Vacation

First I would like to point out that after taking some time off I seem to have actually increased in my overall strength in a few areas.  I'm not sure if this is some side effect I can't explain, too much practice, or possibly I just can't remember where I used to be.  Regardless of what this means, I do need to work on taking time off in some sort of way.  I don't exactly know what this means, but that's what's going to happen.  I can tell because I start to get all panicy when I'm not getting enough things done.  I just know that this is a bad sign, so I am going to fix it.

Training Update

I think it's time for a training update.  I feel like I'm getting close to being physically able to record again.  This doesn't mean that I have recordings where I wasn't physically able to play my songs, but I know that there isn't really a point to simply record my songs again without a substantial improvement in my playing.  As I get physically stronger and more able to easily play my instrument, I can hear the quality of the song starting to improve.  The notes sound cleaner, the transitions are smoother, and I think, but I'm not sure, that my writing skills are even improving by themselves.  I'm not actually going to do any new recordings yet, but I can tell that I'm getting close.

New Book

Men don't spend their time thanking God for cars; they only curse when the carburetor is choked.

Aldous Huxley - Eyeless in Gaza pg. 2

Pacing Yourself

I'm not going to say that I'm doing too much, but I've been considering it.  It's taking me a lot longer than I expected to finish the books I've been reading.  Although technically I would be finishing three books at once, I'm in different places in all of them and they're all different lengths and I read them at random amounts (one I hardly read at all).  But it has been longer than I thought it would take.  I'm not trying to race through anything, but I have to make sure I don't lose interest either.  It's very difficult to pace yourself enough to make sure you stay interested and keep moving forward.

First Jam

My first jam session is not official "in the books".  I think that I did well for a first attempt.  Things definately did not go "well" overall.  My first take a forgot to hit the record button.  The second take I missed a few notes at the end.  But I like where things went.  I was able to play along with the beat without too much trouble.  I was even able to wrap things up around the end of the beat I had recorded.  I think that the overall flow was memorable and interesting.  I think that I did a few cool things that I will be able to reproduce later when I try to get rid of those missed notes.  I could probably add a bit more complexity later when I have a better track recorded, but no ideas yet.

Popular Music (observations)

It seems like about time to start talking about my observations from popular music so far.  I've noticed that there's a way that things fit together.  I'm not sure how to explain that part, but I'm sure that with enough practice timing starts to become something that naturally develops.  As for the mass appeal part, that's definitely still a bit mystery.  People just like you for some reason.  Probably has something to do with skill, but who knows.  I guess I would also call the most popular of the music I listened to as very "clean", "polished", or somehow shinier than something I would make.

Popular Music

Popular music is popular for a reason.  It has to be.  Obviously there are a lot of people that like it and that's what gives it the title.  But there are so many people competing for so few positions.  I say that in relative terms because some of the most popular music is extremely profitable and there are a lot of people that make a living in the music industry.  Yet somehow growing up, there were always groups that I could literally make fun of for not being talented.  Looking back at that phenomenon, there were hundreds of thousands of people that had to like what they did in order for me to ever hear their name.  So they must be doing something well.  All I need to do to be successful is to learn how other people do so well.

More Playlists

I finally went back and recreated my Winamp playlists.  Winamp is what I use to play all the music that I've ripped from CDs onto my computer.  It's kind of convenient to be able to say that, I guess to have a separation from things like local bands.  I didn't actually recreate anything from before since I have no idea what my previous playlists looked like.  I really just played some songs and recorded the order for a while.  But you tend to connect things a little when you know you're recording the order.  Anyway, I really just wanted to say that it's good to finally have some Winamp playlist representation again.  Things were feeling kinda empty and even if it's just a few random songs thrown together, it still gives my computer a bit more depth.

Coconut

"He said coconut cake every time because we never had been able to decide whether Ringo had ever tasted coconut cake or not." ... "Now and then I used to try and help him decide, get him to tell me how it tasted and what it looked like and sometimes he would almost decide to risk it before he would change his mind.  Because he said hat he would rather just maybe have tasted coconut cake without remembering it than to know for certain he had not; that if he were to describe the wrong kind of cake, he would never taste coconut cake as long as he lived."

William Faulkner - The Unvanquished (pg. 24-25)

Grooming Playlists

After spending quiet a while working on my Jamendo playlists, I've decided that the only thing that I can possibly do  with these is to judge them.  I guess at some point I might listen to the songs enough to mix them up and start making actual playlists.  But about all I can really see them being useful for right now is being judged.  Which artists are better than others.  Which particular songs are better than others.  I guess I wouldn't even go as far as to say better, just which ones do I like more.  I think this is going to be mostly a lot of work and not really that much fun.  Who knows though.

Local Music

I think it's time to acknowledge local music.  Jamendo is a great place to start for sort of comparing yourself to the music scene.  Obviously anyone can listen to the radio and hear what is most popular.  But the local music scene is where you might actually get hired to play a show.  For money.  Giving away music is great for getting your name out there and hoping to get a record deal or build a fan base.  But a short term goal for most musicians is going to be to actually play shows.  So, going to shows and getting the music from people that are actually being hired to play is a pretty good way to gauge what is currently out there.  Obviously what you get depends on where you go, what your location is, etc.

Pitch Pipe Practice

Pitch pipe practice is starting to pay off.  I can't tune an instrument by ear yet, but I'm closer than I was.  Seems like I've been doing this for quite a while without results (twice a day, usually), but I think I'm starting to improve.  I can not say this for sure since real progress will by measured by my ability to get the correct tuning without using my tuner.  I can start to hear the similarities.  I guess because I've been tuning twice a day, my instrument doesn't get out of tune very often, but I'm starting to notice little things.  I still try to make guesses when the strings are slightly flat or sharp.  I think I'm going to stop using my tuner at all for a while and see where things go.  I can always bring it back if I'm not doing well.

Balance

I'm not sure how I feel about taking time off.  It's something you have to do.  Everyone is going to get sick or busy or miss a day of practice somehow.  And everytime you do, your training starts to take a dip.  I have to be able to take time off, that's not something I can just ignore to stay in peak form.  I think I just need to say these things out loud so I can get over it.  I'm not going to actually stop playing for any period of time, but taking time off shouldn't throw me off either.

Done

It took a long time.  A very, very long time.  Longer than I can comfortably mention, but I have completed my task.  All of  my lost webcomic bookmarks have been successfully restored.  I think that's all I need to say about that.

More New Directions

I have been working on beats that I can jam over.  Right now I have one loop and a complex version.  I have been practicing and so far I am not talented enough to finish a recording.  The problem is that when you're actually jamming, the other bandmembers will gradually progress and change what they're playing.  The computer does not do this, so it's a big less forgiving.  Also, I seem to hesitate more than I thought I did when I was practicing without recording.  Hopefully I'll be able to record my first jam session soon.

Self Writing

I think that eventually I might need to count this blog as writing, but I'm still not sure.  I recently compiled the old format into a text document.  Single spaced, it's about 27 half pages, so somewhere around 30 pages double spaced.  The actual content is surprisingly more varied then one might expect and even borders on having a narrative.  It's not actually writing yet because I haven't edited (removing things like self reference and comments that interfere with storytelling).  I mention this because I still feel like I have a limited number of topics.  The news never ends, this blog could.

Format Change

Today is the start of my new blog.  I realized that my previous posts were too long and unsustainable.  So now I will be posting about a third of the material.  I will be continuing the extended version offline (which currently includes about a dozen unposted entries).  If you would like any offline updates, request them at:

wontzer@gmail.com

limits

There are hard limits on how much you can do.  Musically you can only play until your fingers start to wobble and the notes grind or mesh together.  You can only practice until your fingers bleed or giant calluses form that disfigure you or, worse of all, you get a wrist cramp.  I'll be talking about the worst of all possible situations, the wrist cramp.  Yeah really.  This is a warning.  One time, I laughed and kept playing.  Boom, couldn't play for a week.  Scary stuff.

So, you're probably thinking, fine, so what?  Sometimes you just go down and don't get back up?  That does not help me.  Well, glad you asked.  According to my research, sleep and lack of practice are the only things that can help you.  If at all possible, you should invest in protective material for your arm.  I didn't, but I figure it would probably work.  So, how do I know when I'm getting close?  Should be kinda obvious.  Short sessions help if you're not so aware.

The hardest part is going to be actually stopping.  I noticed that I started to get withdrawls by about day 2.  By day 4 or 5, I was willing to risk it.  But, I was able to decide that if I waited I'd have a better chance of it not happening again.  After that, you'll need to scale back your practice schedule because you will be weak.  This can not be helped, but with proper disipline you can get back to where you used to be and beyond hopefully since you were probably practicing too much in the first place with that intention.

levels

Meaningful changes are being made.  I have now waited the appropriate amount of time and I am able to make changes to my recordings.  I think that I just have to go through them enough times to be able to decide things.  I guess most importantly I figured out how to improve the quality of my equipment without having money to actually upgrade it.  Sure it's not even close to what you might hear on the radio, but I'm starting to get there.  The tracks are starting to sound cleaner.

For some reason after I've had a song recorded for a while, I start to notice things that I should have picked up on already.  Like, why did I make the percussion track so quiet you can't even hear it?  So I go back and adjust the levels a bit.  Maybe add some sound FX because I can.  That's how my work starts to slowly sound like an actual body of work.  Slight improvements to what I already have.

I like the way my new and enhanced stuff sounds.  It feels like I'm starting to get somewhere.  I'm not sure how they actually turned out because I have to wait a while before I can make any sort of meaningful analysis, but progress is good.

thoughts on book reviews

I'm just going to comment on why I'm not doing book reviews.  On the side for book reviews, while I am reading I will have something to blog about.  But, I think that if I don't blog every now and then it'll be ok.  I'll just have to figure out a way around it, or stop blogging. Whatever seems to work.

Book reviews are basically going to be a waste of my time.  I know they are not actually a waste of time.  I'm sure that you'd find I'm actually in strong support of book reviews.  But since I'm also a writer, I'm not sure that it would be helpful in the way that I want it to be.  Yeah, it's good practice.  But what am I writing about.  The plot?  I guess.  If I'm going to pick anything specific, I might as well do an actual piece of writing.  That would be something I would then blog about, the writing, but not posting the book review, turned into writing.

To be fair though, that's not even the real reason.  I'm not really going straight through just one book.  I'm kinda bouncing back and forth a bit trying to get very specific things out of the literature.  So, really I would have a very small amount of material to work with and if I do get any good ideas for writing from that material, I think I should do a more formal work with it.  That's my logic to this point.  You could also say that I'm avoiding the formality of a structured book review.  I think it would kinda go against the general flow of my writing here.  But, posting a book review is still always possible.  This is just why this post isn't a book review.

new reading material

I have decided that I have become lazy.  Yes, this is something I must say every so often.  I am no longer taking my work seriously enough.  Well, alright, I don't know if I'm going to call it work since I've never been paid to write.  I mean, I've written things at jobs before, but I don't think that's what I was hired for.  Also, I'm not sure I should be using the word seriously either since I didn't go to school for writing and don't actually schedule time to practice reading or writing or anything else that might even be remotely related to the subject.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I've picked out some new books that I'm going to be working with.  Yeah, that's right.  I wasn't really finished with the last ones.  But I was finished enough.  Good riddance I say.  I got from them what I wanted to get from them.  I think they're in a better place now.  Now I have some new stuff all picked out and ready to go.  I may or may not finish this new stuff.  I like my choices though.  My selections are going to round out where I am right now.

I need to get the thought of making a schedule out of my head right now.  The more that idea is considered the more I get the feeling that I might be obligated to start writing new material.  I'm just not there yet.  Yeah, I have some ideas, but they aren't even close.  Could be years away.  Maybe not years.  Could be though.  And no, this blog does not count as writing.  I also need to stop thinking about that.  I could string all the entries end to end and call it an anthology, but we'll all know it's just a blog.  Even with editing it's still just a weak biography at best.

writing practice

I think playlists are how I practice writing music.  I don't really have a lot of formal training, besides a few lessons in high school, and a few years of lessons in elementary school.  And being in bands.  But besides that, how else does one practice writing songs?  How do you know a good song from a bad song?  Well, I make a playlist and lable it, "good songs" and that pretty much ends that discussion.

The best thing about playlists is that unlike an actual song, you can pretty much go anywhere with them.  You don't have to stick with the same instruments or vocals.  Genres can be wildly different, or exactly the same.  Yeah, usually things make sense when you have a theme, or something that ties everything together.  But, "listen to this again" is still a theme.  And even if you don't even listen to it again, there was still a point where you listened to the song closely enough to give it a thumbs up.  Yeah, I enjoyed that.

Sometimes you can get fancy with playlists you've listened to a bunch of times.  But, that's not really a blog discussion.  I know some people have trouble with what they should or shouldn't say.  It's like, I have a blog, I'll just say anything I want.  But I've been trying to write this imagining that someone will read it eventually.  They might not, but at least it prevents me from doing things like talking about playlists too much.

allmusic

When I'm listening to new music, sometimes it largely feels like a conversation with myself.  So self, what do you think of this album?  Who would you compare this to?  How does the song's structure and lyrics hold up in the greater arc of all music ever released?  Some of these questions can be more difficult to answer than others.  When I'm listening to music I usually know a few things, 1. I found this somehow and 2. I would or wouldn't bother listening to it again.  After that, there's a lot of different ways you can go.  I guess what I'm getting at is, allmusic.com is awesome.

That's the direction I thought I was going with that.  I remember way back in high school when I first started going to their site, it was basically a competition between the online version of Rolling Stone magazine, them, and a few other random indepent-type sources.  Although, not to give allmusic too much credit since I don't think they have nearly the funding capabilities of Rolling Stone or the history.  But their site is better for what I use it for.

I think that this discussion is about editors.  I'm sure all the places that write reviews have just fine editors.  But Allmusic is a more complete source of editorial content.  They have chosen to focus on history of all music (as the name implies).  This allows them to do things like connect bands and influences.  To profile genres.  This place was actually like a music history course for me (in fact I actually did a school project by citing their research).  So, when I start feeling like I'm having a conversation with myself a bit too much, I can go to their site and sort of include them in my discussion.

pitch pipe

The first thing that I bought when I first started playing bass was a pitch pipe.  Well, after buying a bass and an amp, I bought a pitch pipe and a tuner.  I tried using the pitch pipe once, decided I wasn't very good at it and pretty much never used it again.  It's really loud.  And I can't quite match the sound to what I hear from my bass.  The tuner, you plug it in, play a string, and start tuning.  It even beeps when you're done.

Now I am learning how to use my long lost pitch pipe.  Why?  Because I want to be a serious musician.  I don't have to be professional, but I wouldn't object to it either.  This is one of the steps to get there.  I just know that.  It is not going to negatively affect my music career to be able to tune my instrument without a piece of machinery attached to it.  That is not going to be a negative.

How?  Every time I tune my bass I play the pitch pipe along with the tuner.  My theory is that eventually I'll just be able to tell when the bass is out of tune by just using the pitch pipe.  The tuner will visually tell me when I'm in tune and with enough practice I'll be able to hear when I'm out of tune.  I hope anyway.  I think that if I'm patient and I work hard enough, I'll be able to improve myself as a musician.

jamming

I thought of something that could be a really interesting idea.  To this point I have mostly been writing songs that are fairly structured and will typically challenge my ability as a musician.  This means that there may be key changes or the tempo will be physically difficult to reach or the notes are positioned in a way to be out of my typical comfort zone.  But since I've been recording, I have not tried the very obvious idea of slowing down my songs a bit.

You're probably thinking (I am at least), what part of this isn't supposed to be insulting?  Well, I have not tried this so I don't know how things are going to turn out.  Without too much difficulty I could record a simple loop.  That loop I could play back in my headphones and just record me improvising over it.  Variations in simple loops could be difficult eventually, but since I haven't recorded any, this could be an interesting starting point for some new music.

I don't plan to have any updates anytime soon because this is just an idea.  I'm not even sure how much I like the idea.  But improvising and recording it is something I haven't tried yet.  Could be worth spending a little bit of time trying.  Now I need to figure out how to just "create" simple loops to play over.

playlist day

Playlist day today!  So basically I just listen to songs for a while and add them to a list.  Yeah, it's that simple.  Then, you know, you start to skip over a song here or there.  Or there's a really good intro.  And of course there's always a theme.  Most of the time anyway.  Until you get one of those spots in the playlist where you kinda change the theme a bit, but even then there's still kind of a theme.

I think I know my music library pretty well.  I try to keep all of my cds on my computer so that I have an easily accessible library from Winamp (I also have different media players for different purposes.  VLC is internet radio, my stuff, and other local stuff).  I think that I know my collection pretty well by this point.  There's a few albums in there I don't know too well, but I mostly leave them out of playlists.  I'm not a madman afterall.

As far as I can tell I don't really have a purpose for any of this.  Usually when I make playlists I'll at least have a vague idea of what I'm doing.  Impress girl.  But I'm just kinda recording what I'm listening to I guess.  At some point if someone ever sees my computer it would be interesting for them.  I guess that's also assuming that I'd want to listen to these again.  I bet I would, if someone else really wanted to know about it.  It's not really the kind of thing I'd show off, but I already like all the music so I don't really have a reason to not explain things.

adjusting levels

Important choice review today.  I decided that one of the songs on my demo (I created a VLC playlist that has my top 5 songs.  Two bass songs, two computer songs, and one turntable mix song) had the percussion track (turntable) mixed way to quiet.  I turned up the mid, turned down the treble and bass to improve sound quality and rendered a new track.  So, originally I was trying to keep the percussion kinda quiet so that the bass would stand out more because the bass is the part that contains the most complex part of the song.  It's supposed to be the center of attention and I don't want it getting drowned out by way to loud percussion tracks.  But I noticed that on low volumes I was having trouble hearing it at all.  That's not really the point either.

I think that I made a good decision.  The track went from sounding like the turntable was a sound effect to an actual instrument.  I like when it sounds like an actual instrument, while still having the bass be the focus of the song.  Now I'm not sure if it's too loud, but I think I'm going in the right direction.  I also like the way it sounds with the mid turned up.  It's not quite a treble, but it's close.  It also sounds more significant without getting in the way of the bass stuff.

On an interesting side note, I discovered how to trim the areas where the sound starts to max.  When I lower the gain in the max sound areas, I can turn up the overall bass sound and get a louder recording.  It's still not quite what I'd like to hear, but It's close.  I might even go over a few of my other recordings and apply this technique and see if they start to sound a little more professional.  I'm actually surprised, I didn't think that listening to my recordings would start to make a difference this quickly, but I really like the changes so far.  My overall work is starting to head in the right direction.

community lurking

Today was going back over the Jamendo library and expanding my playlists.  Before doing this, I went through and listened to all the songs I'd already added to my playlists.  This actually took a lot longer than I expected.  My thought was, I'd go through and listen to all of the songs I have on my playlists before browsing for new music.  That way, I at least won't be saving any duplicates.  I don't actually have a reason not to do this because I've gotten quite a bit accomplished today.  And on the plus side, whenever I visit this site I'll have some fairly well-groomed playlists that I am fairly familiar with.

I'm not sure if it's actually possible to get to know the Jamendo community.  Almost seems absurd to think I could listen to any significant portion of their library.  But then I get in there and start browsing the song tags (which I keep noticing are suprisingly well done) and flipping through the pages, so who knows.  I still haven't gotten to that point where I'm like, ok, the quality is definately starting to drop right around here.  These people are just posting way too soon.  I'm sure that point is in there somewhere though.

Also, I'm not sure if I should say this out loud or not, but I'm not sure why I haven't recognized any of the artists on the site.  They claim to have 27,000 songs or something like that.  I haven't heard of any of this.  Not even by accident.  I feel like the odds should be better than that.  I don't know, whatever.

strength training

Now that I have a few songs written and recorded it's time for me to start practicing them more.  So far I've been listening to music in general, I think that helps after you do a bit of recording to kind of see where you stand in terms of quality.  Then I listened to what I have a few more times, which actually turned out pretty well for at least a few of the songs.  I think that the percussion tracks fit really well with the bass so far.  The computer stuff goes surprisingly well overall with what I have.

I think that to get to where I want to be with all of the tracks I'm going to have to do some strength training.  I noticed on a few of the songs my skill level isn't quite where I would have wanted it when I wrote the song.  The recordings are able to get across what I was trying to accomplish musically, but I know they can sound more fluid with some more work and another recording session.  So this means that I'll be doing some similar stuff in my practices, but with a focus on the new songs I wrote.  I will probably also try to practice more often, depending on if I can.

This part is one of the most frustrating because I like to write new stuff, but it's just going to sound sloppy if I leave things where they are right now.  I also haven't bothered to finish writing the other tracks because I'm not sure how much the songs are going to change when I can play them more easily.  It's really not going to be a significant amount of training to get to where I want to be, but I'll have to really focus and make sure that I'm physically where I want to be to have these recordings.

preparing to publish

Most of today was spent doing fairly unproductive things.  I did get around to making those PDF files which took a lot longer than I expected.  There are a few benifits to PDF files, but they are basically text that you can't edit.  Before creating them, I had to go through all the compiled text files I'd previously created and check to make sure all the formatting was exactly as I wanted.  This meant making changes to the spacing between poem titles, the text, and the margin by going through every page of all the books.  I also made some decent improvements to the location of the section and book titles.

In addition to that interesting work, I also rearranged the folder containing all the publishable materials.  Right now the actual files that I edit are still in their own area, but now I have a cool space with text, PDF, and a set of HTML files that were already on the computer.  All three folders contain exactly the same thing, but each has a slightly unique presentation.  I also have some extras in the folder holding this stuff.  A comic, a drawing I did, and a script that launches the HTML in order, so technically you could read all the books in the correct order by just clicking the file.

rhythm

I spent most of today working on writing and recording percussion tracks.  At the moment this includes turntable scratching and what I like to call "cowbell".  All of the "bass" oriented songs that I've recorded so far I have first written and recorded a bassline, then I listen to it and play along with some sort of rhythm.  I've found that this generally works if I can pay close enough attention to the bass to notice if I speed up or slow down.

First I recorded a turntable track for a song.  The turntable actually sounds a lot less awkward than you might think.  I haven't learned enough about percussion in general to give the tracks a lot of variety, so I try to just sort of go along with the bassline the best I can.  I was actually able to do what I thought was some interesting stuff with the bridge of this track.  I'll have to listen to what I have before I have any further comments.

The second track I tried to record more turntable, but it sounded too similar to what I had just done.  Some people might not notice since the bassline isn't even close, but I would know.  So, instead of wasting my time trying to record something that wasn't working, I recorded a "cowbell" track instead.  Basically, I mess with the EQ settings a bit and it sounds close to the bass drum.  I think this will give me a way to distance myself a bit and hopefully have more luck writing another turntable percussion track.

jamendo

Tonight I wasn't really feeling that creative.  I need to write a few parts to round out some of the songs I've been working on, but haven't been able to think of anything lately.  So, instead of just wasting my time not getting anything done, I spent some time listening to some new music.  Some stuff was new music, some stuff wasn't.

I spent a while listening to stuff on this site called Jamendo for the first time.  It's a free music site that was being advertised on the internet radio stations I'm been listening too. It's a surprisingly large site for an all free music place.  I didn't look into it too much, but I think that some stuff you can download some you have to have a subscription to download, or all of it you can download and some you can't use in other work without a subscription.  I'm not sure, but all of it was free to research and listen too.

I pretty much just clicked on most popular songs and went down the list listening to things that had tags I thought were interesting.  Electronic, metal, ambient, were mostly the ones that I was browsing through. The sort of genres I might be a part of eventually.  I know that there are so many artists out there that you can't really get a sense of everything that's going on, but even just browsing through stuff once in a while gives you a pretty good idea where people are at.  I know that's going to help me more than staying isolated.  It also gives you a chance to sorta change your mindset for a bit instead of just staying stuck.

internet radio

Today, I have decided that I shall be talking about internet radio.  For those of you out there rich enough to simply buy an XM radio and subscription, good for you.  But I do not have an XM subscription (which I have heard is quite nice).  Instead, I've been using the internet radio directory that is built into the VLC media player (I think winamp also has a good internet radio listing, but I've never looked).  Basically, there's just this list of thousands of radio stations.  You can do a keyword search or just browse through all the stations by hand.

A little while ago I spent a bit of time going through the stations and saving some of the interesting sounding ones into vaguely sorted lists.  For example, I have three metal stations that are slightly different in their song selection, but fairly similar.  I suggest saving a few more stations than you would think that you might need since I don't think that most of these have the funding that most larger radio stations have.  The commercials are about the frequency you'd expect from any radio station, about three for four songs then a commercial.

I've found that I get an unexpected amount of use out of radio on my computer.  While I'm reading or working with a music program are about the only times that I can't really listen to internet radio.  I think my favorite part is my ability to think of a genre of music that I like and put on that radio station.  The actual quality of the songs played varies between stations, but I think it's slightly better than what you'd find on cable radio stations or something like that.  I also find it more convenient.

internet archive

I'd just like to say that ebooks are not as good as actual books.  Yeah, I do a lot of things on my computer but reading books is usually not one of them.  The Internet Archive is one of my new favorite places.  The thing that I like the best about the internet archive is that most of the books that that host have a sponsor.  Even better than having a sponsor like, the guy down the street, they have sponsors like MSN and Google (although I think Google mostly links to it's own stuff).

I like almost everything that I've seen from the Internet Archive so far.  The books that I've downloaded are all in convenient PDF format.  I think that out of all possible formats, PDF most closely resembles an actual book, and for me, that's sort of the point.  I get to keep all of the PDF books that I've downloaded.  When I'm reading I keep a bookmarks file near the PDFs so that I can record what page I left off on and when I start reading again I just type the page number into the top and there I am.

There was even an incident where I was reading a book that had some missing pages and was handled quiet well.  I went to their forums, started a thread with my complaint, and I think in less than a day someone that worked at the site or helped there (I didn't ask) emailed me back with a suggestion.  I had already picked out a new copy and didn't listen to them, but it made me feel better as a customer to know that someone actually heard my complaint.  Even if they don't bother to fix the mistake, an actual person at least had to make that decision.

office work

Today I didn't get much exciting accomplished, but I did manage to get some things done that I needed to do.  I took the poetry I've been working on and compiled it into a text document that I will later convert into a PDF file.  All of the appropriate titles are in place and the sections have neat little pages of their own.  At the moment I have I guess a decent amount of writing, about one hundred and fifty pages or so, although that number's a bit misleading.  There are a lot of pages that just have a few lines, the end of a longer poem or a very short piece of writing.

I don't have a reason for making PDF files out of my writing but I think they're good to have around.  I can think about how what I am doing is going to look as a complete work.  Going through the overview I can see how all the pieces fit together.  If I were ever to think about publishing work or letting other people see it, that is what I would want them to have.  I already have a blog that I haven't made public yet, but it doesn't really focus as well on the writing as a complete work.  I posted in a way that they are in order, but blogs aren't really thought of in the same way as a PDF file.  And people aren't going to download a blog.  If you were trying to read all of the blog entries you'd have to keep track of your place which just isn't as easy as it is with a file on your computer.  I know when I read a blog, I tend to think of the posts as separate from each other even if they aren't.  I don't really think of a PDF file like that.  I feel good about what I was able to accomplish.

I'll probably just be doing some reading for a while.  I've done all the editing I want to do for a while and I haven't thought of any new material.  I need to decide whether I'm going to talk about reading or not.  I could do a discussion/book review kind of thing, but I don't know if that's what I really want to do here.  I probably will if I end up spending enough of my time reading.

decisions

So, those two tracks that I thought were too similar are not.  Completely different tempo when you listen to them next to each other.  When I acutally release something they aren't going to be anywhere near each other so it will be even less noticable.  The only reason I heard it was because I was listening for things like that.  I actually really like the variety of the two songs when I hear them played side-by-side.

Speaking of variation, I think that my bass tracks are starting to get too similar.  Alright, I kinda did this part on purpose, but I'm debating whether it's a good idea or not.  Originally I had one 10 minute long song, but that's just unnecessary (at least for where I'm at).  So, I split the song into two songs.  I really liked one of them and didn't like the other at all.  I rewrote the one I didn't like twice and ended up keeping all three versions (for now).  The original version is just a loop basically, no real chorus or bridge.  The first rewrite is the exact same thing, except the chorus is double time (with no other variation).  This actually sounds suprisingly good.  The second re-write is the loop backwards with a single chrous that is new.  I really like the transition from the chorus back to the verus, but it sounds a lot closer to the original version than I expected.  I kinda thought that playing the loop backwards would somehow make a difference, but it does not.  I'm going to wait on this for a while and hopefully it'll sound better like the computer stuff when I listen to it again later.  I will add in other tracks for variation.  I think that if I do it right I'll be albe to keep all of the tracks, but at the moment I don't have any ideas.

early recordings

I finally got some quality time in the studio today.  I was able to record a few tracks that I think turned out well.  My recording quality is still hindering my progress, but I think that I'm starting to work around that.  I should look into this, but when I was adjusting the levels, I noticed that I couldn't mix my track as loud as I would like.  I'm sort of a beginner to recording equipment, but I do know that if the input is too loud it'll start to peak and crack.  But I know that I can turn up the volume on my headphones and the track sounds good.  Why can't I do that in the recording program so I don't have to turn up my headphones so loud?

Yeah, I guess that's a homework assignment I'll have to get to at some point. Although, since I don't have any money for buying new equipment, I imagine the answer isn't going to be what I would want.  So, I'll probably just ignore that for now.  I also need to do more work with the measures within my tracks.  I haven't quite figured out the notation in the program, so I just kinda do whatever sounds decent.  But I know that if I figure out the math, it can work more like sheet music.

And lastly, I should mention that while going through my catalogue of music, I found that some songs were more similar than I would like.  I don't need or even want to have my music just all over the place.  You have to have a theme or style of some sort to keep people's interest and not alienate fans that only like some stuff.  But I can't stand when I do something really obvious and don't notice it when I'm writing. Like, the songs were different enough to say fine, I could get away with that, but I just didn't like how similar they were.  I mean, I didn't do that on purpose.  I don't wanna just make mistakes and pretend like I meant to.  Yet, now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like I have to listen to the songs more closely to make sure that's actually a bad thing.

practice

More practice needed.  I think that for now I'm going to settle for posting my soundcloud account.  This is where I posted some very basic stuff that I did, but it also proves that I'm actually competent with an instrument (loop1 more so than loop2).  These songs are just ten second clips that were smoothed over to avoid that annoying popping sound that loops sometimes make when done poorly, then repeated to the length of a song.  I do not plan to ever use either of these songs, but for now they will be a sort of demo.

I don't think that I'm going to officially post any finished songs yet.  I like where I'm at.  I don't like how my songs sound when I think about selling them.  Listening to the radio and other music I've purchased, I probably wouldn't buy most of my stuff.  I might in the right situation.  I think I either need to wait for the right situation, or simply practice more.  Since I don't have an enormous fan base demanding the release of new material, I can do things like that.

Maybe for a while I'll just write about listening to music.  Sounds kinda awkward though.  Except that's what I'm going to be doing, and that is the point of this blog.  Today I spent listening to my own music.  More on that tomorrow!

blogging

I think I'm blogging too much, but I can't tell.  Kind of a stupid question to ask since I'm still able to post every day, but it's only been a few days so far.  I wonder if I'm going to have enough things to think about months from now when I have close to a hundred posts.  That's a lot of thoughts about things.  I know I can't just think of new stuff to write every time.  I guess I could start thinking about shorter posts, possibly more summary oriented stuff.  But wasn' that what I was already doing?

Maybe I just won't bother to notice if my opinions overlap or confilct with each other.  I mean, I'm a person, I have lots of thoughts all the time.  According to reasonable logic, I probably won't keep writing the same thing anyway, without even trying.  I mean, I guess if I stop practicing and/or creating new material then that would be more likely.  "Oh, you should have seen that song I wrote 5 years ago."  But why would I keep writing this blog, wouldn't that be depressing?

Well, I guess now that just means I'm thinking too much.  Oh no, more problems!  How strange things are.  But I still managed to accomplish something today.  I guess at some point I might even accomplish actual things, but things seem to be going pretty good for now.  I gotta make sure I actually like this whole blogging thing before just running all willy-nilly into the advertising space. Oh yeah, and I need a following to sell things to.  Also that.

accomplishements

Today was about getting things accomplished.  I put some effort into creating unreleased material.  The new album can go in one of two directions.  I can either continue my current pattern, or I can try creating things that are maybe less compatible, but more oriented towards using all of what I have to offer.  I think that this idea will be important for how I write music in the future.  Although, maybe not.  Sometimes I just write things because I think of them.

So, you'd think not a lot was accomplished during a day of mostly thought work.  Although I think I went in a decent direction with my computer work.  I was trying to create something that was a little more consistent, yet had some possibly more complex layers.  Even when you do not have that many layers, it is important to consider your ability to comprehend how they all interact.  As you gain the ability to view more pieces of the whole, the parts begin to fit together better.

As part of my overall album work, I think that I am where I'd like to be right now.  Releasing what I have is starting to look like a better idea.  I do have more important decisions to make, regarding things like the actual work that I'm accomplishing.  I will have to decide what direction I will be going.  I also want to make a decision about how much time I'm going to spend going over the smaller details of some of the sound work/layers in the current releases.  Some stuff I'd like to change, but I like spending time on new material.

bandcamp

Today I needed to think about what to do with my bandcamp account.  I could release what I have now, but I know that some of the songs are going to change.  I know that I would like to have much better recording equipment at some point.  If possible the recording quality of many of my songs is going to change.  I know I also have a few ideas for changes to some of my songs, but that's not going to be much.  Yet I do have enough material to be released.

There's a chance this won't be a big deal because I feel that enough of the songs are decent that people will like them if they're going to ever like them at all.  But since I don't have an official following, I'm not sure how I feel about selling material that I know is going to change.  I could offer upgrades on request(the sort of thing where if i mention in my blog that something has changed, I could send them the new version), but that could easily get out of hand.  I don't know how to offer a free album to just one person online, and I doubt I'd want to manually send everyone a new copy.  I could though.

Releasing an album is also going to mean that new material will be written for a different album.  It's a big decision to finish working on any album.  I might even need more unreleased material so I have some idea where I'm going next.  I can't really take myself too seriously, but I don't want to seem unprofessional either.  I think I'll have the most difficulty finding people that will keep buying my albums if I don't give them the impression that I'm creating a serious release.

I think that finding an audience for this blog might need to be considered in the more imediate future.  I can create entries for this blog very quickly, so this will be the most interesting going forward.

paperwork

Today, along with most of the rest of this week has been filling out forms and doing other financial related tasks that one usually does not wish to do.  But, like everything else that is healthy for a person, sometimes one has to do these things.  If I don't create a blog with ads then how am I going to create a source of income?  Also, how the hell do I promote my bandcamp?  Sure, there's always facebook.  But, I could just ask most of them for money personally.  Marketing sucks and is stupid.

Fine, doing the album cover art and giving the albums a name was kinda thought provoking.  Kinda.  I won't be writing any new songs from the album cover art though.  And the name kinda puts me in a hole, I mean, now I gotta figure out where I go next.  Like, the name sticks around, so now I have a name history.  And I'll eventually need to make more album cover art.  It's just not what I do, I'm sure someone reading this will find this complaining insulting because sure, some people enjoy doing that stuff.  I do not.

And what are my options for promotion anyway?  Spam chat rooms and forums?  I'd get banned the second or third time easily.  And if that worked, everyone reading this would then do that.  I better just personally like every single person that views my page.  I guess I could always hand out flyers at the supermakert.  I hear that's what some people do.  Imagine if everyone did that.  I'd start getting my groceries delivered.

intro

I started playing the trumpet in the 4th grade.  I had my first piece of writing published in 5th grade(it was a homework assignment that the teacher published without asking me).  I started playing bass senior year of high school in a band that I knew.   Some of my musical influences include: Primus, Slipknot and Radiohead.  Some of my favorite writers include: Ginsburg, T.S. Elliot and William Blake.

I have been recording songs with the instruments: bass, turntable, mixer/ipod, computer mixing, and cowbell(kinda).  For songs that focus on complex basslines, I use the turntable as high end percussion and cowbell for low end percussion.  For stuff that is focused on the turntable, I record a track that contains turntable scratching with ipod mixed in via the mixer.  This does not directly sample original work in any way since the mixer manually scrambles the ipod input.  After the track is recorded, I play it back and record a simple bassline over the turntable/ipod/mixer track.  The other stuff that I have is one long track recorded from different turntable sounds.  This track is sliced into tiny pieces, given a melody and sound effects (or beat if done for low end sounds) and put together with several other tracks done like this.

My writing is usually done from observation.  Some of the longer pieces are done as part of lager events.  Typically, the longer pieces will be written all at once, then edited down later.  Much of the editing is getting the diction to be more thoughtful.  The medium sized pieces and the more abstract smaller pieces are usually a mix of several smaller pieces.  These pieces will usually be collaged together in a sort of story form.  All the pieces are then ordered in the form of a book, and the books are ordered in a series.

Artwork is minimal at best, although I have spent time doing graphiti.  The videos should be my most performable material.  The current set was made into a four part series.