May 27 2011 +

The Implication

The problem with hope is the implication is that life can change, improve, get better… useless half synonyms. The question of faith comes fairly quickly. You have to believe in a structure by which progress can be observed. observation. Most of my life has been observation rather than participation, anthropology necessitates a level of detachment I can’t quantify. Hope clouds observation, or so thought frank herbert. so how does one observe faith in a detached state. Evolutionarily I’m meant to believe its a survival mechanism designed, excuse me design implies intelligence, lets call it ‘developed’ (even cells develop themselves through some primitive form of collective conscious).

So as this faith structure develops it naturally draws evidence to itself like metal shavings to a rare earth magnet, slowly they build upon the exterior until the form is totally obscured the cold metal beneath covered by a hard, still dangerous, but somehow fuzzy looking facade. This facade gives the implication or a much larger formalized organism. In reality the core of the belief beneath naturally draws like to like. opposites attract, another cliche, functional as it may be it improperly describes the complexity of attraction.

On the sub atomic level elements have properties which we are meant to take at face value, as if they had not a love story of their own, their development is not considered a worthy topic for lovers, but if all attraction is chemical, and all love is a twisted, and not terribly effective defense mechanism than perhaps we should revisit the secret love life of minerals.

May 11 2011 +
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(Source: emeraldjuice)

May 11 2011 +
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Aug 08 2010 +

On Any Sunday

“Just when I think everything is wrong with the world I come out here and see people having fun on motorcycles and it makes me take a second look”

Steve McQueen / On Any Sunday

Feb 17 2010 +
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Having recently traveled to Europe to visit friends and check out some grad schools I thought my first trip out of the country was a worthy topic for some music.

Edinburgh was one of the more amazing places I have ever been and staying with my friend and former musical colleague was amazing. The night we got to Edinburgh we stayed up till 5am and due to a bit of jet lag and a lot of whiskey we slept in till 5pm the next day. Mr.Pitts took us out on the town and one of his friends related to our sleep-through-the-day ordeal, she said “I think Edinburgh was made for sleeping” so here is my little track featuring a sample of street sounds the morning evening we woke up.

I hope to make one of these for each town we visited. Hopefully I can follow through for once.

Aug 28 2009 +

Fancy

My wife is a pretty fancy lady and she’s turning 30 this year. Since we think thats kinda like being officially grown up we wanted to have a dressy cocktail party. Our idea of dressy is so loose however that we though some examples might help.fancy birthday party

Jun 09 2009 +
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Bois Sec – A musician who was the topic of a short documentary we watched recently… truly amazing. Mardis Gras in smaller rural towns seems so much more amazing that what we ususally see coming out of New Orleans. more in the flickr set.

Mar 01 2009 +

Audio Snap Shots

I debated wether or not to upload a photo with this post since the snapshots are supposed to be audio… but I did anyways. I love taking pictures and I have for as long as I can remember. More and more tho I am aware of how visually literate our culture is and how illiterate we are when it comes to sound. With that in mind I have started trying to take “snapshots” with my digital recorder more often. I want to see if in 20 years they describe events, places, people etc as well as photos do now.

It just so happens these first ones are musical, i’ll try to add more atmospheric/environmental ones later.

We just got back from salvation mountain and we got to meet leonard who built/builds it.

leonard, salvation mountain

He sang us a song he wrote in his “igloo” which you can find on that flickr set. I think the accoustics of this recording describe it nicely.

http://typenerd.com/goods/mp3/flower_tree_and_you.mp3

Later that evening my friends saw a small owl by the shore of the salton sea, and decided to play a song for it, the owl flew away when disturbed by the train that runs right by the camp ground.

http://typenerd.com/goods/mp3/owl_song.mp3

Feb 10 2009 +

Experiments with Nodal

Being interested in ambient music and electronic means of creating it I have always been fascinated with generative music. When I took my first ever computer music class as CSUSM in the 90s I was fascinate with a seemingly archaic application simply called “M”. It was so old the computer lab kept intentionally outdated macs around just to run the app which I believe was less than 1 megabyte in total size. It is credited and contended that M is the very first piece of midi software for the home computer, regardless it was amazing. Amazing that in its limitations he allowed the user to explore music visually and in very non linear terms.

The very wise music software company Cycling 74 (makers of max/msp another of my loves) purchased the application a few years back, mostly for posterity from what i can tell. Even visually its totally gorgeous.

cycling 74 M

So anyways… M had me hooked on computer music and i made things with it for a few years, none of which i liked (as always) and im sure its all in dead hard drive land forever, resting bleep blooping itself to sleep. However, as M rests in its own hyper advanced grave, I was alerted to the existence of “Nodal”.

Nodal is a self described generative music application. It uses well… NODES to trigger notes in linera time based on parameter and connections you draw with the crude and charming interface. Nodal is dead simple. I had it sending singles to Ableton Live and generating sounds in seconds, and furthermore I was digging into the more “advanced” features within an hour. That is all to say Nodal is AWESOMELY POWERFUL. Being a visual person with little musical training nodal allows me to experiment with one of the fundamental building blocks of music… time. Time signatures have always eluded me, on of my close friend in school said that I secretly “loved waltzes” cause all the music i made resembled the waltz in timing. I would have never known there was a comparison to be made had I not know more percussively inclined individuals.

With nodal I have begin exploring generating beats that change constantly but are always “on time” something I can’t achieve personally.

Here’s an example of a structure that is a simple 4/4 time beat where the notes accross the x axis increase in distance exponentially.

nodal exp 1

here’s how it sounds:

http://typenerd.com/goods/mp3/nodal/1.mp3

Its pretty plain, but its sorta cool how you get a flam effect in the instances when the notes double up on each other.

Here’s the same experiment modified slightly just for interest.

nodal exp 2

heres how it sounds:

http://typenerd.com/goods/mp3/nodal/1.mp3

Whoa broooo, sorta instant idm. Ok that’s an exaggeration, in fact I hate myself for even thinking that.

The other thing that Nodal let’s you do, which is the truely interesting thing, is it let’s you think about time in a strictly spacial capacity. The above examples show you visually what 4/4 looks like. But what if “time” didn’t have to travel on the grid in perfect units of 1? What if it could take the shortest distance between A and B.

Here’s a standard 4/4 piece.

nodal exp 3

here’s what it sounds like:

http://typenerd.com/goods/mp3/nodal/3.mp3

Now heres the very same structure only I changed all the connections to be “direct” meaning they don’t follow musical timing laws… aka: DIAGONALS BITCHES!

nodal exp 4

here it be!

http://typenerd.com/goods/mp3/nodal/4.mp3

If everything up till now sounded samey to you then this probably sounds like a toddler banging on a cardboard box… well maybe a robotic todler. This is really interesting to me because it begs the question is the only thing that makes computer music inhuman sounding to some people the fact that it does exactly what we tell it to? We taught the computer how to make music OUR way, what if it doesnt give a shit about time (excuse the anthropomorphization), what if WE have made computers sound shitty not the other way around.

All this is to say I’m interested to see what weird poly rhythms I can come up with using nodal, and how I could potentially work them into a live situation, and what they can teach me about being spontaneous and intuitive with time.

More to come folks.

Jan 25 2009 +

Favorites of 2008

Tobacco – Fucked Up Friends
Side project of the super amazing Black Moth Super Rainbow. Critics mentions that it is very “hip-hop influenced”… so what isn’t these days.

Mr.Chop – Sounds from the Cave
Some people cring at the word “jammy” and for good reason, typically it just means we don’t practice and we don’t care. I relate to that attitude but i abhor most of the music it produces. Mr.Chop however, jams but is tight and talented. This record is special but its definitely fun.

Padded Cell – Night Must Fall
hrm… listen to it see if you like it. i think its pretty good.

Siriusmo – All the Girls
I hate the word funky, and so should you. Sirusmo takes a stab at redeeming a word which frankly think saying in public should be considered might be a hate crime.

Ersen – Ersen
Tis is kinda cheating, Ersen was a turkish psych band in the 70s which recently had this compilation put out by finders keepers. It the first recordings that have ever made it to the US so in a way its a new release.

Clark – Turning Dragon
Clark is one of my favorite musicians around. His music is as diverse as it is textured and interesting. This record is remarkably dancy compared to prior releases. i think thats a good thing. (not much on last.fm from this guy so i just linked to his general profile)

Black Devil Disco Club – Eight Oh Eight
From Last.fm

The full name “Black Devil Disco Club” is used for Bernard Fevre’s releases after 2004. The first record “Black Devil Disco Club” was originally released on “Out Records” in 1978 as Black Devil. Originally released in 1978, Black Devil’s “Disco Club” is an extremely rare disco masterpiece, an epic journey into the deepest electronic disco.


… i have heard a rumor that this is actually the secret side project of Luke Vibert. This paranoid theory comes from the intense sophistication of the sequencing and effects in this recording. People seem to feel this couldn’t have been done without the aid of MIDI (which slightly postdates the alleged release date of his first record). I dunno tho’ Daniel Wang was doing it in the 80s why not this guy?

Abe Vigoda – Skeleton
Probably my favorite of the year, super upbeat music with a frenetic and hyper sound. Multiple guitars swelling over each other in raw waves of joyous sound. Pretty great folks.

High Places – High Places
This supposedly improved recording is remarkably sophisticated and complex, the ladies that comprise High Places refer to this record as “dub”. I have no idea where they got that idea but it is worth many many listens.

Tape – Luminarium
Unbelievably rich soundscapes of quiet and droney instrumentation mixed with mild electronics. It has enough structure to keep you awake tho so don’t be shy if you don’t typically like “ambient” music. (link above is from and older album, last.fm is missing luminarium)

Xela – Il Boca al Lupo
DRONEZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz (again last.fm is missing the new album so far)

Chris Schlarb Quintet / Nathaniel Frank and the Wisconsin Magic – Comma Split CD
So this was technically a 2009 release but I got it early cause i had the pleasure of doing the cover art. Both sides are really good but really different. Schlarb’s quintet is super talented free jazz that I can’t get enough of and the Nathaniel et al side is something of a noisy syncopated power trio. Sounds terrible by my description but its really not, really. (once again last.fm has failed me… i may need to find a better source of references).

Well that’s it for 2008 i’ll post anything else i think of in an adendum at the bottom. Hope you enjoy some of these recordings. Happy New Year.

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