The Light of Day

Open letter to Republicans

By now, I’ve read several hundred of your comments and blog posts, and watched the Republican YouTube debates. I want to be informed as to your side of the issues, and your rationale, but I’m afraid it’s not coming through. I really do have an open mind, and I really am listening. All I’ve heard from any of you so far is insults, name-calling, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, re-hashed McCarthyism, and that the sky is generally falling. (The Republican candidates themselves restrain themselves a little more carefully than you, for image management reasons; but that would hold true for any party, and I’m addressing you, the ordinary “people on the street”, who aren’t under that pressure.)

I’ve heard from you that whenever we vote for a Democrat — which, as long I’ve been alive, has been one of our two most realistic choices at every presidential election, and our only realistic option if we don’t like the Republican candidate — we’re voting against everything this country stands for, voting away freedom, and voting in communism, high taxes, moral decay, and general chaos. Basically, anyone who doesn’t vote Republican is anti-American. This implies to me that you don’t believe in voting. If you think that’s not a logical conclusion for me to draw, then please explain to me the point of having elections if, as far as you can see, there’s only ever one valid candidate. There are plenty of countries who hold elections when, in fact, the leader is pretty much already chosen. Is that what you want?

I’ve also heard that every time we have had a Democrat in office, the country has fallen apart. I’ve lived through several of these terms and don’t remember seeing the country falling apart. Do you have photographs of this fallen-apart-ness to show me and possibly refresh my memory? I was probably looking in the wrong direction at the time. Maybe “fallen apart” to you means that you heard stories on TV about people doing things you personally wouldn’t do, like having weird sex and not getting arrested for it. No, seriously, explain to me how it adversely affected your life, or the life of somebody you know. Explain to me how things got better for you or your loved ones every time a Republican took the wheel again.

Not only have you said nothing to persuade or inform me as a 38 year old, but even as a seventh grader I could have told you that you aren’t apparently making any real, convincing points. All you’ve convinced me of is that you hate a lot of people.

I’ve never checked off the “liberal” or “democrat” boxes on any questionnaire asking me what my political leanings are; I’ve always considered myself apolitical and open-minded. But you’re giving me the impression that this is less about political ideology and more about low IQ, lack of maturity, or common spite. I will flat-out be the first to tell you there are plenty of liberals and democrats who don’t write maturely or intelligently, and yes, there is a signal-to-noise ratio to contend with. The difference is, with Republicans, there’s no signal.

If you just need help translating your noble ideals into coherent sentences, maybe you can hire some of us commie liberals (your word for non-Republicans) as literary consultants to write it up for you. It would be kind of like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, except we’d be helping you with words instead of haircuts.

I like debates. I like intellectual challenges. I like to mull over opposing viewpoints. It’s not fun or challenging to choose between a viewpoint and a bunch of primitive chest-thumping. Please don’t make it so easy for me.

First “final” mix of Rival Big Bang

“Final” because all the things are there that are supposed to be there. “First” because they never are, are they?

My ears are toast. Enjoy if possible. :)

So you want to make… something that’s “dead”

The good news is, not everybody takes glee in the album being “dead”.

John Lennon was only ever interested in singles. Paul McCartney was the one pushing to segue tracks together to build longer suites. But neither was right or wrong; it’s a floor wax and a dessert topping. What’s “dead”, if anything, is the need to bend your ideas in an inauthentic way to conform to a physical format. But even physical media itself isn’t “dead”.

We call something “dead” when a bubble bursts. (It’s our spiteful way of celebrating the decline of something that has been popular and ubiquitous, but maybe not a good fit for us individually.) A bubble is something that is bigger than it should be, or bigger than it normally would be, and as a result, can’t be sustained as it is. However, when a bubble pops, the material that made it up still exists; it only ceases to be artificially inflated, reverting to its real and natural size.

There may no longer be a trend of people making albums who weren’t interested in albums in the first place. If you are interested in albums, though, that’s good news for you; when the people who came to the party for the wrong reasons finally leave, that’s when the party becomes fun again.

Oh, and don’t forget all the other things that “died”: acoustic pianos, real drums, the orchestra, radio, live performance… seems to me like most things do quite well after they “die”.

Mixer’s Block on Hometracked

I could very easily find myself posting a link to every single article on hometracked.com. Although there’s been a slump in posting volume over the past few months, they seem to be steadily posting again for now.

Ever heard or used the phrase “mixer’s block“? I haven’t, but I think it’s a great phrase. When you’re mixing, you’re painting a sonic picture. If you try to bring more focus to one element of the picture, the context of all the other elements gets thrown off, and you get yourself in a perpetual tug-of-war between, say, trying to make the drums cut through more solidly and keeping some keyboard part “full” and “present” sounding (my own off-the-top-of-my-head example). Often the solution is somewhere in left field; changing some third thing you hadn’t thought of somehow magically solves the first two, but you need to think creatively in order to get there.

I don’t have time to elaborate on this further at the moment, which is probably a good thing. Class dismissed.

YouRadio

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was saying “if only video was as standardized as audio”. At the file format level, it’s still relatively true; you can talk about OGG, MP4, FLAC, and so on, but ultimately, there’s no such thing as a person out there who can’t listen to an mp3… whereas, if you’re making a video, and want to send it to everyone in the world, good luck.

But the file format level is no longer the hurdle. At the web level, the problem is pretty much the opposite. You can put up as much video as you want on YouTube, it costs nothing, the sound and picture quality aren’t bad enough to make it unwatchable, and everybody basically knows what YouTube is, how to embed it, how to promote on it, and so on. For everyone but the high-def snobs, video delivery has been solved for some time.

Not so for plain audio. We can find free hosting for the files, but to present them in a “ready to play” format requires figuring out where to put them. And, as I’ve recently learned, figuring out how to make them available to humans only…

In the big picture, this may not be a bad thing.

Although my first instinct is to ask, well, why the hell don’t we have an audio equivalent of YouTube? Something like a “YouRadio” or whatever… okay, well suppose we did. Suppose there was such a thing.

I would hate it.

I can tell you that right now, in full certainty. Why? Because I’ve always hated music culture, and the whole “promo” activity scene. Get your band heard, get your band discovered, get your band ranked higher, get your band this and that… spend more and more time playing this like a game, and less time exploring the creative act of navigating unknown musical waters. And that’s exactly what a YouRadio would be. Promo-noise. The only people interested in bands are other bands, and the only reason they’re interested is because of what they think they can get for themselves by association.

Music, at a fundamental level, is a genuine thing that happens to a person. A person hears some music, a person is affected by the music. If anything else is happening — supporting your friends because you like them as people, etc. — it’s phony.

I’m here to create, not to compete. Trying to rise to the top in a heap of artists all trying to rise to the top is scarcity-minded. Engaging in this sport reinforces the tiny prize-to-contestant ratio as a reality, unnecessarily. Rather than seeing myself as one of millions of musicians, I see myself as one of only one: me. There is no other me. I don’t have to compete with anyone else to be myself. The noise everyone else is making is their problem, not mine. (Not that you’re all making “noise” individually — just collectively.)

But I digress. Since there is no “YouRadio”, I can stop bitching about how awful it hypothetically is. And suppose it did exist, and was useful, and free, and gave you an easy way to embed all your songs in flash players such that you would be rewarded rather than penalized for accruing plays over time. What features would I want it to have? Well, maybe it would be nice if it could display lyrics. Or production notes. Or some kind of images associated with the songs…

(Thanks to Heather for having a baby for the sole purpose of illustrating the parent-child relationship between necessity and invention.)

So, like, it would be audio… but with video. In other words, maybe the ideal “YouRadio” would simply be YouTube.

So now, I wouldn’t be making videos just to promote the audio; the videos would be the audio delivery. Out of necessity. And the fact that there’s anything to look at on the screen will just be a bonus.

First goal: get one song up from each album. The “music videos” don’t need to be any slicker than the session videos… just be imaginative.

And at least now I’d be doing it for a tangible reason.

I bought some paper.

I feel a little healthier than I did yesterday.

It also lifted my spirits to buy some colored paper today. If I knew exactly what I was going to do with it, you’d be the first to know. Well, no, actually, you’d be the second, because I’d be the first.

And if words aren’t enough for you, here I am in the picture shows, telling you the exact same thing. Roll ‘em!

Site wonk-i-ness

Adjusting to the new hosting. Growing pains. Stay cool, waterbabies.

You’re full of shit…

…so cut the shit!

“Well, I never!”, I can hear you say in gasping, blushing, brow-raised disgust, shielding your upper chest with the spread fingers of one shaky hand. Okay, okay. Lemme clarify. We’re all full of shit. Ah, that’s better, isn’t it?

See, I just filmed this short video blog, and — well, what I really did was just turned the camera on, and left it on for hours, until I finally had something to say. I initially shot and discarded over an hour of myself lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, sort of playing guitar along to music I didn’t know, out of tune, beating rhythms on my stomach, coughing, blowing my nose, and occasionally making the valiant attempt to speak to the camera. And when I finally felt I had said something worthwhile, and watched it back, I was disgusted by all the crap I said leading up to it.

“Oh, actually, I already know I’m full of shit”, I can hear some of you say. “I mean, I have a day job, and/or some difficult relatives, I sometimes have to interact with people I don’t like, it’s just part of life.” BZZZT. No, that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s the easy part.

I’m talking about being full of shit when you’re in your element. It’s the most pervasive part of your affliction — the shit that you don’t smell anymore, because unlike the masks you sometimes put on and take off, this is running through your heart, mind, and soul, all day and night.

It’s easier to see it in other people than in ourselves. Let’s pick on an easy example: someone who devotes his personal education and career to being an expert on finance. To me, he’s obviously doing one long and meaningless dance around something that, in the end, is a.) is going to all whittle down to one barely-interesting little number at the bottom of a sheet of paper, and b.) is going to be distributed among his survivors (whose love for him was always genuine, of course) because he’ll be too busy feeding the subterranean ecology to spend it on anything meaningful.

Okay, so, speck in one eye, board in the other, what about all the crap that I ramble about? So I know which musical intervals approximate what whole number pitch ratios, and how much they’re off by. How does that help me? Even as a songwriter, how the fuck does it help me? How does it benefit anyone? The information itself is just noise. Maybe occasionally useful, but even so, for the few people that ever need to do so, they can look it up on a table.

But it’s worse than that. It’s not my occasional tangent into mathematical factoids; it’s my constant endless rambling about what I want to do with my life, and how far along I am on this, and what little thing I worked on today, and so on. It’s fine that I do those projects, and useful that I have such patience for the mundane details while doing the work, but when it comes time to talk about them, what do they mean?? It would probably take me a while (and some humbling) to even comprehend what the big picture looks like, because of how ingrained my habits are of throwing jargon around to describe some obscure tweak I just made. And using that jargon as ___ to ward off the Big Questions nipping at my feet. (And then complaining that people “don’t get it”, because it’s easier than admitting I don’t get it myself.)

Videoblog #1 doesn’t answer The Questions (I put that in bold type to avoid the flood of demands from people wanting “their ten minutes back”), but it gets me to the point where I’m at least asking them, and that’s a a start:

Now, granted, I’m still kicking the residual gunk from this cold, and I’m not at full energy or clarity. For that matter, it may be downright hypocritical to post such a shitty video. But why not begin this process now, since the past few weeks of zero productivity kind of gives me a blank slate.

Eagle-eyed viewers may spot mice at play in the background. Notice how totally not full of shit they are.

How about you? What would you kick your own ass for babbling about way too much, and what point are you trying to get to? You know all that clever and careful editing we do on our art and music, to get rid of all the stuff that was helpful in the working stages, but superfluous in the final presentation… could you benefit from applying some of that ruthless editing to your own everyday inner dialogue?

I’m going to assume…

…that the man pulling up his pants and zipping his fly in my parking lot had a darn good explanation.

Gapingvoid on obscurity

Care of Gapingvoid:

Savor obscurity while it lasts

Visiting that realm

I’m gonna go easy on my Personal Web Assistant and keep this one “text only” until the hosting switch-over is complete.

What? You don’t have a Personal Web Assistant? I thought everyone did.

Anywhy…

Little reminder about how to keep your spark lit without feeling overwhelmed, even though I’ve pontificated on this at greater length in my big ol’ SERIES: Forget that you have “work to do”. Just turn on the freaking software that you use, load something in, and listen to it. That’s your only requirement. It’s as easy as sitting around listening to iTunes, only instead of clicking on the iTunes icon, you click on the Tracktion icon. Or the Audacity icon. Or Logic, or Audition, or Pro Tools, or whatever you use. Don’t worry about getting work done; just go in like you’re there to listen. Be curious about it. The initiative to start monkeying with it will come on its own, and even if it doesn’t come immediately, that’s fine. You’re visiting that realm — that’s the most important thing!

(FUNNY PICTURE)

Today’s thing to listen to is… big drumroll… the lengthy title track from Through Forbidden Black Doors. Kind of a hidden gem because, a.) it transcends the overall quality of the rest of the opera, and b.) it’s buried somewhere in the later part of the first half. And it’s one of the bits I did so nicely right out of the gate that I won’t have to lay down any new instruments or anything… oh, except the vocal. The lyrics will need re-examination.

Here, pretend to take a listen to the basic track, naked, before putting down guitar, horns, or little tambourine-drum-toy-thingy:

(IMAGINE THERE’S A CLIP HERE)

Okay, a few of the piano runs kill the illusion by being a little too nimble. But is music all about creating illusions? Can’t it just be about throwing notes at people? Sometimes that can be fun too, ya know.

While you’re at it, listen to the overdubs in isolation; some neat stuff there too:

(PRETEND THIS IS ANOTHER CLIP)

That, by the way, was the first time I ever recorded Paul Gaspar improvising. After doing a few sessions of people reading stuff off a sheet, I realized this was where it was at, and I’ve done it that way ever since. I really don’t want to bring in guest musicians anymore unless they can improvise. (If I’m going to orchestrate something more carefully, I’ll use samplers instead of humans, so I can micromanage the notes without feeling guilty about it.) What I love to do is record several tracks of raw madness, and then shave away all but the best bits. The result is furious brilliance. The cherry-picked improvisations sometimes overlap (nice word for “step on each other”), and sometimes leave gaping holes. And that turns out to be more of a great thing than a bad thing.

As for this other project of mine, called “pay your bills, idiot”, I have to say that… overall, I’m cool with the job. One thing that I’ve found helpful is to divide the day up into thirds, rather than halves or quarters. For some reason my mind can reconcile with three parts more easily than two or four. So I’ll be eating two mini-lunches. And I schedule my coffee at an offset from that, so I have another little guidepost.

(ANOTHER FUNNY PICTURE)

Another thing I’ve found helpful is to hear from another co-worker at my previous job, who just got fired herself (for having too many medical problems — nice, huh?). She has few kind words to say about the place, and it helps to remind me what I’ve escaped from, and to put where I am now in perspective.

Add this to the list

Y’know something I want for Christmas next year? A globe. I haven’t seen a globe in something like twenty years. How can you be sinister, and plot world domination, and go “bwahahaha”, without a globe to furiously spin and poke at with your crooked finger, indicating all the territory that one day will aaaalllllllll be yours? Nothing against Google Maps, but I don’t think it has quite the same effect.

Start 2008 off with a warbly Strat arpeggio!

Been a while since I plugged the Stratocaster in (I’ve pretty much been using the Les Paul exclusively ever since I got it a couple years back).

Oh, and look, it’s only got five strings on it. Not exactly a financial priority lately. Hey, kids, it’s also been a while since Cap’n Keith has uploaded an audio clip.

This particular frankenguitar (nothing against Strats in general) prefers not to be in tune (you can tune it, but it takes some coaxing, second-guessing, and reverse psychology), so it’s less than ideal for anything other than quirky parts like this… but kind of fun to listen back to anyway. If you have headphones on, you can hear the Strat bouncing back and forth between your ears — that’s because it’s two separate tracks, me playing only every other string in the arpeggio. And because I’m only playing half as many notes at a time, I overdo the vibrato and bendy shit. Think Adrian Belew on downers.

Enjoy!