the buses in detroit end ridiculously early. 9, 10 o'clock. yeah - absurd. i'm still mad that i can't take my bike under the tunnel, but it's been a non-issue so far because everything i've been to has been within walking distance from the tunnel. i was thinking about going to hamtramck tonight but it doesn't seem like i'm going to be able to get home until the morning - even if the show is over before 11:00. the show would have to actually end before 10:00 to catch the bus back...

it's not far, either - it's a twenty minute bus ride. the buses just end at 9 or 10.

i know, it's detroit - everybody has a car. says the 85 year-old. that hasn't been true in decades. it probably has more to do with public safety, but it's hardly safer to walk an hour and a half back to the tunnel.

they're building a light rail up woodward and i think this might help a bit. but i'm very seriously considering getting a bike and just parking it in the parking garage at the border.

there's advertisements all over the buses in ottawa - take the bus if you're out drinking. they even have free bus service on certain days where people are expected to drink a lot.

with a bus schedule that ends that early, i'd expect that detroit would have a pretty high dui rate.

i will probably purposefully strand myself in detroit over night at least once in the upcoming year, but the show tonight isn't worth stranding myself for.

yup. curve is still going, to my amazement. i was sure it was cooked...

i'm going to be driven to keep pushing over the month, but what i said in the post a few days ago is still absolutely true.

existence (soundblaster mix)

written in the fall of 2001. rendered, remastered and remixed in late september and early october, 2014. this render is from october 1, 2014

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/soundblaster-mix-6


http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/existence


(bandcamp is being weird with me with the upload. they're identical. the single version is working; hopefully, the thru version will be up shortly.

that was actually the time consuming part. the next five vst mixes should be rapidly constructed. there will be one for voice, one arranged the way i had arranged it, one for stings, one that is a combination of those three and one that is sped up a little.)

i somehow lost my original render of this, which was spliced from two soundcards and put through some pre-amps, so it's not exactly as it was back in 2001, when i initially constructed it. it captures the idea, though.

there's a longer write up on the page.

this is the last midi-oriented piece in the archives for a little while - about six months.

15,000 views

the curve hasn't updated yet, but it's beat. significantly. enough that i plowed through something else, too - 15K hits.

ok, so i got the soundcard mix done, i think. i ended up sending the eight separate mixes out through cubase into one, so it's a bit thicker than i remembered, but that was what i was trying to do in layering them, anyways. i want a fresh set of ears to hear it, so i'm going to wait until the morning, but that will likely be up shortly after i awake.

it's probably going to be the only published soundblaster mix, due to time restraints. the other 4 full choir mixes will be vst-based, and then i'll post a sped up version, as well.

took off for a few hours to see cloud nothings in detroit

i caught cloud nothings in detroit tonight....

i'm actually not going to write much of a review. i've been listening to their newest record quite a lot this year, so i was very familiar with the material; it was nicely loud, harmonically dissonant, ironically obnoxious and just a little bit catchy, and that's what you're looking for with this. did i mention it was loud?

they closed with wasted days, which was the most obvious thing possible, but a nice head cave, nonetheless.

obviously, the stage was a little smaller...

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/09/30.html

...and, out of nowhere, i get a spike in the last two days of september.

i think i might have hit it after all. nice surprise after a pretty good cloud nothings show.

i'll find out in the afternoon.

it's going to be very close if i didn't.

wow; i was getting all kinds of noise from all kinds of places. yes, the sound font is noisy. i'm almost wondering if it's meant to emulate a mellotron, because it sounds like tape noise. but it's not at all the real core of the problem

i was actually getting a steady, but inaudible, hum coming from the cd player. muting everything except the midi out cleared up a ton of it - and, again, i do explicitly recall always doing that, back in the day. not something i've had to do recently. you don't really notice it in general, but it was badly exaggerating the hiss under certain high notes...

the eq on the card was weird, too; just turning it down a little cut a bit of the edge off.

so, i'm rerendering yet again. all of it. this is going to be the last render, though - it's silly to be neurotic about the midi mix, when it's the vst mix that is the final version.

what i really need to do is just get the 8 renders into cubase, and play with the eq from there, rather than try and remember what i did in cool edit 14 years ago....

i don't remember when i deleted the old render. i think it was like '08, and by accident. don't do that...

caulking gun

hi.

i got a third coat in today, then ran out of caulk. it *looks* like it could use another coat, but, putting my hand up against it, i no longer feel a draft. so i'm content to leave it like that, but the truth is that i don't really know if it's enough. i'll check again tonight when the temperature comes down a bit, but it really seems tight. clearly, the gap was pretty deep to need three coats and still look like it needs more. but i think you can take your caulking gun back when you want.

j

actually, now i'm remembering that i sent it through a hiss reduction. it's funny how the memory is reactivated, just how much is in there seemingly dormant and waiting to jump out and scare you...

and, now i remember why i converted the choir to orchestra - the choir patch was hopelessly noisy.

i'm trying to render each line separately in cubase to see if the noise disappears. that's going to take about an hour and a half..

i was on track to beat august most of september, but it's dipped the last few days and it's now very unlikely that i'm going to get there. it'll be off by about 100 hits.

i therefore don't care about the curve any more....

it's actually probably for the best. i think i was wasting too much time trolling to beat the curve, with little concrete return. i simply wasn't generating much of an audience out of it. just empty metrics.

i'm not going to stop trolling altogether, but the recent trolls i've been posting on viral videos are going to stop. the audience is too broad for the music i'm making, so it's just a waste of time.

in a broader scheme, i guess i have a bit of an internet addiction, and that's how it's been working itself out. it's worked itself out in a lot of ways for a long time - usenet, mailing lists, forums, facebook, now youtube....i jump...i should really stop just for that reason. i get lost in it and it eats away time i should be spending doing something else. i pried myself away from facebook about a year ago by deleting almost everybody, and a few months later i'm basically glued to youtube wasting my time the same way...

so, yes: the internet addiction has been restricting my progress in completing these pieces. i'm aware of it. i have been the whole time, but i was rationalizing it with the curve. i'm increasing views! it's productive! but the curve is gone. i've gained some perspective on it. i'm going to show more restraint..

i think the key for now is just avoiding the "youtube trends" page altogether and retreating back to the habits i had a few months ago, which weren't destructive.

so, i'm going to have to expect a bit of a dip for october. but the reality is that getting less hits from better traffic sources is better than getting more hits from weaker traffic sources.

the other thing is i've started smoking again. some people connect smoking to coffee. i connect it to internet debates. post a reply, go for a smoke, check for replies, repeat. i need to stop that, too.

so, i'm rebooting yet again - no youtube trolling, no smoking, more focus on the tunes. hopefully this one sticks....

there's a lot of addiction in my family, but i really don't have any problems with alcohol or drugs - although i should clarify that i haven't done any serious drugs for the precise reason that there's addiction in my family. i've turned down every opportunity i've had to try cocaine because i *know* it's going to get me. the idea of staying up for days at a time is something i'd get very attached to, so attached i'd be dead within a year. i'll just drink two pots of coffee a day instead, thanks.

the only thing that's ever really gotten me hard is the internet. i'm not in denial when i say i don't have much of a problem quitting smoking (i do it all the time...for weeks...but then go back to it...), but more of a problem in *wanting* to quit smoking.

with the internet, it's really more the classic problem of wanting to spend less time ranting and having difficulty controlling myself with it.

75,000 hits

ok, i think i got it...

i had to remap the default midi mapper out to the soundblaster because the m-audio card just sounded weird - it's accenting different notes and stuff. most of what i've been dumping has been through the soundblaster's wavetable directly, so this wasn't necessary before. i do remember that i had the file playing through the windows out. so i've now got the raw components as i remember hearing them back in '01, it's just a process of cutting them up and mixing them a bit.

i think i may have actually had this through the soundblaster's pre-amp, as well. i'm not sure where to find that software, or if it's even compatible with xp. i would have been running 16-bit 98 or me up until about 2004, when i finally upgraded to install matlab. i'm still running xp on this box...

i wouldn't remember the patch, anyways.

so, i don't think i can get this as close as the others. i think i've got it as close as it's going to get for the morning...

i'd actually kind of like to get that "environmental audio" reinstalled. i think i ended up uninstalling it because it was eating too many resources and pissing me off, but it's not going to be a problem on this machine. i've lost the disc, and this is so old and who knows if it's compatible with the image...

i have lots of other pre-amps. but these ones were actually very heavy, and very clear. in general i'd rather do processing on a clean signal on the way in, and if i really want to use that kind of dsp i have lots of options in the mixer, but it's still kind of silly to not have the option, when it's sitting there.

there was a soundfont app in there, too, which i think i only used once.

next reinstall, i'll experiment with it. somebody remind me...

in the end, with this, *you* don't know what it sounded like 14 years ago, and i need to remember that. i want to get it as close as i can, but it's not like anybody's going to call me on it, either.

i've been aware for a while that people seem to be subscribing to the wrong feed. putting a like up on this page or subscribing to me on youtube indicates you're interested in the music - and i've certainly had a few people interested in the music, but not nearly that many, from what i can tell. my channel is an artist channel. if you want to follow my comments, you should be following me on google+, because that's where they get sent from.

so, what i think is happening is that people are liking my comments and subscribing to my artist feed, then interacting with the "wrong" content.

the reason it can be a tad offsetting for me is that it builds up false expectations. i'd like to think that uploading a video with 200 subscribers might mean at least 50 will watch it. but that number seems to be more like 10. i'm getting far more hits from random surfing...

so, i said i don't "get it". i do "get it". i perhaps should have said "i don't see the use of this subscribers thing, but...".

from my perspective, i'd probably argue they should consolidate the feed so that "subscribing" to deathtokoalas is a one-click operation that sends both comments and uploads to the feed. the user should then have the option to subscribe to comments, uploads or both - and i should get the metrics, so i can measure how much interest is tied into what.

as it is right now, i don't really have a clear understanding of how many of the 200 people are interested in reading my comments, are interested in listening to my music or are just subbing out of a sense of solidarity.

i do realize that it's weighted very heavily towards the comments, though, and that the result in most cases is just a dead feed, creating a dead sub.

it's especially confusing, considering that i comment on a lot of social issues. i'm not really that close to either, but i'm closer to deadmau5 than la dispute; most of my stuff is instrumental, so deadmau5 is a better comparison just on that basis alone. there's some possibility that a deadmau5 fan may get something in the feed and dig it. but, there's really little reason to think that the subs that come out of solidarity for a feminist statement or a geo-political analysis or an anarchist rant are going to translate into any kind of interest in the music - that solidarity could be coming from the world's biggest folk fan, or a hip-hop purist, or an older person that listens exclusively to "classical" music. having that all mixed up into a confused user base that doesn't seem to know what they want to subscribe to just creates a number that doesn't really have much meaning, in the context of what i'm creating and what i'm doing to promote it.

unexpected early crash.

i'm hitting a sort of neo riot grrl thing in windsor tonight and need to put a third coat of caulking on my window, but i'm hoping i can get at least one thing uploaded by the afternoon.

i spent most of the day yesterday rendering through different cards. i have a rough memory of rendering the file twice through separate outs and then pasting it together near the end. i've been trying to jog my memory in reconstructing that with mild success...

as this track is very long (14 minutes), i'm going to have to be careful in restricting what i upload until the listing is final. the single may end up being non-comprehensive due to time restraints. i'm currently thinking of the following.

1)  raw midi choir
2)  raw midi arranged
3) 1 + 2 merged
4) 3 sped up
5) vst choir
6) vst arranged
7) vst strings
8) 4 + 5 + 6
9) 8 sped up

currently, (8) is the most likely candidate for final version.

roach update - good news

hi.

i just want to give an update on the roach situation because it's the end of the summer and proper communication on the subject is a lease obligation on my behalf.

i guess it would have been  the end of may or the beginning of june that i blocked the holes up and did a significant amount of spraying around areas that i thought they might be considering nesting. as mentioned, i didn't ever get the impression the nest was in the apartment, but that they were coming through holes in the wall from somewhere else. the concern was to stop them from nesting. i have not seen an adult roach in the apartment since the beginning of june, so this has been mostly successful.

i think what i did eliminated everything except any possible egg populations, which i couldn't get at (there may have been some deep under the sink) and which the spray would not be effective against. so, the concern was that they would repopulate as they hatch,

however, that doesn't seem to have happened. i've seen a handful of baby roaches in odd places that probably were hatched in the apartment, but they've mostly been found dead.

i also noticed a spike in the centipede population after i sprayed, but this is probably a function of them coming out looking for food. when you see a lot of centipedes, it means you probably have roaches near by; certainly, there is a source of insects for them to eat. that also indicates that the roach population was dwindling or gone. note that the centipedes will also eat the egg sacs. based on what i can observe, it seems like they may have gotten almost all of them.

the next thing i noticed was that the spiders started disappearing. i'd rather have a few spiders near the windows than flies floating around, so i prefer not to kill them, but the centipedes must have been eating the spiders. now i've got more flies than i'd like, but hopefully the spiders come back...

the centipedes then mostly disappeared altogether, indicating the food source had been exhausted.

it's still too early to declare them gone. i think they must be around somewhere, not too far from here, but they don't seem to be present in the apartment right now.

we'll find out in the next few weeks if they have another entry point, as the temperature begins to fall and they seek refuge indoors for the winter.

j

got an interesting question today.

"would you turn on ads if one of your videos went viral?"

i would, but i'd have to be sure of it and it would be temporary.

am i being a fool? am i getting ripped off? given that i have a little less than 15,000 views, if i had ads on i'd have generated around $15 since december, 2013 - and i'd have to give half to the government. for that amount, it's not worth alienating possible listeners. as i've stated before: the video *is* an ad. the product is at bandcamp. youtube is an advertising portal to try and generate bandcamp traffic. it's worked about as well as i could hope it might, but hasn't generated any actual income. you have to be realistic in this market - an independent, abstract artist that manages to sell even one album in this climate of entitlement to free downloads is extremely lucky. that's reality. there's some talent involved in herding the horses, but it's just bullshit luck underlying any decision to or not to drink.

so, i slap an ad for some movie or something on the video that is itself an ad, and i'm just redirecting traffic away from bandcamp. that's a far worse proposal than the $7.50 i might have in my pocket right now could justify offsetting for.

if i ever see anything start to pick up at over a few hundred hits a day then the whole calculus changes and i have to be rational about accepting revenue. but that's not realistic, given the nature of the music. there's really little reason to think i'm ever going to be in a position where generating ad revenue from youtube becomes more attractive to me than directing traffic to bandcamp and consequently little reason to think there'll ever be ads on anything.

but, would i, if it made sense? sure. there's no principle underlying the decision other than rejecting putting somebody else's ad on my ad.

and, i mean, i used a movie as an example. even worse would be google using it's algorithms to place another music video in front of mine that is specifically tailored to the individual's tastes. that is just about the *worst* thing i could possibly do.

it's like, "great, i've got your attention. now, listen to this other person's music instead.". derp?

i really only need to sell a handful of records to make up that $15 in "lost" revenue. it hasn't happened yet, but i think it's better to place my hopes in that than to think i'm ever going to generate anything worthwhile from ads.