what i was able to do with the ry30:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/electronic-pieces-in-a-primitive-style

in order to write in that kind of detail, i had to slow the tempo down to the lowest possible speed and fill everything in in quadruple or higher time. this had the effect of limiting the complexity of the compositions that could be built on the device, as well. this is a deficit of the device's lack of memory, as an early 90s computer. you could buy expansion slots, but they weren't cheap, and it didn't really solve the problem. so, you could only do so much with the device, as a sequencer, due to the limitations of the technology.

that said, it was also one of the most advanced machines of the period, and the entire concept of a standalone drum machine disappeared with the move to computers for recording. so, while i may have outgrown it's limitations, it was also just about top of the line for a device of it's sort - there isn't really an upgrade path, besides moving to cubase.

the technical thing i used to replace the ry30 was a program called noteworthy composer which is a scorewriter, like sibelius or finale. i like the interface a lot better, as it's keyboard driven rather than mouse driven:

https://noteworthycomposer.com

while the ry30 had a primitive synthesizer built in, i no longer found it useful once i had access to a jx along with cool edit, and while no tool is ever truly obsolete, it wouldn't be my go to for sound generation,  if i had one, today. there's a million other ways to generate noise and hook it up to a sequencer, and there was nothing particularly unique about the device for that purpose - even if it was exceedingly useful to have the thing in house, so long as you had enough memory.

on the other hand, what you could do with noteworthy composer is anything you can do with written music. there are no limitations regarding bar lengths, time signatures, numbers of patterns, "polyphony" in drum types, song complexity or anything else - you're just writing into a score editor. in theory, you should be able to interface those midi parts with any kind of sampler, but in practice you end up limited to general midi, meaning you'll need another approach to integrate sound effects and sampling. to me, that's fine, as i found myself more drawn to wave editors (like audacity, although i still use an old version of cool edit) for that kind of sound generation.

this is an example of something i created in noteworthy composer (and using a soundcard emulator for playback) that i could have never created using the ry30 due to the intricacies in time signatures and the sheer number of "patterns":

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/electronic-drum-kit-mix

further, this is my noteworthy composer record, as ported to more contemporary vst software:

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

of course, i also have an electronic kit, and that's actually going to be what i'm focusing on using for most of what's left of period 3, at least, as these tracks were actually intended to be recorded with sarah on the drums. sarah used to play drums for her dad, and found it upsetting to have me dictating instructions to her, which is the only way i knew how to work, musically. i may be a little less controlling nowadays. but, she couldn't deal with me yelling at her to stay in fucking time...and i had to play my drum parts, myself.

but, a good way to look at the ry30 is as a device of medium complexity; it's not detailed enough for very carefully written parts (because it is ultimately a drum machine, meaning you have to build up patterns in blocks, however much detail it allows for), but it's far too developed a device for simple, repetitive loops. as such, i really did grow out of it, as i couldn't do with it what i needed from a device of it's sort, and it was just a lot easier to use a 909 emulator if i just wanted some simple beats.

so, the replacement for the ry30 is as follows:

- hammerhead + leaf + whatever other simple 808-style emulator is around for loops and simple beats and weird sounds, in a strictly sequenced manner

- fully written-out sections in noteworthy composer for actual drum parts  <---this is the real replacement/upgrade, namely moving to scored parts in midi rather than drum machine sequences in beats/bars/patterns

- i can use a scorewriter for midi sequencing (some of the earlier sequencer parts that sound like synths were actually created on a ry30)

- cool edit + various synthesizers for sampling and whatever other noise generation

while it's not exactly the same - and i'd jump at an emulator if i found one - i'm not really missing anything in no longer having the device, except the idiosyncrasies of the device itself, which can only be replaced by the device. i know of no other drum machine that can really replace the ry30, in the sense that i used it - which was in quite a lot more depth than your average user. but, i still outgrew it. that's ok - it was my first programming device, and we all outgrow our first devices, right?

that said, the one thing i don't have that the ry30 had is those velocity-sensitive pads, and i'm looking at a way to remedy that, even if i'm less convinced about the importance of it. i have velocity sensitive keyboards and velocity sensitive electronic drum heads, is there really any use in having velocity sensitive drum pads, especially for period 3? i can't say it's worth much to me, no. but, if i can get one of those mini akais for $20 or something, i'll do it.

as it is, the scorewriter is an upgrade to the sequencer in the ry30 by a long shot, and i've got a million software synths to generate sound with, and a million other ways to sequence it. i miss my ry30, for sure. but, i realize i have more important things to expend scare resources on.

you see those akai pads come up on kijiji relatively often and they don't sell, so i'll get one when i can get somebody to cut the price enough, just give me time.

so, here's the ry30:

and here's the upgrade to it, in any meaningful sense (although i am using a program called noteworthy composer, not finale):

you can then take the sequences once they're written, export them to midi and line them up in a daw (i use cubase) to make it easy to layer in sequenced sound effects, samples, etc.

- i also started using noteworthy composer as a sequencer around this time, and i still use it to write midi parts (and then export them to use with different playback engines)

- i don't use the windows 95 sound recorder anymore, but i still use cool edit as a wave editor

- i still have the portastudio 414 and do still use it from time to time as a buffer for things like bass parts. but, the replacement mixer is the alesis:

- i still have the jx-8p, but the keys haven't worked in a long time. i picked up a 61 key controller the other day, which will put it back in normal working order, in any functional sense. i've been using a 49 key dx100 for years, when i need to.

(post from july 19th inserted here:
 

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 still install goldwave regularly, although i haven't used it in years. it was more useful as a noise generator than cool edit, and it had a different selection of effects that i found were more pronounced. it's still there if i want it.

- i could never get sound raider to work in nt (xp on), but it's one of the things i'll want to try to install on the 90s pc. it's a unique program that has no direct parallel. but, i'm probably past it, as well.

- i recently replaced the wood flute my aunt gave me in 1998. i actually still have the old one, but it's splintered at the top. i may also get a plastic recorder. this is less about the sound and more about the breathing, which you can't really get out of midi, unless you have a breath controller, which is a lot more than a plastic recorder. if i ever find a million dollars on the ground, i'll definitely get a breath controller. for now, i'm happy with my line to midi interface, which is coming.

- hammerhead is a basic 909 emulator that still works in nt. it's one of the types of programs i found myself going to for simpler drum patterns when i needed something quick.

- i still have the three epiphones & the ms-2, too.

- coagula did still work the last time i tried it. i still install it, but i haven't used it for years. i always wanted to do more direct sampling with it, but it never really happened.

i'm dating this to around the point where i'll start the alter-reality:

i think this was from the first part of 1989. my dad didn't understand my existential ennui about the meaninglessness of winterlude and insisted i play in the snow, to little response from myself besides boredom. this is feigned reaction to a request for a smile. i remember that, and wish it wasn't from outside the bounds of the story. maybe i'll do a flashback.

this is a picture of me on a bicycle from the summer of 1989.

i had a number of stuffed animals and other doll-type toys that i personified for quite a few years. judging from my hair, i believe it's the same period as the other shots.

i'm surprised i don't have more shots like this, actually:

i'm dating this to the later months of 1989, before it got too cold.

so, i'm looking at some old pictures...

i knew that old black ibanez was the second electric guitar, but i couldn't remember what the first one was, other than that it was a hondo. it turns out it was a hondo telecaster copy - clearly, from the pictures. i was very young, but i think i always assumed it was some kind of strat. nope - most obvious telecaster, ever. 

so, when the hannah montana washburn mini telecaster arrives, it can be the replacement for the first tele, which was traded in for the ibanez.

there was also an unbranded acoustic guitar, which would have been traded for the tele, and would have ultimately been replaced by the epiphone, which i still have. it looks like it was probably 3/4 size, but i couldn't tell you that at the time.

so, that's two more guitars that needed replacements, and it's all already dealt with.

i can't think of anything else to take note of that young, except that i learned to play recorder at school in the 5th grade

i'm working on the next batch of replacements.

this is the best document for me to use to try to triangulate the things i was influenced by at that age, as the radio & television set were by far the biggest influences on me:

http://hitsofalldecades.com/chart_hits/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=2498

it's not the most exciting update, but it's a start. 

https://thejournalofj.blogspot.com/

....and, we've got the font updated, too:

so, here's the theme, if you want just the notepad without the goofy shit:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10tPlsE_lBPc9t_Bq8-m5J0K-35m5usws/view?usp=sharing

this should line up well, just keep in mind the following:

- you need to title every post. if you post something without a title, it will misalign.

- it will eventually go out of alignment if your post is too long - well over 100 lines.

- new posts will realign, so long as those posts have titles.

- you want to use normal breaklines and not the weird ones it defaults to nowadays. i use the following as a template:

<div style="text-align: left;"></div>

that simple line will default everything to normal line breaks, and let the formatting work correctly.

it's entirely functional, but it has some limitations that are probably hardcoded into the html, and may even reduce to floating point errors within the processor. computers aren't as good at math as people think...

so, i'm ready to get going, now.

ok, so that took far longer than intended, but i've got my template down:

https://thejournalofj.blogspot.com/

the mechanism is that i'm writing in a little book, and i find it somewhere and scan it. hence, the lines - and the trouble i'm taking to line the writing up.

here's the trick - i used a 12 line image because that's when it starts to overlap, but even that will only take me so far before i need to reset. it's like a calendar - you need a leap year every four years to make up for the measurement error. but, i posted many test posts to make sure that the cycle resets on a new post, so long as i post it with a title.

i'll have to keep an eye on it and make adjustment if necessary but i think this is sufficient.

i just want to finish the template, and then i'll upload it for anybody, as i think this is useful and am happy to share it.

this will run from 1989-1996, and is intended as a preface - these are childhood year notes, from before i did any recording. the alter-reality will run from 1996-2013 and occupies the actual writing phase. and, current reality runs from 2013-death and is the cleanup and finish phase.

i'm starting in 1989, though.

what of that was relevant to me?

not much. some rem. some u2. that gowan record. tears for fears. actually, i loved that klf record...

beatles, yes; genesis, floyd, crimson...not yet.

that also seems to be a somewhat sanitized version of the list. the next oldest version i have is from 2001, and it has a lot more stuff that i didn't include....things like bryan adams cassettes.

we'll do this next week.

this week is just going to be an introduction.

music cat was a cataloguing program written by bill van rooy, later briefly of download.

so, i found this from 1999 at the tripod site, which finally let me in...

the crosswinds site is still dead.

i think this is the earliest file i have.

Music Collection

---

1000 Homo DJ's	Supernaut	CD
54-40	Dear Dear	CS
	Smilin' Buddha Cabaret	CS
Alice In Chains	Facelift	CD
	Dirt	CS
	Jar Of Flies	CD
	Alice In Chains	CD
	Nothing Safe	CD
Autechre	Bass Cadet	CD
Barenaked Ladies	Gordon	CD
	Born On A Pirate Ship	CD
Borland	C++	CD
Brian Eno	Ambient 1/ Music For Airports	CD
Bush	Sixteen Stone	CS
	Razorblade Suitcase	CD
	Deconstructed	CD
Candlebox	Candlebox	CS
	Lucy	CS
Canon	Canon Creative	CD
cEvin Key	Music For Cats	CD
Chris Connelly	Phenobarb Bambalam	CD
Coil	Horse Rotorvator	CD
	Love's Secret Domain	CD
	The Snow	CD
	Bee Stings	CD
	Musick To Play In The Dark Volume 1	CD
	Songs Of The Week	2-CD
Collective Soul	Hints, allegations, and things left unsaid	CS
	Collective Soul	CS
	Disciplined Breakdown	CD
Coma Lodge	What Kind of mind do you have?	CD
Cop Shoot Cop	White Noise	CD
Cyberaktif	Temper	CD
David Bowie	Aladdin Sane	CD
	1. Outside	CD
	The Hearts Filthy Lesson	CD
	Earthling In The Ciity	CD
	I'm Afraid Of Americans	CD
	Earthling	CD
Dead Voices On Air	Hafted Maul	CD
	New Words Machine	CD
	Piss Frond	2-CD
Die Warzau	Big Electric Metal Bass Face	CD
	Engine	CD
DMSO: DRUGMURDERSEXORGY	Marezine Halloween	CD
	Phantom Freakshow	CD
Doubting Thomas	Father Don't Cry	CD
Download	Furnace	CD
	Microscopic	CD
	Sidewinder	CD
	III	CD
	The Eyes Of Stanley Pain	CD
Eco-Hed	S/t	CD
Econoline Crush	Purge	CD
	Affliction	CD
	The Devil You Know	CD
Einsturzende Neubauten	Tabula Rasa	CD
Eleven	S/T	CD
Filter	Erkenntnis Theorie	CD
	Short Bus	CS
	Short Bus	CD
	Title Of Record	CD
Firewater	The Ponzi Scheme 3 track promo	CD
Foetus	Thaw	CD
	Butterfly Potion	CD
	Boil	CD
	Null / Void	2-CD
Foofighters	Foofighters	CS
	Foofighters	CD
	Big Me	CD
	The Color And The Shape	CD
Frank Zappa	Apostrophe'/Overnight Sensation	CD
	Joe's Garage Acts 1-3	2-CD
Garbage	Garbage	CS
	20-May-98	2-CD
	Version 2.0	CD
	Version 1.0 Rarities	CD
Genesis	Trespass	CD
	Selling England By The Pound	CD
	The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway	2-CD
	Wind & Wuthering	CD
	A Trick Of The Tail	CD
	Invisible Touch	CD
God Lives Underwater	EP	CD
	Life In The So Called Space Age	CD
	Rearrange	CD
God Speed You Black Emperor!	F#A#oo	CD
	Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada	CD
Gowan	(You're A) Strange Animal	CS
Gravity Kills	Gravity Kills	CD
	Manipulated	CD
	Perversion	CD
Hater	Hater	CD
Hewlitt-Packard	Cd Writer Plus Software Package	3-CD
Hilt	Call The Ambulance Before I Hurt Myself	CD
	Get Stuck	CD
	Journey To The Centre Of The Bowl	CD
Hole	Live Through This	CS
I Mother Earth	Dig	CS
	Scenery And Fish	CD
	Blue Green Orange	CD
IBM	World Book Encyclopedia	2-CD
id Software	Doom II	CD
	Quake 1 + 2 + addons	CD
inri	inri	CD
	inrimake	CD
	inriched	CD
	warning	CD
Jane's Addiction	Nothing's Shocking	CD
Jesus H. Christ	H	CS
John Lennon	Shaved Fish	CD
Joy Division	Still	CD
Killing Joke	Changes - Spiral Tribe Mixes	CD
King Crimson	The Concise King Crimson	CD
	AAA Sampler	CD
KMFDM	UAIOE	CD
	Angst	CD
	Naive (Hell To Go)	CD
	Light	CD
	Brute	CD
	Nihil	CD
	Xtort	CD
	Adios	CD
KMFDM Vs. Pig	Sin Sex & Salvation	CD
Korn	Korn	CD
	Life is peachy	CS
	Follow The Leader	CD
Limblifter	Limblifter	CS
Live	Mental Jewelry	CS
	Throwing Copper	CS
	Secret Samadhi	CS
Ludwig Van Beethoven	Piano Concerto #2 ; Symphony #7	CD
Machine Gun Kelly	Boy In A Mansuit	CD
Machines Of Loving Grace	S/T	CD
Mad Season	Above	CS
Mark Lanegan	Whiskey For The Holy Ghost	CD
meathead	Dick Smoker Plus (w/ Cop Shoot Cop)	CD
Micronaut	S/t	CD
MicroProse	Civilization II	CD
Microsoft	VB4	CD
	VB5	CD
	VB5, Learning Edition	2-CD
	Mastering VB5	CD
	Learn VB5!	CD
	Encarta 97 Encyclopedia	2-CD
	Developer Network Library - Visual Studio 97	CD
	Windows 98	CD
Ministry	Twitch	CD
	12 Inch Singles	CD
	The Land Of Rape And Honey	CD
	The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste	CD
	In Case You didn't Feel Like Showing Up	CD
	KEIANHNH (Psalm 69)	CD
	Filth Pig	CD
	The Dark Side Of The Spoon	CD
Moby	Animal Rights	CD
	Honey	CD
	Play	CD
Mother Love Bone	Mother Love Bone	2-CD
Muslimgauze	Maroon	CD
Neil Young	Live Rust	CD
	Mirrorball	CD
Nine Inch Nails	Purest Feeling	CD
	Pretty Hate Machine	CD
	Down In It	CD
	Head Like A Hole (Opal)	CD
	By Bizarre Hands	CD
	Head Like A Hole	CD
	Sin	CD
	Fixed (American)	CD
	Demos And Remixes	CD
	Fixed	CS
	Broken	CD
	Broken Rarities	CD
	Crossed Nails	CD
	The Downward Spiral	CD
	Disturbed	CD
	Closer	2-CD
	March Of The Pigs	CD
	Further Down The Spiral	CD
	Further Down The Spiral V2.0	CD
	Children Of The Night	CD
	Blue Lies	CD
	Quake Soundtrack	CD
	The Perfect Drug	CD
	Closure	VHS
	The Perfect Drug (complete)	CD
	Videos (89-98)	CD
	Related Side Projects Vol. 1	CD
	The Fragile	2-CD
	Multimedia Disc	CD
	The Day The World Went Away	CD
Nirvana	Bleach	CD
	10/08/89	CD
	Bleach	CS
	Nevermind	CS
	Smells Like Teen Spirit	CD
	Lithium	CD
	Live In Minneapolis 10/14/91	CD
	082591 w/misc. covers	CD
	Nevermind	CD
	Incesticide	CD
	Incesticide	CS
	Heart Shaped Box	CD
	In Utero	CS
	Roma	CD
	Unplugged In New York	CS
	Rarities	CS
	Live From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah	CS
Nitzer Ebb	Showtime	CD
	Godhead	CD
	Ebbhead	CD
Option 30	Option 30	CD
Our Lady Peace	Naveed	CD
	Naveed	CS
	Clumsy	CS
	Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch	CD
Pearl Jam	011090	CD
	Ten	CS
	Vs.	CD
	Vitalogy	CD
	Merkinball	CD
	No Code	CS
	Yield	CD
Peter Gabriel	Self-Titled	CD
	Security	CD
	So	CD
	Passion	CD
	Us	CD
Phil Western	The Escapist	CD
Philip Glass	Koyaanisqatsi Soundtrack	CD
Pigface	Truth Will Out	CD
Pink Floyd	Animals	CD
	The Final Cut	CD
	A Momentary Lapse Of Reason	CD
Prick	Prick	CD
PTP	S/T	CD
Puff Daddy	Victory Remixes	CD
Radiohead	Pablo Honey	CS
	The Bends	CD
	OK Computer	CS
	Karma Police	CD
	Live From The 10 Spot	CD
Red Hot Chili Peppers	The Best Of The Red Hot Chili Peppers	CD
	One Hot Minute	CS
	Californication	CD
REM	Murmer	CS
	Green	CD
	Out Of Time	CS
	Automatic For The People	CD
	Automatic For The People	CS
	New Adventures in Hi-Fi	CS
	E-Bow The Letter (Colectors Edition)	CD
	Up	CD
	Daysleeper	CD
Revolting Cocks	Beers, Steers + Queers	CD
	Beers, Steers And Queers (Remixes)	CD
Ric Ocasek	Troublizing	CD
Rx	Beside Toxicology	CD
Scott Weiland	12 Bar Blues	CD
Shudder To Think	First Love, Last Rites	CD
Silverchair	Frogstomp	CS
Sister Machine Gun	Sins Of The Flesh	CD
	Burn	CD
	Metropolis	CD
	[R]evolution	CD
Skinny Puppy	Remission	CD
	Bites	CD
	Live In Horst 86	CD
	Fractal Zoom	CD
	Cleanse Fold And Manipulate	CD
	Addiction	CD
	VIVIsectVI	CD
	Testure	CD
	12 Inch Anthology	CD
	Rabies	CD
	Too Dark Park	CD
	Worlock	CD
	Tormentor	CD
	Ain't It Dead Yet?	CD
	Last Rights	CD
	Inquisition	CD
	Brap : Back And Forth Vol 3 + 4	2-CD
	The Process	CD
	Remix Dys Temper	CD
	Process Demos/Outtakes	CD
Skold	S/T	CD
Sonic Youth	Confusion Is Sex/Kill Your Idols	CD
	Sister	CD
	Goo	CD
	Dirty	CD
	Washing Machine	CD
	Muzikale Vergezichten	CD
	Perspectives Musicales syr #1	CD
	Silver Sessions (Jason Knuth)	CD
Soundgarden	Flower	CD
	Louder Than Love	CD
	Big Dumb Sex	CD
	Badmotorfinger / SOMMS	2-CD
	Badmotorfinger	CS
	Superunknown	CS
	Songs From The Superunknown	CD
	Down On The Upside	CS
	Live In Austin Texas	CD
Sponge	Rottong Pinata	CS
	Wax Ecstatic	CS
	New Pop Sunday	CD
Squarepusher	Music is Rotted One Note	CD
Stabbing Westward	Early Demoes	CD
	Ungod	CD
	Wither Blister Burn And Peel	CD
	Mailing List Compilation Video	VHS
	Darkest Days	CD
Stevie Ray Vaughn	Texas Flood	CD
	Couldn't Stand The Weather	CD
	Soul To Soul	CD
	In Step	CD
	The Sky Is Crying	CD
Stone Temple Pilots	Core	CS
	Purple	CS
Sunny Day Real Estate	Sunny Day Real Estate	CD
	Radio Sampler	CD
Swans	Omniscience	CD
	Omniscience	CS
Sweet 75	S/T	CD
Talkshow	Talkshow	CD
Tears For Fears	Songs From The Big Chair	CS
Temple Of The Dog	S/T	CD
The Beatles	The Beatles (AKA The White Album)	2-CD
The Innocent	Livin' In The Street	CD
The KLF	Doctorin' The Tardis	CD
	The White Room	CD
The Meat Puppets	Too High to Die	CS
	No Joke	CS
The Offspring	Ignition	CS
	The Year That Punk Broke	CD
	Smash	CS
	Ixnay On The Hombre	CS
	The Offspring	CS
The Presidents Of The United States Of America	The Presidents Of The United States Of America	CS
The Prodigy	The Fat Of The Land	CD
The Smashing Pumpkins	100588	CD
	89 Demo Tapes	CD
	160690	CD
	Lull	CD
	02/12/91	CD
	Gish	CD
	Tribute To Blue Oyster Cult	CD
	Peel Sessions	CD
	I Am One	CD
	Siamese Dream	CS
	Disarm	CD
	Cherub Rock	CD
	Mashed Potatoes ?	CD
	Today	CD
	Siamese Dream	CD
	Pisces Iscariot	CS
	Pisces Iscariot	CD
	Earphoria	CD
	Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness	CS
	Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness	2-CD
	Double Door	2-CD
	1995 Demo Tape	CD
	666	CD
	The World Is A Vampire	CD
	Sequence 4	CD
	Tonight, Tonight	CD
	Zero	CD
	1979 remixes (Holland import)	CD
	The Aeroplane Flies High (Condensed)	CD
	Mellow, Jolly And The Infinite Madness	CD
	1979	CD
	33	CD
	Bullet With Butterfly Wings	CD
	The End Is The Beginning Is The End (all mixes)	CD
	The End Is The Beginning Is The End Fluke Mixes (UK Promo)	CD
	Children Of Gotham	CD
	Perfect	CD
	Adore	CD
	05.19.98 Aula Magna; Lisbon, PT + misc	2-CD
	103198	CD
	Intimate And Interactive	CD
	Viper Room	CD
	Perfect EP	CD
	Ava Adore	CD
	041099	2-CD
	042399	CD
	Vinyl + 042399	CD
	live 2	CS
	live 3	CS
	live 1	CS
The Tea Party	S/T	CD
	Splendor Solis	CS
	The Edges Of Twilight	CD
	Alahambra	ECD
	Transmission	CD
	TRIPtych	CD
The Tear Garden	Tired Eyes Slowly Burning	CD
	To Be An Angel Blind, The Crippled Soul Divide	CD
The Who	Meaty, Beaty, Big And Bouncy	CD
	Who's Next	CD
	Quadrophenia	CD
Tool	Undertow	CD
	Aenima	CD
U2	War	CD
	Under A Blood Red Sky	CD
	The Joshua Tree	CS
	The Joshua Tree	CD
	Achtung Baby	CD
	Mysterious Ways	CD
	Zooropa	CS
	Zooropa	CD
	Pop	CD
	Please	CD
	The Best Of 1980-1990 & B-Sides	2-CD
US Robotics	56k Installation Disc	CD
Various	The Tyranny Of The Beat	CD
	In Defense Of Animals	CD
	Sweet Relief II: Gravity Of The Situation	CD
	Lost Highway Soundtrack	CD
	Escape From LA Soundtrack	CD
	Ransom	CD
	Spawn Soundtrack	CD
	Paradigm Shift	CD
	J	CD
	Regular Set-Up Files	CD
	Skinny Puppy Related Side Projects And Rarities	CD
	Foxtrot	CD
	Songs Of The Witchblade	CD
	Transistorized Spectra Sonic Sound	CS
	Hyms Of The Warlock : A Tribute To Skinny Puppy	CD
	Nothing Changes	CD
	Skinny Puppy Related Rarities And Side Projects Vol. 3	CD
	Videos1	CD
	Music Set Up Files	CD
	Cd Covers	CD
	Skinny Puppy Related Side Projects And Rarities Vol. 2	CD
	The Souls That Create	CD
	Stigmata	CD
	Music I'm Embarrassed To Listen To Vol 1	CD
Voivoid	The Lost Machine/Jack Luminous	CD
Westwood Studios	Command & Conquer	CD
White Zombie	Astro-Creep : 2000	CS
	Supersexy Swingin Sounds	CD
	Supersexy Swinging Sounds	CS
William S. Burroughs/Kurt Cobain	The 'Priest' They Called Him	CD
Wiseblood	PTTM	CD

 

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Automatically generated by MusicCat 
Last updated on 9/27/99 
by inri

ok, where was i?

it's saturday night (31st).

- i slept in until the afternoon today and haven't done anything

- yesterday was a short day that never got started. the one thing i did do was clean the fridge, a little more. or, try to, anyways.

- thursday, i got out to get some bloodwork, bought some books, got some clamps

- tuesday & wednesday were spent looking at the takeharu guitar

- monday, i went to get the mic stand, and got some books

- sunday was a kind of a down day

- saturday (24th) was a running around day, and i got the takeharu, the bottom of the vox (video coming...) and the mini xylophone

- most of last week (18th-23rd)) was spent sorting through kijiji, etc ads and also in researching gear

- 17th, these were uploaded, and i started working on a big post about the old gear i had and how to replace it.

- on the 16th, i uploaded a rough mix of the lost symphony to the trivial group lp as a placeholder, uploaded some rough xenophanes mixes, bought a microcasette, did some orange testing...

- on the 15th, i was looking at dna sequencing and spent a lot of time filing the recording machine

- on the 14th, i decided to get a pignose when i went in to get the mini vox (and didn't, yet)

- i got a mini vox and a mini orange to go with the mini ms-2

- on sunday morning / monday night (11/12th), i started adding gear to the alter-reality page, which included a ms-2 mini marshall amp and i started researching mini-amps for period 3 recording...

- friday the 9th was back to alter-reality, 

- the rest of the week was spent looking at blood tests, genetics, shopping online & cleaning./

- i got some more bloodwork on the 5th

- i stopped filling in the blog on monday morning (the 4th)

- the bookcase (required to access cds for reviews) came in on the 2nd

- on the 1st, i decided july would be extremely productive and continued transferring the facebook page to the new blog, which was my friday project

so.

let's update this first:

already purchased:

- 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

- micro cassette recorder 

- wood flute

- sennheiser replacement headphones

- marantz microphone

- 2 of 3 gig bags

- bottom of the vox combo

- soldering iron, solder & a pink pool thing for a sponge

- mini xylophone

- mic stand

- takeharu guitar (w/ case)

- no-name mini classical guitar (w/ case for epiphone electro-acoustic)

- a stack of old books

- ancestry dna test

- another stack of old books

- 3 c-clamps, wood glue & a sanding block

these items are in a weird limbo due to alipay not working correctly with paypal:

- xylophone sticks

- melodica

and this is what is coming:

- pignose (not now though, later) *

- midi guitar*

- 21 fret classical*

- 1 of 3 gig bags

- hannah montana guitar

- audio to midi converter (with extra cord)

i don't want to buy anything else until i can get some tickets to toronto for the orchiectomy.

and, because i think we're going back into lockdown, i need to take advantage of this time window as best i can. so, i need to call on tuesday and get this booked.

right this minute, i need to start my first post in the alter-reality and take it from there. then, i'm going to want to finish that gear replacement post. it's the end of the month, so i need to clean - although this is being bottlenecked by the fridge. and, i can get back to the blog clean-up, maybe, early in the week.

again, this is the intent:

- friday: alter-reality

- sat--->mon: period 3 recording

- tues--->thurs: liner note rebuild (and general writing workthrough)

the last diet update was on may 19th.

so, let's do this one thing at a time and hope i don't get any other major disruptions in what i'm doing.

but, i may have to ask him to take the fridge out of here - i've given it until tuesday to decide.

i'm not able to get out anywhere fun right now, so here's one of my new shirts:

so, i also picked up some c-clamps and a sanding block at home depot yesterday, and have some glue coming in the mail.

i grabbed a few more books as well, including some bradbury, which is relevant for the alter-reality.

is this going to work? i think it should.

i want to actually start writing this weekend. and, how am i going to do this? i wanted to started in 2019 and do it in real-time...

the real-time portion of the blog doesn't really get interesting until about 1993 or 1994, but i still wanted to be clicked into it by now.

if i do monthly entries every week, i can catch up by early 2022. i guess i got my first electric guitar around early 1992, so that's a reasonable catch up point.

and, these little asimov and bradbury tests can be read by an adult in an afternoon.

i needed to do the filing on the main computer before i got back to recording, and i'm actually pretty close.

and, if i can get back to the blogging process on monday, i guess i'm getting back to the diet, first.

i need to look over the last few weeks and refocus, but i think i stopped in mid-june.

but, should i do two c-clamps or one c-clamp with one of those guitar bridge things?

ok, so i've decided the neck on this guitar is very healthy. it's pointing at about a 30 degree angle downwards, which is surprising given the issues with the bridge. but, it might mean the truss was pulled all the way down. i suspect i'll have to adjust it, but that's ok - i just didn't want to have to reset it.

i'll need to get strings on, first.

regarding the bridge and how the guitar was/is made, somebody on one of the forums suggested i shine on a flashlight through the holes to determine what's in there, and the results are kind of inconclusive - the action holes look like solid top (although the wood grain is still moving in the wrong direction), whereas the string holes have clear layers (two for a reinforced bridge plate and two for the top, itself). on top of that, the age of the wood is visibly different.

so, it seems like somebody tried to reinforce the plate from the bottom and may have done some surgery to the top, although it's hard to tell. that means i want to avoid shaving it further, and rather want to continue with the reinforcement as best as possible.

i want this to be an acoustic guitar for recording, but i need to convince myself it can handle the tension, first. so, i'm going to start by stringing it with ball wound classical strings and see what happens. can i even hit that 21st fret? if it holds tune and plays well, i'll have to decide whether i want to keep it as a classical or move to the next higher tension, which is probably some heritage-designed steel string guitars that run a little less than 100 lb. and, if that's not good enough, i can look at silk & bronze, if i think it's workable.

so, i'm going to need the following:

- two c-clamps

- a small sanding block

- some title bond wood glue

- some ball end classical strings

unfortunately, i need a nap.

this is a landscape shot of the ottawa river, standing from the confederation alexandra bridge - gatineau is on the right and ottawa is on the left. it took me a minute to be sure about that, but i was able to cross reference it fairly well on google maps:

as she would have taken this picture in early 2004 (i have a set of doubles she gave me), it is probably a more appropriate front cover for the art show demo.

she used to climb that old rickety bridge like it was monkey bars, to try to get up to catch the view. it drove me nuts. that picture was probably taken climbed up the middle of the bridge a good ways...

this was taken in the lower mainland of bc, somewhere up the strip between osoyoos and penticton. i want to say penticton...

we were fighting over something (i don't remember what), and it started just pouring, so we had to stop and immediately seek shelter. we met working as employees in a coffee shop, so we had this kind of weird instinct to cooperate in strangely effective ways, and that just completely overpowered. when the downpour had subsided, this just absolutely vivid and surreal double rainbow popped into the atmosphere in front of us - and it was so close that it felt like you could reach out and touch it (although, of course, you could not). she's kind of a primitive, pagan irish girl at heart; that meant something to her that i can only analyze metaphorically, in terms of rebirths and new beginnings. 

the picture only captures the moment vaguely. if this was done right, it would be dripping with paint, like something out of what dreams may come, or perhaps pleasantville. but, it's a nice shot, nonetheless.

i wish i had something better and am going to ask her a second time...

i couldn't sleep this morning because it was so dry and dusty (and smoky) in here that my body just wouldn't let me go. i can't sleep in dry, dirty air like that - i need clean and most.

tonight, i need to determine what i'm doing with that neck...

but, i took the opportunity to sort through some period 3 era pictures when i woke up. that cover art with the statue of liberty is sort of neat, but it's not permanent. i sent sarah a text asking her to contribute, but she hasn't responded. she responds sometimes...and, it's always clear that she sees me as an ex-boyfriend, rather than as a friend. that wasn't always true, but you can only bring a horse to water.

anyways, i found a few shots for use with cover art.

i've tried to avoid posting pictures of sarah, but at this point it doesn't matter anymore, and i don't really know how to post this and manage to remove her from it - it seems impossible.

you probably wouldn't be able to recognize her today from 20 year old photos, and that's really been my main concern in not posting them.

so, this is a picture taken right before we left for bc. this was a total ambush - i had no idea it was coming. her intent (as explained by her), was to catch me hunched over and kiss me on the lips. so, the photo was intended to be of me leaned over the guitar, and her leaned over me; as she was kissing me, i was kissing my guitar. a love triangle, of sorts. it was a reflection of her insecurity around where my affections truly lay, as she frequently accused me of expressing and investing more passion and emotion into the guitar. why can't i play her like i play that guitar? well...she wouldn't stay in tune, to begin with....

but, i sat up when she embraced me (i had no idea what she was doing...) and sort of ruined the shot.

i think this is a good back cover for the acoustic project and am going to file it away for that purpose: