What an interesting dream: Axe in Dorm Room Sexy Time

I just woke up.. .and can still remember my dream… and.. I thought it was interesting and strange enough to share.

I’m in bed with my girl friend.. We are having what you might call “low key sexy time” as.. this scene is taking place in a college dormatory and I have a roommate and my roommate hasn’t woken up yet… It has the feel to me of… well it’s nothing like the dorms I lived in in college… but it does remind me of the feeling of art school I had.. when I was in high school and taking a summer program at the school.. and it reminds me a little of when I was hanging out in a graduate program at the school… going to an art gallery that was attached to a dorm.. but mostly it just reminds me of certain feelings… that are kinda hard to describe.

Anyway… so my roommate leaves…. . and then this guy comes in.. with an Axe.. and is like threatening us… I tell him about 3-5 times to leave or put down the axe or whatever… and he doesn’t… so I get out of bed and I take the axe away from him.

You have to understand that it’s a little like you’re about to get in a fight with someone carrying an axe… right? And in the dream I feel no fear about it, have total confidence in my ability to take it away from him.. and then once I’ve taken it away from him I wield it as if I were some kinda axe Ninja.

Well I shouldn’t say that… but you know how.. a cowboy gun fighter might be really great at twirling his 6 shooters around, and getting in a gun fight has fucking nothing to do with your ability to twirl a 6 shooter around? It’s a for show kinda thing.. It’s maybe a thing to psych the other gun fighter out?

Yeah.. well that’s what my axe twirling was about.. I know how to twirl around a Samari sword in that sorta fashion… and this was enough to get the guy to leave….  and my girl friend.. somehow missed the splender of what just happened.

After this I was regaling people with the story of it.. feeling all… Like,… I don’t know.. like I expected people to be sorta like “what the fuck?” and then kinda blown away that I took the axe away? I mean in reality if you told this kinda story to someone.. it would be a WTF moment… and it would seem sorta heroically bad ass of you..

But in the dream it seemed like it was a little bit about ego.. or if not ego a feeling like maybe I wasn’t appreciated… that I was more bad ass then people realized… and I was trying to use this as a moment to sorta show it…. and yet, in the dream, for me.. it was sorta not a big deal.. but it’s the sorta thing that a witness would think was a big deal?

Like for me as a kid getting in fight…. well as a kid getting into a fight it’s a little bit like getting on stage.. and whatever happens in that fight is a little magnified.. or that was my experience of it… and sometimes what other kids would think would be scary or whatever… not so much for you… or for me.. who got in fights all the fucking time.

Like… there was this time… this kid from my karatee class.. whom I was sorta fooling around with.. spit in my face….  and then this other kid was was like “I would have crushed him” and so I go over to him again.. he does it… and I… do that kick from the Karate Kid movie…. the double kick.. into his face.. and he falls down.. and I think I must have kicked him again.. and i just walked away.. like not a big fucking deal…

And I mean what the Fuck.. he was #1 being a dick and #2 was in my karatee class.. #3 was a higher belt then me that i thought was bullshit…

Anyway some friend of his comes up to me and gives me this thing about “why don’t you pick on someone your own size” and I look at him and I’m like…. “you really think your size means shit to me?” Or that’s what I’m thinking… He apparently thought I was the bully in this insident… and thought I would somehow be intimidated by him when in reality I didn’t give a shit.

I don’t know that this illustrates my point….

Anyway… so I was telling the story in the dorm… and eventually I saw the person who had had the axe… and it looked like he was looking for his axe.. so I went back in my room to procuer it.. and to threaten him away with it….

When I got the axe at this point.. I noticed it was sorta malformed… that it was not a very good axe at all…

I suppose I woke up sometime after this.

Now….

I also have this insecurity in the dream like “was this guy with the axe really threatening me?” Like I do tell him to stop, to put it away, to whatever… and I tell in my reteling of the story, in my dream, to sorta push forward the notion that I wasn’t over reacting in taking the axe away from him.

Now look.. you’re in the bedroom, with a girl.. a guy walks in with an axe… how is that not fucking threatening? So I’m not sure why I should have been insecure at this point.

I almost wonder.. in reflection upon the dream… if it wasn’t sorta like.. I’m the master.. and the kid with the axe is sorta… not… like he’s no threat to anyone but he’s trying to seem like he could be a threat.. maybe he just wants to be taken seriously.. and I’m a dick for taking his axe away…

It’s also as if his axe was a kind of mental illness… or some kinda psychological thing.. and I knew what it was and was able to deal with it no big deal… but that…. to have left such a person without a weapon.. might have in someway been immoral.

And the other thing… that seems worth mentioning.. is that axe wielder was black. I say this might be worth mentioning because in the dream I didn’t want to mention the part about him being black, as I retold the story to folks in the dorm.. it was as if the issue of race was somehow playing into dream… or like I didn’t want to be accused of racism….

As I think of it now… though in the dream “he was black” what I remember of his face seems more kinda hispanic?  But like “americanized”… culturally… not first generation or anything like that…

Anyway.. yeah.. interesting dream

Guitar Rig Research: Preamble to a Rig I may never put together.. for a record I’ve been working on for a while now

God only fucking knows what my means look like… but.. I have these two gift certificates from two birthdays.. and I want to put a little more money in.. and get a new stomp box for my guitar.. and there’s a somewhat obvious choice I think I’m going to go for if I can get the money together… BUT.. I’ve been looking at any number of other effects peddles and it’s gotten me thinking about my Rig again.. a subject I haven’t visited for eons cause… well its been eons since I thought I might have any means of adding much of anything to it.

On the Subject of the Guitar Rig and it’s Uses

I feel.. to invest in the sorta guitar rig I’m thinking of investing in… which is to say more then just this one peddle.. or whatever… but a substantial amount of stuff… I kinda need to be serious about being “a professional guitar player” which seems like madness to me… I mean.. how would I ever make a living at this point in life, from this? But.. still the dream, I guess.. tugs and me.. and why the hell not, right?

So let me tell you a bit about the rig…

What it’s about is a kind of sonic pallet, you might say.. or a sonic range.. that I would have in my hands… as I play… it’s about the places I could go.. that I could write songs that could go to all these different places… that’s what it’s all about… and right now.. i don’t really have too many places I can get to without resorting to SIMs…

I suppose I could break it up into 3 categories

1. Balls to the wall metal / hard rock
2. “Timeless rusted nails”.. it’s more of a classic rock.. maybe electric blues… a kind of tonality that would see timeless.. effects and sounds of yester year.. all be it employed in a very different sorta way… It’s about a kind fire breathing dragon thing… maybe it’s a little hard to explain?
3. Ambient and experimental… This is a lot of tape delay type effects.. and just wierd shit… stuff that’s soncially off the walls… almost if you reimanged a guitar as a modular synthesizer in someway…

Over all.. if I were to put myself in any musical genera… as a guitarist.. it would be hard rock / metal… It’s just that there are these other sounds I’m interested in that… broaden things… and its sorta like… if you want to make the heaviness really pop… you need to contrast it with something else… and it’s kinda about that…. and thinking about what that something else could be.

Anyway.. .I should perhaps share you videos of some of the stuff I’ve been looking at

The obvious Stomp box for me: The Boss Rolland Space Echo:

The Real space echo is bar none by favorite effect EVER… The actual units can be had for $1000.. and I really really really want a couple of those… but you can’t exactly gig with those… and I don’t exactly have the money for that kinda thing at this point in my life.. and if I did have it.. it probably wouldn’t go to the space echos…

Also.. what is really cool about this is it’s a totally stereo effect.. which means its good for all kinds of things other then guitar… that is software synthesizers and what not.. real real synthesizer should I get a budget for that going.

So this is what I think I’ll get now.

EHX Pitch Fork

I don’t really know that I want this… err I mean I do want this.. I just don’t know what’s the right pitch effect for me of this category… I do want an octava peddle.. and I think this will do it.. and that along with some of its other features.. and it’s reasonable price, and its polyphonic nature.. make it really compelling to me. I THINK that Digitech’s stuff allows you to make it as if your guitar had an entirely other turning.. like say for slide guitar.. and wow, wouldn’t that be nice…

I won’t go into any of the alternatives to this… but what I do keep thinking is what if there was a way you could take an expression peddle and have it going into multiple effects at the same time… where… ether one or the other effects are on at the same time.. so you’re only controlling one or the other… OR… you have this similtanious control of different stomp boxes and thus different parts of a sound…. that really got me excited.. that thought right there….

Red Panda Particle Effect

This is a.. are you ready for this?… “grain delay.” This kinda maddness you normally only find in the world of electronic music…. and I just think it has some incredible textural possibilities……

Clearly this is a bit more into the… experimental camp of sonic places to visit.

EHX Super Pulsar

I had really become obsessed with the idea of tremolo effect…. it’s under the “timeless” category.. but at the same time… you can do creative things with it that are new…. and when I saw this box I was just like “YES, THAT’S IT!!!”… this is the effect for me!!! So dig this……

Kinda awesome, ha?

For me.. closely associated with the Tremolo effect is the vibrato effect…

Chase Bliss Audio’s Warmped Vinyl

This is kinda a vibrato / chorus effect… but it’s kinda mental… this is a very different kind of creature… and I don’t know that this is what I would want… but it just seems so interesting kinda….

Pretty cool ha? I love Vinyl effects anyway… and to have this kinda thing in a guitar peddle.. as a take on vibrato and chorus.. how cool is that.. .so you can hit sorta the usual sonic places you might want to hit… but then there’s the maddness of all the other stuff… and how they could sorta fit together….

Carl Martin Headroom: Spring Reverb

Here’s another classic effect.. and for me.. the thing is… I kinda want the real thing… no compromise… and I think this #1 sounds super cool.. and is not as unaffordable as so many real spring reverbs are.. and #2 you can switch between two different sized springs… basically… so.. go from something subtle to something more ambient…

Yeah man… that’s where it’s at… I think there’s places I’d want to go with it that are very different…

Tony Iommi 15W Signature Amp

So for me.. I think I want a rig, particularly for in the studio, that involves switching between a kind of more high gain amp… for metal… and then use my current amp.. which is more vintage classic rock to blues sound kinda thing…  and for me it is clearly.. that this is the amp I want for the heavy metal amp…

I think it’s freaking awesome

Err Towards a conclusion or something or other?

For me there are sorta “must have effects” and there’s a lot that I’m not sharing.. that are some of my pics… but.. This is a pretty good list of what has my imagination at the moment.. though I couldn’t really say that I’m sure of these picks.. they’re just sorta interesting….

Where things get really interesting and complex, maybe, is this feeling I have that I need multiple effects chains.. where you stomp on a box and it changes your signal path.. where you turn on multiple effects at once… and all that kind of thing.. and I have ideas where I’d really have to make my own dam stomp boxes… in order to really get what I want.. but..

Oh.. and I must say that most of the other effects that have my interest are delays… We only have one analog delay in here.. For me I think investing in a digital delay is important just cause I feel like I kinda need presets… cause other wise…

Guitar Rig Applications

I don’t want to go deep down this path in this post.. but for me there were very specific applications for which I was working on designing a rig.. this is a subject I haven’t thought about too much for maybe 6 months so… I couldn’t go to deep into it…

The Gig / Set

One application is… I have however many songs and i want to play all the songs… and these are the sound chapping tools.. the effects.. I have to use across all those songs… I can’t sit down and change stuff durring the set.. or I could but generally I’d want to avoid that…

With analog delays, in this context… generally it’s like one effect… and there it is.. and I mean this is true of all analog effects.. or most.. most don’t have presets… digital… And effect might be capable of any number of different things.. but here you’re only going to get this one thing from it for the whole set.. so choose wisely…

The song in the studio

Somehow in the course of song writing.. the subject of effects comes up.. where you, as a guitarist, design your sound across the song… and peddles are like the lego blocks you can hook up whatever way to try and design all the sounds you’ll have across the song.

For me.. I want to be able to play the song from start to finish… in one take… with the band.. that’s how I’d like to make the record… and different songs would have different set ups.

In this set up… you can really tailor everything to the song in great detail… so it’s kinda awesome this way….

Crafting a recording with overdubs

Alright.. I’m going to play the intro part… lets go through all the gear I got and see what I can craft.. sonically.. from whatever’s in my tools box, for this intro part… repeat process for all the other parts… This is a different way of crafting things… and obviously.. you need a lot less stuff to do it.. and on the other hand… having choices to mix and match from is a great thing…

I should maybe also add.. that in practice… a lot of how you craft a sound of record… doesn’t happen on the level of the guitar… it happens in the studio.. on the level of the recording engineer.. or mix engineering… kinda stuff.

Improvising

I like the idea of being able to sit there.. improvising.. and just have these different places I could go to

Let me end this long freaking post

I’m not really sure what to say in closing.. othe then this is a long freaking post.. but I wanted ot share some of this stuff.. that I’ve been thinking for so long….  I feel it’s maybe not written as well as it should… and it’s insainly long.. I should maybe spend more time thinking about how to present this information.. or this whatever… but here it is.

Also… I don’t know if anyone really gives a crap.. but here it is

Observations from my mental health world

So I suffer from “mentalillness.” It is to me a deep question “err what exactly is mentalillness?”.. I mean apart from it being a stigma not to be spoken of publically, like on my blog or something… and I think it’s quite a bit more challenging a question then the world of psychotheraphy / modern psychology / etc… would have you believe.

There’s often talk of “brain chemistry imbalances” which… ok.. but what is balance, and…. is it even desirable?

I don’t want to make overly broad sweeping statements about “and this is the way it is for all” but in my view.. much of what we call “mentalillness” features the brain operating the way it ought to be operating… given the conditions it finds it’s self… so I feel the problem with the term “mentalillness” is sorta how it judges the mind…

I’d even go a few steps further to say that “mentalillness” has everything to do with what are the value systems of modern society.. so to be in revolt with the social order.. .that’s mentally ill… but anyway..

For me it was my mom dying… plus.. being sorta ill prepaired for the reality that would then greet me…   Basically.. I’m an artist / deep thinker.. I think maybe that’s a good way of putting it. So I’m willing to starve for art and music and deep throught… and was willing to live in a kind of poverty state.. while living in my parents house.. up to the point my mom died.. and when I lost her I had an ill father to take care of… state got involved.. he went in a home.. and suddenly I fell into a poverty for which I was ill prepaired.

At this point I was like “ok, should I race out and try and get a job or go for it on the art side?” I choose the art side.. and being on dissability, for mental ill health, seemed like it might be the better road to take… Now I might chose differently given what a hell it’s proven to be.. how hard it is to get out of… but it’s also true that I had a lot of issues I needed to deal with and falling appart because there seemed to be no saftynet beneath my feet…. was like something that threatened to destroy me.

Now.. its years latter… and I’m sitting in this mental health group therapy thing… called “mindfulness and meditation” which.. is good for anxiety.. which is the chief issue I have… and I’m sorta realizing how the other people in the group are in an incredibly worse situation then I am… mental health wise…

This realization is in part an effect of how much better I’ve been getting over the past… I’m not sure how long.

My current goal, of course, is to get my car totally on the road, with a little help from my friends you might say… so that I can then go and get a job… and leave this world behind.

I’m in this program for folk with mental health issues.. that helps you get a job.

Early on there was this part in the process where they assess where your at.. your skills and what not… to see if they are real… and I met with a guy whom… I haven’t seen since… but he was like “you’re not like the other losers, you can make a lot of money?” The fact that he was refering to people who found them selve in this spot.. loosers… was kinda insulting.. even as it was directed to my mentally ill peers and not myself…

But if we put that part of it aside.. and look at the truth there… I had, with the help of friends.. worked jobs where I made $100/hr to edit video in a bar, while having a few drinks… I have, and I’ve begun to reflect lately… lived a life where I have access to a kind of eliet world…

I’m not talking uber ritch.. but I have a feeling that if you were to come out of Harvard, or some similar eliete situation.. you’d find your self in similar places… where people treated you a similar way kind of.. where you’re environment, in a certain way, makes you feel a certain way about your earning potential and your value in the market place.

I’m not putting this well at all…..

My girl friend.. who helps me get my shit together… came across some old pay stubs and was kinda like “fuck, you made this much money?” It was for a short time at some job somewhere… one of my “profesional jobs” and it was really entry level… and at the time it was more then any of my friends were making… but I saw it as a world I could enter into… and indeed was entering into.. and am now planning on revisiting.

Her reaction… sorta triggered something to me.

See.. the people I’m around now… to go and make $15/hr is a lot of money… and that has something to do with the way they persieve the world.. and with sorta social economic strata and…  I need to explain this a little better.

I spend my life learning… always trying to learn more… often very career focused learning… It’s sorta what I do.. and if you look at people who make “a lot of money”… they are kinda all like this… again.. whatever “a lot of money” means… But if you simply look at “leaders” in any field.. they are the ones most obsessed with learning and prefercting there trade.. where as the larger group of people… maybe just want to get through the day….

The people around me… just want to get through the day and they sorta think I spend too much time learning.. and they.. in some sorta secret way.. look down on my poverty.. and whole situation and don’t think I can make money using my brain.. or they seem to see it like an obstical sometimes.

Ok sure.. maybe….  and it would depend on profession… I mean I’m highly abstract… and always playing with ideas… that are a little out there?

So for instance.. take a figure like Nietzsche… Nietzsche is kinda like a hero to me… and I’m happy to quote bits of him.. bits that nobody else quotes… in order to describe a business problem to someone… and I’ll take a left turn from that into Buddhism and Jungian psychology…. and I’ll come up with this whole sorta way of looking at… lets say the problem of change management in business…

Now.. if you’re the sorta person who is into learning… you’ll follow what I’m talking about because.. wether or not I’m full of shit.. or crazy.. it’s at least going to be interesting… and you’ll probably learn something along the way… and that’ll have value to you.

But other people.. just want to get to the point.. and have a hard time seeing the point through the abstraction and theory… and it’s true that I have certain gears my brain goes into… that are just very challenging…

Back in my mindfulness and meditation group… I noticed that… I noticed what my brain was doing as we walked through the material….

Mindfulness… in psychology is… all the rage.. it’s a big deal… and the thing is.. I’m kinda like hyper advanced… in it.. Like Buddhism has been a part of my life and thinking since I was in college… in art school… as has Nietzsche and Jung for that matter.. well Jung since high school…. and in a way I’ve just gone way deeper then where this group I’m is ready to imagine contemplating…

I was somewhat horrified when the therapist talked about the guy at UMASS who was one of the important people in bringing mindfulness to psychotherapy… about how he was bringing it to cognative behavioral therapy… because I sorta hate cognative behavioral theory.. on what you might call “advanced mindfulness grounds.”

I am forever in conflict with therapists..and the world I meet on the public saftynet…  because of this stuff

I was talking to my psychiatrist… It was a challenging converation because I can’t get medication if I don’t see a therapist and I haven’t had one for A LONG time… AND.. I had missed my psychiatrist appointment… and I think he was sort upset with me or it was the changing rules.. and so he had sorta tied up my medication to force me to see him.. and I was deeply troubled by this.

Now I should mention.. that I missed my psychiatrist appointment because my dad had died… so I mean there were curmstances he didn’t know about.. in our session I challenged him and the rest of the programs rules and all the rest of it…

He was like “Matt, you have a searing intelect, you are wrestling with some of the most challenging problems facing humanity, any therapist you have is going to be challenged by you.” This was in the context of what I felt were the challenges in finding a therapist that would be helpful to me…

But what he said really… I felt was helpful.. because I felt like people were forever treating my brain like it was the problem… and he was like “no, you’re wrestling with real stuff”…..

And I felt that way as I spoke in the mindfulness group.. that the therapist took what I was saying and refraimed it in a way that would have made sense if I was in a lot worse shape then I am.. if I were in as bad shape as the people around me.

And I had this conflict in my head.. which is sorta like “wait, am I doin’t it wrong and being stubborn, do I need to subordinate myself to this stuff, or hould i go my own way and search for the answers and maybe assimilate it on that level?”

Fun with hell fires and psycho drama

I haven’t been seen around Facebook parts.. or the usual social circles.. for months, since my dad dies, which is out of character for me and then out of no where i post this:

I’d like to dedicate this song to a very special little lady who shouldn’t play with matches

I figure that might raise a few questions and eyebrows so I thought I’d make a little post on the subject.. for the inquiring minds…

I’ve been having these sorta on going confrontations with someone who’s been trying to use coercive means to get me to do what she wants.. and is given to threatening black mail… and blah blah blah….

There’s something about my past that… causes her approach to dealing with me… to kinda bring out the worst in me… It’s sorta like her demons are getting together with my demons and trying to damage the both of us…

To my mind.. some of how she’s been behaving… is kinda breath taking in.. where I try and help her out and she tries and take advantage of kindness.. and how far she goes.. and blah blah blah.

But I also think its worth taking sometime and looking a little more deeply

As I sorta subject to her to analysis… It seems to me that there’s got to have been some really horrifying shit that went down in her childhood… because really whats happening between her and I is the playing out of past traumas… that her shadow and my shadow are kinda getting together….

Err a little bit of an explanation of this shadow projection business:

What happens is.. when we have stuff within our selves that we don’t deal with eternally… it projects it’s self into the outside world.. and makes things unfold in a way that correspond to its pattern..  and forces us to deal with it in this inward realty in material world… which.. if we are up to, is actually a good thing… if not.. you find your self living in eastern philosophy / religion’s notion of… being stuck in karma.. cycles.. of death and rebirth.. eternally stuck in this trap.

The good news is that for the pasts.. I guess 5 or so years… the sorta main thing I’ve been doing is wrestling with my own kinda psycho spiritual reality… so I’m sorta becoming more and more freed from this trap.. and the present manifestation is… manageable as a learning opportunity? And it feels like the forces of light should overcome the forces of darkness.

And then on the other hand

It strikes me that… I need to guard against being too easy on my opponent. I am sorta comforted by the presence of my own demons. There is this sense that I need to integrate them into my personality more.. not be such “a nice guy”…. in places… and seeing that this is a process that will no doubt take a long time… or….

It’s hard to see with claridity into the darker sides of your own soul…

I live a part from society in certain key kind of ways.. To my mind it’s as if our culture has it’s mental illnesses.. which are forced upon you as you join the world.. and I have mine.. and I suppose it’s this heroic thing I need to do.. is to do battle with the cultural demons.. but I can sorta only do so through a fight within my own and………

In a way.. this is the story of us all.. for to be civilized we all have to give up the animal within.. to live in society.. so my.. nice guy hood problem? It’s not REALLY a personal thing… on a certain level…. and in someways it strikes me that psychotherapy is all about rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic

America

I must say that I really love this particular reading of it.

I hope, at this point, you might be able to intuit my deeper meanings in this post…. something about what it means to be an artist.. something about… knowing we are dancing a fools dance in this ficiton of life… and saying yes to it.. yes to it without all its stupidity… and recognizing it and….

Yeah.. I should just post already

Contemplations of Adventures in obsolescence: SN5R and Sound Editor

So I have this old synthesizer from.. guess the late 90s or something… early 2000s.. the Korg SN5R… This is a digital synthesizer…. and it just sorta hangs around mostly.. I’m in this funky situation where I’ll often push my computer a bit too hard, I suppose you’d say, and I sometimes think “why not pull the SN5R out for then?” Well ok.. accept it sounds kinda bad… as a synthesizer… or I mean.. mostly bad?

It’s PCM… so basically they recorded samples… using old technology… as the basis for there sound synthesis.. where they had no space for anything.. and so had to optomize the living crap out of anything to make anything happen.. especially compared to modern tools… of our day.. but… in a certain strange way I find that I like it’s digital sound?

Well it came with a patch editor.. software.. which I was somehow never able to use… so just out of shits and giggles I decided to do a search for an editor… for it… I figured who knows.. maybe someone has something working for it?

What I found is this Sound Quest software… and then I find out that not only do they want you to freaking hand money over for it… but if you’re on a Mac you gotta spend like.. around $500 to get your hands on a copy? Which is odd considering you can get a sorta $50 copy for the PC…. for $50 I’d consider it.. I mean I’d need to get some kinda virtualization going…

The trouble with these old sound modules is there like.. not worth it.. when it comes to programming sounds.. I mean.. its a pain to try and do… so you kinda.. need the software if you’re going to do anything with it that involves creating sounds…

It’s hard to know what Sound Quest supports… I mean.. how it could be worth shelling out that much money for it.. you can kinda see it if… there’s like old tools you want to use… or have used.. and you sorta need it for that.. and there’s not a big enough group of people interested in it for anyone to find it worth it to keep the software up to date (which is not insignificant on the Mac platform where with every new OS a certain amount of software will stop working if not updated)… but still… $500?

I have to confess that the idea that you could have a hands on control programming experience with an iPad, if I had money for an iPad.. is a compelling thing… but.. this is an obsolete synthesizer… obsolete technology… and…. to my mind… if you were to buy software to create the sounds it creates… that software wouldn’t really be worth more then $50… I’m sure you could sell an NS5R for more then $50 but… the idea of going out and spending $500.. and for $500 you could get… well really good stuff… in order to make this silly old thing to work?

I mean seriously.. I’d be using it just to be slightly crazy.. not because… anyone in there right mind would use it really?

Err…

Ok.. so lets argue it has a few sounds I like.. that there’s a certain digital sound that has a strange nostalgia value.. and then on top of that..  you can have 16 different instrument sounds going on at once out of it.. and ok workflow sucks.. and you don’t have a good idea if sound design with it will have a decent workflow even with the software… and even if it does it has a total of 2 mono channels, or one stereo if you prefer.. coming out of it? So if you want to save the bad sound via the magic that is processing.. you probably not going to be able to really do it?

Early 08-09: Story of Street rave / old school clubbing.

Err, if I haven’t explained this properly.. I’ve been making music with computers forever and I’m looking into the problem of how to make a living from it.. and a part of it I think means sorta researching everything to do with the various cultures of electronic dance music / electronic music / whatever…

A part of what I get a kick out of watching these old videos… is that I’m in no way a part of this world.. I’m a metal head… and… very often these kinds of docs are really more designed to be consumed by the choir.. by people whom are already fans of the music… and I find myself doing this funny kind of deconstruction of the communication to sorta deal with the propiganda layers if you will….

I don’t think it’s as big a thing with kids today, though I don’t know enough kids today to really know.. but when I was a kid growing up.. so much of what music you listened to had to do with identity.. that in part it’s about you saying to the world who you are.. and in fact, I think in a developmental sorta way, its about you trying to figure out who you are…

Clearly, for me, at my age.. music doesn’t really entirely serve kind of the same purpose…  so often I’m going out and trying to appreciate different kinds of music that are maybe music, like say in the case of dance music.. stuff I thought was just shit.. and like the worst imaginable thing.. like all that was wrong with the world.. when I was a kid…

Although techno and rave culture did always seem kinda cool too me… but at least big popular dance music was just like.. yuck.

Keys to Success: EDM

I thought this was a really cool little talk from Canadian Music Week

I guess I’m interested in this because I’m an electronic music artist.. and it’s great to kinda see “oh, so this is kinda what the business looks like.” In truth I don’t even understand the culture.. I’m old I suppose.. but I make music with computers and what not.. and I’ve been doing this forever.. .and I’m sorta doing research trying to figure out what the hell my career prospects might look like… and I’m trying to figure out “how the hell would I ever fit into that?”

What’s sorta interesting to me… is I’ve been feeling like I need to learn to do EDM, kinda sorta.. but it’s never totally felt right to me.. and I’m sorta wondering how the hell I’d do it.. but the message that EDM is some kind of a bad word.. for somebody… sorta and that sorta suggests to me that.. what the culture is really all about.. is sorta much closer to where I’m coming from.. then I sorta really realize.

Entering the Sonictalk intro theme music contest

Once upon a time I had this funny notion that this blost would be like a journal of.. me.. an artist who did musical stuff.. sorta talking about it… and whatever might strike my fancy.. .but that doesn’t seem like what’s happened… but err.. here is some work I did.

Sonictalk.. my personal favorite music production type podcat… did the contest to create intro theme music… and I created my entry….  that I’d sorta like to share with you. I’m not sure it’s all that great an entry.. and I’m up against like.. upwards of 100 other folks.. whom are no doubt infinately more talented then I am.. but what the hell… err and you mgiht dig it?

Err but basically they have this opening motion graphics thing… and I created a little intro audio for it.. and I need a demo real anyway… and yeah.. so that’s the basics of it.

Getting Back on the Grid

My living arangement situation has been one of flux.. and one of the larger fluxes has been room mates who really like to have a thing we in the modern world call “TV.”

I wouldn’t say I’m a marxist.. though I might make cracks about “opimum of the masses” and speak in Drug Store Cowboy like terms about “TV Babbies” and.. this whole larger sorta critique of… blah bla blah.. but at the end of the day I’m poor and don’t really give a crap about having cable enough to spend money on it.

Long and short of the story is someone always wants to spend money on Cable..  and finally we looked into how much I was paying for internet through Comcast who.. is offically dead to me… I should add.

I have a Payee.. and this is a story of me somehow not being able to handle my own money? Yeah, always been insulted by the assertion…  and never felt like it.. worked.. and I’ve been feeling screwed by my payee to a degree where I wonder if I shouldn’t be sueing them… they are so unbelievably horrible.

Well it turns out I was paying $80 a month for internet… Like.. it would have been nice if the payee had informed me of this.. maybe this was unacceptable or maybe there was something else that could be done or this that and the other thing.. but they are essentially useless…  and I won’t go into the story of how to get rid of them or all of this only to say this was discovered and now we are getting rid of the Comcast.

Well I don’t know what the deal is with Verison… but they suggested there was some kind of wifi system via which all the cable boxes.. for TV… worked via wireless… so there was no need to use cables….. drilling holes around the house. The installation guy told us this wasn’t so and all of sudden it looked like instillation was going to costs untold hudreds of dollars… and it was kinda fucked up.. .but ended up not being a big deal…

I could see how it would be possible.. I mean there’s a PS3 in the other end of the house for the internet.. and an HD stream does stream realtime over wifi… I’m not sure how many streams you’d have the bandwidth to do.. but it does seem like an entirely superior system if you ask me… to do the wifi..  and I know the wifi network in the house is an older kind of wifi then the current standard….

Anyway….

I’ve had some internet troubles for a long long time… It would seem lightening destoryed my internet connection on my main desktop… relegating me to a laptop….  and the laptops power… was growing iffy.

1. The Mac Book’s power cable.. is sketchy…  doesn’t consitently feed power into the laptop
2. The internal battery is sometimes sketchy.. where it’s as if it vanishes.

These two problems can spell no working laptop.. and I was down to trying to use an android device, and how the fuck do you type with that…  to get online… and to communicate…

Between this and the loss of my dad.. and maybe other forces…  and factors… I withdrew… from social sites and whatever…  but now… maybe I’ll be back because now it all work as it should…

Still.. there’s this kind of overwhelming sense of what I need to do to create a live worth living, sorta deal.. which includes getting a career going.. making money… getting a car on the road… and blah blah blah….

Basically… errr well….

Let me Explain my Conception of the Modern Job Search

There is what I like to call “The old school job search thang.” This includes… creating a resume, elevator pitch.. getting good at cover letters.. and if you’re a creative.. there’s the portfolio…

And yeah.. that’s all groovy and everything…

But today I think you have to think of your self as a product, a brand even.. and there’s the problem of telling the story of your brand.. and products.. and services… which means creating contentent.. images, video, copywriting… maybe you start a podcast, a blog, a whatever.. leverage social networking sites.. and blah blha blah blah…

BASICALLY… we can split this madness into a few different categories

1. Hanging Out
2. Content Creation

Woody Allen famously said that something like 80 % of success was showing up… I sorta like the phrase “hanging out” and on social networking sites.. the main thing is to consitently be hanging out… in the scene.. and maybe give it at least an hour or so a day… spread across whatever scoial networking sites you’re using.

Well.. it certainly helps to be online.. to do that…  and so that’s sorta the big deal with getting internet working today.

Err but lets talk content creation anyway…

Feed the Beast, right? Like.. if you’re somewhat smart about this stuff you probably have “a content calander” by which you manage content creation and publishing… inside of a larger content strategy… and how do you sorta ensure that you’re regularly creating enough content? I mean especially when the time spent creating content could be spent doing something else..  so how do we get the right balance of activities.. of time and energy invested, and all the rest of it?

At the moment, or I should say this week, my job has been to storyboard out a motion graphics intro that I’ll be using on a series of video’s I’ll be producing…

I’m billing myself as… “A Strategic Transmedia Storyteller of the INTP Polymath variety”…  which is a bit of madness really.. and the video’s are sorta to make sense of what the hell it is I just said…  Err, maybe I should give you some sense of it?

There’s a lot of ways I could talk about it but I’m not an artist that works in one particular medium but more one who works in many… and there is both the art and the design… there’s fine art and commercial applications.. for all this stuff.. and I think there’s a unique value proposition for me to make.. about this… and in light of the sorta modern world of marketing and communications…. for sorta understanding… stuff.

Err, it’s a long story, and I shouldn’t even bother to try and tell it here…

Waiting for a ride: A quick state of consciousness, err something?

I’m tired and… wanted to post something or other while I had some sorta uninterrupted time on a computer to talk about something?

I think.. with any luck.. I’m moving forward… soon I should have my car on the road and be in a position to look for work.. more properly.. and kinda take it from there.

There’s a feeling I have of not being totally there… I suppose the passing of my father is a decent enough reason.. that and the seemingly impossibility of getting the car on the road… or.. being able to do the job-e stuff.

No car… has a lot of implications.. but no job interview, no networking events, no ability to get to a job… kinda key things.

It’s stuff I have to do to pull myself out of poverty…..  I suppose the larger objective is to try and heal.. to find some place where I can heal… I think such a place is likely better found through contacts then through job interviews.

And yest I have this other idea about it

My feeling is that it doesn’t matter what you do you just have to do it. The it is the only important part of it… that it doesn’t matter what it is as long as it indeed is it… which is.. whatever it is.

I know, crazy talk… but this came to me in a conversation where I was sorta talking on about on the subject of God.

Hold on you atheists… this can still have some value for you…  in talking about God… I’m following the idea that it doesn’t matter if there is or is not a God.. we can study the behavior of the concept of God in human consciousness… and.. what I’m sorta looking at… is.. viewing certain kinds of “spiritual stuff” in terms of “psychological transformation.”

So.. the concept of God.. the definition… is that God is transcendent of definitions, of categories… I dare say reality it’s self is this way… What this means is God neither exists or doesn’t exist… is or isn’t…  blah blah blah….

The point isn’t to talk about God in these terms so much as reality… and to understand the larger problem that reality… is not something we know anything about independent of experience… and experience doesn’t happen independent of psychology… so all of it is subject to psychology… and if you think of.. sorta various structures of consciousness as in someway operating as intermediaries between our selves and experience… at a certain point the real key to everything comes from evolving the relationship to these structures….

From a Jungian perspective.. the Gods of all religion and and mythologies are in fact expressions of the structure of the psyche so… it has a certain kinda value to look at it through this kinda prism.

But again.. my main point has to do with the relationship of our ideas of reality to reality… or reality we call experience and…

Err, it gets complicated sooner or latter.

And it is because of this strange psycho-surrealism nature of things.. that I can really do anything… as long as I’m doing it.. that it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it is it… that the “it” in saying this has to do with the structure of the psyche inside of which experience happens… and so the specifics of the material world, of facts… the specifics of the situation… are all besides the point, as long as it’s about it. You see?

I’d go into this more deeply… accept that I suppose what I really want to say is that all the problems of life are at bottom inward problems… and in out the ward struggles… it is really our selves we are struggling with……

Err, but I gotta get going, so I guess that’s about all I have to say for now.. but there it is.