the time machine (dirty synth mix)

so, the update is now complete, i just have to finalize a tracklisting.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further remixed over july, 2014 and again in may, 2015. this version of the track was completed on may 27th, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/dirty-synth-mix

it's not. and i'm remembering that i went through this before many years ago. well, it is in theory, if i tuned the b up to an open c, but then i'd need jimi hendrix or michael jordan sized hands, and, as it is, i've met tween girls with bigger hands than mine. they're really freakishly small, it's sort of almost unbelievable, even. if lamarck was right, but alas...

so, i can't close this. but it could be years before i get that 21 fret guitar.

hey, listen - i can do sneaky, acrobatic things that hendrix' hands would get jumbled up in. it forces a specific style, but i can count as many times that it's been a benefit as i can that it's been a drawback. guitars aren't like pianos like that, there's too many angles going on.

the specific problem is that it's written in the third fret position, and there's consequently a lot of bass notes around there that need the hand to stay put - so they can ring. it's *already* kind of tricky, with pinkies stretching out to the 6th fret. if i tune the high e up to f#, i have to move essentially the whole melody up a string, because i need chords to ring through the high e and also to ring through hammer ons (meaning another solution would be to have six fingers). but, because the low g and f# are both prominent, that puts me in a situation where i need to fret from the 3rd (low e) to 10th (b) frets - which is not impossible in theory, it would just require hands much bigger than mine. it doesn't help to tune the a down to g or f#, because i have the same problem with the f# on the bottom string or the g on either of the two top strings - nor the e up, because it needs to ring quite a bit. a seventh string on either side would be another answer, but it's still not useful to me right now....

you know, i'm not sure why it didn't occur to me until right now to just tune the high e up a step. let me take a look at the score and see if that's playable.....

the time machine (updated midi nylon guitar mix)

here is the midi classical guitar mix, with a more listenable sample-based sound font.

i gotta be clear: i don't like doing this. i'm a guitarist. this is a computer. my teeth are grating a little.

but, the reason i moved the track from guitar to piano (and then abandoned it, until this year when i turned it into a jazzy techno thing) is that you need a 21-fret classical to play it. there's a live electric guitar mix - because electric guitars have 21 frets, minimum (mine are 23 and 24). but i just don't have a 21 fret classical. i can't even fudge the harmonic; all i have is a miniature 19-fret thing, and it just can't do it.

but here's the thing: maybe i should have a 21-fret or more classical. and i will, eventually. i'd even go so far as to suggest that, when i get done the discography, classical guitar music may be the only music i keep making. that means i can't permanently close this - in fact i can virtually guarantee that i will eventually add a live classical mix to the ep.

but, i won't remove this one, because it's a different slant on it. so, here it is...

this evening, i'm going to do a full drum and bass techno romp mix with crunchy synths in replace of guitars. as of this moment, i'm thinking it will probably finish this off, but i'll need o give it a good listen before i get to that conclusion. i'm also not entirely sure about the tracklisting yet...

written in early 2001. rendered may 27, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/updated-midi-nylon-guitar-mix

the time machine (updated midi piano mix)

when i initially uploaded this, i had the silly idea that it would be a bad idea to change the sound font, for the reason that it was important to maintain the sound of the piece as i had written it, for historical reasons. but...who wants to listen to a lonely sequenced piano through a budget 90s soundcard....

i've kept the initial files up, because, hey, why not? but, i've updated the font to sound considerably better.

the piano wasn't so bad to begin with - i've used the soundcard for plenty of piano parts, but it sounds a lot better near the higher end of the register, and with a little reverb. it's worth it on an a/b but it wasn't really terrible. i'm going to be updating the guitar part as well, which is going to be a much more noticeable update.

written in early 2001. rendered may 27, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/updated-midi-piano-mix

the time machine (atmospheric electric guitar mix)

written in early 2001. reinterpreted in july, 2014; this version of the track was initially completed on july 21st. remixed to include background atmospheres on may 27, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/atmospheric-electric-guitar-mix

the time machine (string orchestra mix)

inri025 is being overhauled, and almost doubled in length. that's fine, it's why i'm doing this run through.

when i did this last summer, i was thinking less comprehensively than i came to think over the course of the year. in truth, there's quite a few ideas to work out further, and a few that were kind of not the most interesting thing to begin with. this is going to be all digital; the tracks are down and done.

so, this is the second of what i'm thinking will be at least six additions to the single.

i kind of want to get all the "ep-singles" up over 40 minutes, as well. eps are usually conceptual, and subject to different requirements; singles are singles. but i consider the ep-single to be a sort of mini-record. that's what i grew up with - it's what i'd want, as a consumer. the releases are currently priced to sell (*ahem*...hint...), but if i get to a certain number of homemade sales i'd like to press some of them. what i press will depend on what sells - the magic number is 5000, which should pay for a pressing of any specific disc, if i get to that point. so, ensuring these are all "mini records" makes them a bit more worthwhile as possible physical items. i guess it's also worth pointing out that everything is designed for instant printing, should a label decide to pick me up on terms i'm willing to accept...

i don't want to just upload crap, though, either. what's coming is largely based around compilation ideas that actually work. i'm a little skeptical about a chamber works of synthesized string music, but we'll see what comes up.

it's often stated that a song is really good when it sounds good on just an acoustic guitar. i can't agree with that - but i've never been a fan of folk music, either, so it's partially an issue of defining what is "really good".

i think a better metric is "if it sounds good when arranged purely for strings". decide for yourself, i guess...but this isn't going to be the last one of these...

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further remixed over july, 2014 and may, 2015. this version of the track was completed on may 27th, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/string-orchestra-mix

the time machine (percussion & bass mix)

this is a "drum and bass" mix, with pitched percussion for the melodic parts.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further remixed over july, 2014 and may, 2015. this version of the track was completed on may 26th, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/percussion-bass-mix

i'm serious about these being final updates. inri025, inri036, inri037, inri039, inri042, inri046 and inri048 are being further examined.

i will post each record as it is "closed".

republishing stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (inri043)

i've been in the process of closing down my second artistic phase for longer than i'd like, but i'm really getting to the final points on it, which means taking one last run through everything and making final decisions on it. this is the fourth mix i've appended to this single over the last week, but it is now final. closed.

so, behold inri024, which is now a 90 minute 12-track "single" of reinterpretations of this track.

inri024 has been updated and permanently finalized.

===

this is one of the tracks that i can't date well. i do, however, remember working on it during the winter, which means it must have been late '00 or early '01. i'm going to consequently deduce that it must have been what i was working on over the 2000 christmas break and date it coming out right after it.

actually, i have another reason to date it in early '01 rather than late '00: the introductory piano part was recorded live into my notation program on my dx100, which i was given over christmas (maybe a little before; it was a cheap garage sale pickup) to act as a controller for my recently broken jx-8p, that i had tried to take apart over the summer to clean a sticky key (a common problem with mid-80s roland analog synths) but failed and left keyless. it's still keyless. yet, the dx still drives it....

that introductory piano part formed the basis of the track, which built itself up fairly quickly. somewhere, i lost the nwc file by saving it as midi, which ruined all the formatting. it's been sitting on my drive ever since.

why put together seven different midi versions of the same track, and sequence them after a polished recorded version? well, this was never actually meant to be computer music. i was just composing something the old fashioned way with the intent of later giving it to some musicians to play. that never happened. what did happen was that i found myself playing it back on multiple sound cards over many years, trying to make it sound as good as possible in the short run - until i could finally get the chance to sit down and actually record it. while each of the different renders has it's strong and weak points, i ultimately don't feel that they form a total order. something i thought about doing was recording tracks independently on different cards and then pasting them together, but that would have just created another dozen incomparable mixes. rather than arbitrarily pick one, i decided to just upload all of them.

in hindsight, i think the format is interesting in itself in terms of it being a psychological experiment with sound. the differences from track to track are sometimes inaudible and sometimes extremely noticeable. stringing it all together in a row like this is challenging to any listener in the sense that it rips apart the process of becoming familiar with a piece. it means listening to exactly the same song through multiple different sound libraries. i think your brain would have to interpret that as a sort of a trip, especially when it comes to trying to build associations in sound within tracks that are both similar and different sounding, soundcard wise. i think that might be part of the reason i had so much difficulty isolating tracks in the first place.

so, listening to the ep through all the way is likely to be a bit disorienting and might ultimately be a strange experience. however, if you like the track for what it is as a collection of overlapping sequences of notes then i hope you get something out of the process of comparing and contrasting the renders together.

i have included the original midi file as a bonus item in the download, if you want to play with it on your own. the added guitar sections in the final version are recent additions and have not been written out.

thematically, the track is meant to orchestrate a feeling of claustrophobia with society pushing down on you too hard. it's meant to transmit a feeling of existential dread. at the time, i really felt stuck with life in general and not sure how i was going to get out of it.

four further remixes were added at the end of may, 2015, which has forced me to move two of the midi renders to 'download only'.

written late 2000 & early 2001. the renders present here are all from after 2013. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may, 2014. initially released on june 7, 2014. four new orchestral mixes were added in late may, 2015. re-released & finalized on may 26, 2015. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - electric piano, programming, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals, vocoders, digital effects & treatments, digital wave editing, composition.

the rendered electronic orchestras variously include piano, bass, synth bass, distorted electric guitar, clean electric guitar, other guitar effects, steel string acoustic guitar, nylon string classical guitar, sitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, synthesizers, clarinet, flute, piccolo, xylophone, glockenspiel, woodblock, tubular bells, orchestra hit, jazz drum kit, hand drums, melodic toms, orchestral drum kit, hammered percussion, marimba, taiko drum, synthetic percussion and electronic drum kit.

released january 10, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides
 

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (slow string orchestra fade out)

so, as mentioned, i'm going through inri024-inri050 and posting final updates.

this has been added to inri024 as an absolute final update.

written late 2000 & early 2001. rearranged, rendered and faded out on apr 27, 2014. further remixed on may 26, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/slow-string-orchestra-fade-out

my sleeping schedule cycled back around. i couldn't imagine going back to a regular schedule. the last time i tried that (2006/2007), i ended up scheduling myself on 48 hour days - i'd wake up, go to work, go home, stay up all night, go to work, sleep. i did that for months. it was the only way i could get anything besides work done.

nowadays, i tend to live about 25-30 hour days, which means the time of day that i'm awake staggers forwards by a few hours every day. last week, i was doing overnights. this week, it looks like i'll be up during the day. next week i'll probably be waking up some time around noon. and the week after that, i'll be waking up when the sun comes down.

i need to mail a package when the post office opens, and make a few calls at a pay phone on the way back. but, i'll be back to work around ten.

i had put a number of ideas aside for future comps - i need to systematically approach this now, not later. at the least, the comp ideas are finalized, so i can approach this that way. i'll be mildly updating a number of releases after inri024 over the next day or two, until i get back to inri050.

some of the comp mixes have no real option but to be exclusive - they don't make sense on a single, or the single is pushing 80 minutes of mixes already (yeah, i know....but it's what happened...) or the addition is too minor to really justify the addition. but this needs to be comprehensive, because when i push forwards to the post-trip material, i have no intention of moving backwards.

i'm not going to get anything done today, but ive got a few hours while i'm waiting for a doctor's appointment, and i'm scolding myself for being lazy on the ambient works - i should have created a new mix for "fuck boxes", and knew i should have, in fact i almost did, but i didn't want to open the single or set up the files so i said "this is good enough"...

but it isn't. i mean, half the mix fits the right description, but there's nothing ambient about punk drumming and zeppelin riffs. i'm going to have fix that by taking some parts out, and also create a guitar mix for the atmospheres disc. there's really only one organ part, and no synths, so it's largely a guitar collage.

there's really no excuse for that on my behalf. the point of this is a comprehensive, final, complete revision. i will fix that error, take a closer examination at what's there one more time and promise not to cut corners in the future.

i've pretty much settled on combining the techy guitar tracks together into a "tetris", and waiting until the end of period 4 to release it as a 2xcd. i'm mostly done the sound collage - just a few more tracks. but it's going to be split into tracks for a normal cd release, and it's a little short of the 80 minute target. the guitar atmospherics disc is also seeming like it's coming up a little short, so this may actually get moved to a period 3 comp. i'm just a little hesitant that it may end up creating the problem of requiring two more discs - and i wouldn't really want to release a 4xcd of this nature, or release it in two doubles. tetris is something i've been wanting to do for years, and it works as a 2xcd. but a 2xcd of guitar snippets is overkill, and a 2xcd of guitar atmospheres is likewise pointless; this is only interesting when bundled together as an a/b side type thing.

i have a pile of real world things i need to do tomorrow and probably tuesday, and was hoping i could get this done first. i can't put it off, so if it's not done by the time i sleep, it's going to be until at least mid week before it is.

so, i've narrowed this down to one, maybe two more comps.

it seems like i'm going to have a guitar works up in three volumes, similarly to the ambient works - with a spliced together mix tape of shorts for the period one material and a 2xcd for the period 2, with one for "lead" parts and one for "atmospheric" parts.

i'm debating also putting together a drum and bass / electronic jazz disc, but i want to put together the guitar disc first to see if it overlaps.

i've had an idea for a while about a "tetris" idea, which is specifically meant to be techno guitar solos. this overlaps with the drum and bass idea. but, it also overlaps with period 3 and also period 4.

so, i'm contemplating these things. and then that is it - it will be on to period 3.

publishing orchestral works (inri072)

this is inri049 - an orchestral works compilation to close my second compositional period. these pieces are diverse, but the commonality is that they are arranged for the whole orchestra.

==

an unexpected result of the project to complete my discography, undertaken in late 2013, has been the construction of a handful of orchestral pieces, mostly as remixes of original tracks from the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj period. while these tracks were initially written out as scored pieces for expanded instrumentation, they were generally written around the guitar and the expanded instrumentation was largely meant simply for colour. the exception to this is the psilocybin symphony, which was written as a piano concerto from the start and previously completed in early 2006.

the ability to expand these pieces into orchestral works is the result of the advances in vst sampling technology that have occurred since 2003. while changes in instrumentation have been accompanied by extra writing (mostly on the guitar), tempo shifts and other general rearrangement choices, the existing technology makes it very easy to rearrange a rock song for an orchestra, by simply multiplying staves and changing the sound fonts.

the condition i've set for a piece to be "orchestral" is that it must utilize the entire orchestra: it must have percussion, piano, horns, woodwinds/reeds and strings. guitars are generally treated like "first violins", whereas violins are generally not considered to be more special than other similar string instruments. some of the tracks also have prominent choral sections. all of these pieces meet this condition, except the last one which does not have a woodwind/reed section.

my delve into scorewriting ended in 2003; the material in my third phase is more focused on live and manipulated guitars and synthesizers. i consequently feel that this is an interesting summary of my second period, taken from a specific angle that is otherwise largely relegated to single-only remixes.

initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015, except track 2 which was completed in early 2006. final compilation date is may 23, 2015. as always, please use headphones.

credits
j - controller inputs, drum & other programming, orchestral & other sequencing, live guitars, live bass, live synths, effects, sound design, digital wave editing, composition, production.

the various rendered electronic orchestras includes violin, viola, cello, contrabass, electric guitar, nylon guitar, guitar fret noise, bass guitar, synthesizer bass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, english horn, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, bamboo flute, flute, piccolo, synthesizers, mellotron, organ, piano, harp, koto, music box, clavinet, kalimba, xylophone, agogo, mallet, hammered percussion, woodblock, tubular bells, tinkle bells, glockenspiel, orchestra hit, melodic toms, electronic drum kit, timpani, orchestral drum kit and choir.

released april 29, 2003

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/orchestral-works-vol-1

reflections (orchestral mix)

written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed and re-rendered over may, 2015. this render was completed as an ambient mix on may 16, 2015 and expanded to include a horn section on may 23, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/reflections-orchestral-mix

done up to the trip

hey..

this has been a painfully slow process, but i'm finally done up to the bc trip. that's a lot of stuff. like, almost two days of music. now, i need to get to creating final versions of as many of the songs i wrote on the trip and right after it as i can remember...

"refractions" (inri046), "flying" (inri045) and "la la la la" (inri043) are singles of material from "reflections (inri050), which was the going away trip. there's some new remixes on 43 & 46 that you may enjoy, specifically.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/music

j

prematurely publishing orchestral works (inri072)

ok, so i've published this with the ambient mix of "reflections", but i'm in the process of adding some horn parts. these are minor additions that are doubling guitar and bass parts - you'd have to know the track fairly well to even notice. but it's conceptual in getting the comp together, and it *does* brighten up the sound a little.

i'm not expecting to add reed or woodwind parts to this, but i'll have to listen to it on repeat for a few hours to be convinced of that.

for right now, this is basically inri049. i'll post the final update when it's finished.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/orchestral-works-vol-1

inri024 has been updated again with two more mixes - the discussed orchestral mix, and a glitch sound collage that came out of the process. i believe this is the final update.

this process of compiling ideas at the end of period 2.2/2.3 will be the absolute final modification of the material up to inri050.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides