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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

listen, cia, we need to talk...

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

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

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

alright?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

right now, i need to eat.

re-publishing ambient works vol 0 (inri035)

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

==

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

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

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

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

so, here is the new inri017.

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

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

released december 31, 1999

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

so time consuming...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

damned hiccups.

i am not an amphibian.

or am i?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

so, i need to make that choice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

but it's just not making sense.

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

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

white lung tomorrow is a for sure.

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

www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jx8p.php

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

yamaha ry-30

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

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

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

www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/ry30.php

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

i'm not so vain...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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