OK here are the other movies I made and then we're done witht this

"Through the Windshield":


This is technically a photography project, though some weird framerate issue makes it impossible to see the photos. Whatever.

"The Universe" (best viewed in HD)


A big reason why I didn't post much over the last two months. This is the longest film anyone has shot in the history of the class by like five minutes.

"Fortunate Son (Demo)"

...because if you put "Demo" in the name, no one will complain about the poor recording quality. More words...tomorrow?

Update 2 Days Later: I wish I could say my inspiration behind this was strictly political, and that I didn't come up with the idea after hearing it on Sons of Anarchy. I probably wouldn't have gone through the trouble of recording it and posting it if I wasn't such a Communist, though (see previous post).

This song is obviously very similar to "Testify" in that both are really vocal-driven (though here the guitar is used more harmonically, where there it was used more for rhythm and dynamics), and in that both, at least to me, update older protest songs for modern-day issues even though the words aren't changed. "Fortunate Son," while it's rooted very much in Vietnam and the anti-war movement, is pretty easy to translate because it's basically about power and privilege and how wealth tends to set in and fester and slowly decay everything around it. No wait, that's plaque*. Anyway those are universal themes that never go away, they just change to suit the times, like the Endless.

So anyway I was practicing the song, insert "know way do you practice" joke here, and noticed the sort of bluesy sound I was getting from the tuning (it's the same key as the original, but tuned down two steps so you're playing the A/G/D/E chord shapes instead of G/F/C/D). Some versions I tried to do used a lot of seventh chords and switching from the major to seventh chord, but it was too ornate to play easily, and it sort of gets overwhelmed by the vocal anyway. A few sevenths snuck in, on the D chords in the chorus. Similarly I'm sure a full-band version of this is possible, but that would probably be too hard to play distract from what I'm saying trying to say.

I've always had this theory that I could sing, in the same way that I could run a marathon or be elected Dictator-for-Life or get a steady, well-paying job: it was technically possible but highly unlikely. I think I'm getting closer, and didn't expect to get a better take then this one, so decided to use it, but I wouldn't say I'm quite there yet. Also, how do you not breathe into a microphone if it's the built-in microphone? I've had this computer for three years and have taken it apart completely to replace the screen (one of the reasons I didn't blog anything this summer), and I don't even know where the microphone is.

I still have no idea if I'm going to post anything next week.

*I had dental surgery last week.

Let's Play Count the Clichés! (Again)

Bon Jovi, "It's My Life"

This ain't a song [1] for the brokenhearted
No silent prayer for the faith departed [doesn't really count, but I hate when songs cheat at grammar like this. Unless you're Shakespeare, it always sounds forced]
And I ain't gonna be just a face in the crowd [2, plus a third just for "face in the crowd", and a warning for "I ain't gonna be"]
You're gonna hear my voice [4] when I shout it out loud [5]

It's my life [6]
It's now or never [7]
I ain't gonna live forever [8, plus another warning for rhyming "never" with "forever"]
I just wanna live [9] while I'm alive [warning #3]
(It's my life) [10*]

My heart is like [11] an open highway
Like Frankie said, "I did it my way" [12**]
I just wanna live [9b] while I'm alive [warning 3.5]
'Cause it's my life [10c]

This is for the ones who [13, or possibly 1d] stood their ground [14]
For Tommy and Gina who never backed down [15; 4th warning for putting these two right next to each other]
Tomorrow's getting harder, [15, though I'm pretty sure it's "tomorrow's getting hotter," which is about equally bad] make no mistake
Luck ain't even lucky, gotta make your own breaks

[repeat chorus]

You better [16] stand tall [17]
When they're calling you out [18]
Don't bend, don't break [19--when was the last time you heard "bend" without "break"]
Baby [20-- the imperative "Baby"], don't back down [15d]

[repeat chorus twice]

Total Score: 20 distinct clichés, plus 4 repeats (or possibly 19/5), adding up to two less than our last entrant. However that song had 23 qualifying lines, while this one has 21 (or 19 if you omit the two repeats in the chorus). Add in the 4½ warnings, and the final score on the Clichometer is a near-perfect 95|114|135.

This is actually lower than I expected; most likely I was overestimating it because of the all-cliché chorus, which just feels like you're being assaulted with them. And note that many of the non-cliché lines (especially the second and the first half of the last), don't actually make sense (how can a song be a "silent prayer"?); for that matter, the first two lines are complete filler, state what kind o song this is not, but having no real relation to what the song is. Other special notice goes to use of "ain't" and "gonna" as cheats to skip syllables, and, conversely, "just," "like," and "when" as filler words. Note the fact that nearly every line is (part of) a complete sentence, and that the chorus is twice as long as the verses, both tropes endemic to pop and pop-adjacent styles (i.e. pop-rock, pop-country), which tend to lead to lyric that are stilted and repetitive, respectively.

That took longer than I expected. I;m really out of practice with this actual writing stuff.

*The cliché in question is reusing the first line of the chorus as the last line of the chorus.
**I'm letting "I did it my way" off, but glib quotes of older songs, literature, and poems are one of the worst of all the clichés. Bon Jovi does this on a lot, the worst of which is this. For your own sake, don't click on that link

"Hayao"

Over the last summer, I was having a lot of problems with my mood. I wouldn't say it was full-on depression, because I know it wasn't because I had some of that too, but later. But I'm not going to write about that, because it's not a very interesting story and also wildly off-topic. Maybe some other time. Anyway, one of the things that helped was that I got to see all the Miyazaki movies for the first time (the other thing that helped was Calvin & Hobbes). I'm not very good at explaining it, but there's something about even the darker ones that just makes you feel better about everything.

This song isn't really an StL song, but it is soundtrack-realted (similar situation with "Grace", but that's a different long story). Basically what happened was I just had this scene in my head, and I heard this music under it, like a waking dream almost (or am I the only one who writes music in their sleep?). And it reminded so much in spirit, and setting, and style, that I hummed it into my computer and gave it this title in homage.

The main thing with this guy is that it sounds like a Joe Hishashi-style piece, but somehow doesn't resemble any specific one, either in terms or melody or arrangement. [Or it's an exact copy and I'm in big trouble. I've never done pastiche before, so these problems are new to me.]

"♣ Noise"

With all the "___ Noise"s, I tried to create something completely different, but at the same time I wanted there to be elements that were common to all four--basically a "spirit" that justifies the hyperlinked titles. While each focuses on one element--Hearts on the way the tracks are layered, Spades on how effects change the sound, Diamonds on balancing order and chaos, and this song on playing different textures and styles against each other-- they all have this thing that unites them, which is that they're all almost something, but not quite. They're supposed to be sort of deconstructed, "wrong" versions of what they're sound like they are. Hearts is almost, but not quite, pure noise--everything still fits together in some recognizable way even as it clashes at the same time (compare to "Insanity," which uses noise more as an instrument in itself, rather than a result of the composition and how the instruments are used). Spades is almost a straightforward rock song, but the rhythms and scales are all off and for some reason there's an all-sped-up version. Diamonds could be pop, but the vocals are just an inaudible moan and the horns sound defeated, and some of the other instruments aren't even paying attention to what the others are doing. This song has the synthesized sounds and mash-up aesthetics of modern dance music, but it's near-impossible to actually dance to.

This song has probably the most uniquest (take that, grammar Nazis) structure of any of my song, one which I don't think I've ever heard before. It's a refrain/solos structure similar to jazz, but there's no refrain, just a series of consecutive solos (bass, ukulele, piano, and acoustic guitar) played with barely any breaks between them. The rest takes a sort of A-B-A form, but the second "A" section isn't really all that similar to the first, and adds a new motif (the 10:8 guitar/drum breakbeat) which gradually takes over the whole song.

Other things:
At one point (around the end of July/ start of August), I spent most of a week trying to figure out how to get the guitar sound on this--something that would be simultaneously atmospheric and musically dynamic--but gave up, and the next day ended up writing "Insula" in less than an hour*. The final sound is me playing weird rhythms on an A Minor chord, playing a wah pedal with my left foot and a whammy pedal with my right foot, which is essentially the same as something I made a joke about a long time ago.

It's probably fitting that my attempt to write electronica has the most metal riffs I've ever written.

The screeching noise that ends part one is a triangle scraped with a drum brush. I used the same effect on it here as I used to create "Insanity in 9:8"
Initially I tried to write around the bass and drum parts, and recorded a bunch of additional "solo"parts to use later. Everything but some minor percussion and the two electric guitar parts was thrown out and ended up rerecorded.

As I said above, this song, like "Diamonds" has a 5:4 beat (really more 10:8, which i actually use a lot but not in anything I've recorded yet). I want to use more weird time signatures going forward--so far really all I've done is the 3:4 parts of "Rise"-- but I especially like how it's used here because everything else is still 4:4. Other weird key and tempo stuff-- the song is mostly in A minor but the piano and uke are in C**, the bass in f#, and the guitar breakbeat in G.

The guitar breakbeat uses the A, G, and E power chords, the same chords "Ray of Light" is built on, and has a similar circular pattern to both "Reaction" and "Watchtower."

The endless coda to this song isn't some bold artistic choice, it's a mistake, caused by me setting something wrong and then not bothering to listen to the song before posting it.

Out of all my songs, this is the one I'd most like to see performed live.

*To be fair I also figured out structural elements like the piano solo, and the pattern for the breakbeat, then played on cymbals.
**I later went back and made some minor changes, the biggest of which was writing a different piano solo which is in A Minor

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: See ** above. Also I used a hard pan to put the acoustic guitar on the left and the rock guitar/drum breakbeat on the right. Also the ukulele is a little quieter I think.

"Ray of Light"

I wanted to cover Madonna since I saw the episode of that show about her. You know, the show with the singing teens? I think it's called The Sopranos*. Mainly I wanted to do it for the contrast of it, similar to why I did some of my other covers, but I also think Madonna deserve more respect than she actually gets. Even when complimenting her, most people talk about her image or her celebrity status, and ignore the fact that she's actually responsible for some pretty good music. It's especially odd when someone does basically the same thing (hint: rhymes with "maybe lava"), and gets lauded as the Greatest Artist of our Generation TM.

As with Hallelujah, this song was easy to write (it took about an hour to work out the chord placements), but hard to play. Madonna's original "Ray of Light" is already hard to sing; this version is even harder, because of its unusual chord progression (which is either I-V-vii or vii-IV-vi, I couldn't figure out how the key worked) and lots of variations. Most of my early takes came out as vague grunts or psuedo-drunken slurs or Billy Corgan impressions. I actually changed parts of the structure of the song after taping this, but couldn't get a decent recording of the new version, so I had to stick with this earlier take instead.

Random Bull---- (he said, pronouncing the dashes effortlessly):
-At one point I was going to change the lyrics more, but I think what I was trying to say with the song works without all the changes. I sort of saw this version as being about losing someone (where Madonna's is more about going towards something), so lines like "faster than the speeding light she's flying," end up meaning very different things in the two versions.
-Recording this was a lot like recording "Hallelujah," but with a few differences. I spent a lot more time here trying to nail down the singing style, and playing in every conceivable key, in an effort to avoid the headaches the last song gave me. I failed, though this one did take less time, perhaps due to lower standards.
-This song was completely finished (by which I mean written) in May, but was shelved until recently because my attempts at recording it back then were about as successful as my attempts to record it now. Except for I gave up sooner, and I was less desperate.
-I decided not to listen to the original at all until I finished recording, so that the two versions would sound more different.
-Because I'm proud of them (and because they're nothing like the original), here are the chords in standard tuning (I played it three steps down):

Intro:
(D A C G B F Em D)

D              A     C       G
Zephyr in the sky at night I wonder
G              Em       A                C
Do my tears of mourning sink beneath the sun
D                   A             C
She's got herself a universe gone quickly
C               Em      G               A
For the call of thunder threatens everyone


A     D     A             C
And I feel like I just got home
D           A             C
And I feel like I just got home
Em    G    A  D
And I feel
D              A      C          G    Em
Quicker than a ray of light then gone
D              A      C          Em    G
Quicker than a ray of light then gone


D               A        C           G
Faster than the speed of light she's flying
G             Em     F        Am    C
And I don't remember how it all began
D        A     C      Em       G
I had myself a little piece of heaven
F               Em        Am                D   A
Waiting for the time when Earth could be as one

(verse)

G A B C D Em F G A

A     C     A      C
And I feel/ And I feel

D              A      C          G    Em
Quicker than a ray of light then gone for
Am                  Em
Someone else should be there
Am            Dm    Am A
Through the endless years

A     D     A             C
And I feel like I just got home
D           A             C
And I feel like I just got home
Em    G   C  A
And I feel

A                   D
She's got herself a universe
A                   C
She's got herself a universe
A                   D
She's got herself a universe
A                   C       Em G A
She's got herself a universe

A     D     A      D
And I feel/ And I feel

A C G B G F G Em G A Em

D              A      C     Em    G
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying
D              A      C     G     Em
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying
D              A      C     Em    G
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying
D              A      C           G  Em
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying

A D A C G Em

*In all seriousness, I've wanted to write about Glee since it started--it's not always a good show but there's always something to talk about--but I didn't want to start TV blogging again (too much work, plus I wasn't that great at it), and it seemed weird to only write about one show.

"Hallelujah" in G Major

Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" is possibly the greatest thing ever put to record. It's so good it's almost insulting to call it music. It's less a song, let alone a cover of a song, and more this secret little world that you get a glimpse of for a few minutes. It conjures something from nothing with just sound. It's light and darkness at the same time. It's pure passion, but it doesn't sacrifice structure or logic. It is perhaps the closest thing I've ever seen to something truly supernatural.

But it's not the whole story, nor should it be. "Hallelujah" is so widely covered because it's so ambiguous (unlike a lot of widely covered songs like "Yesterday," which are done because they're so universal). It can be sarcastic or achingly sincere, dark or redemptive, subdued or screamed, total crap or the greatest thing ever put to record (it also helps that you can pick and choose which parts to sing, and everyone including me seems to change the words). Even something as great as Buckley's version can't tell the whole story.

[In fact, I've written at least three different covers of this song, and every one of them is completely different. But more on that if I ever finish them.]

With this version I wanted to do something fairly dark, almost minor-key in the way it's sung (especially on the choruses, which are meant to sound pained and defeated, literally "broken"). In all honesty I probably bit off more than I could chew. I picked this version out of the three because I thought it would be relatively painless. Three weeks, fifty takes and one-and-a-half panic attacks later,* I was proven wrong. This was without a doubt the most difficult and time-consuming recording process I've ever had. The end result (for now at least) is what you hear now, which is successful in some ways but certainly isn't nearly as good as it could be.

There were basically three problems I had when recording this. 1.) Learning how to sing it. This version is a little talky, mainly so you can make out the words but also because I kept losing the good parts of my voice, and this was a decent compromise. Goddamn cold season**. 2.) I made a lot of mistakes. It's tricky chord progression, and it's hard to remember the third verse, because the best lines are at the end not the start, so you're always like how does the holy dove verse start oh shit I can't just keep playing people will realize it's cause I forgot the words better start over but now I'm rambling. 3.), and most annoyingly because you can't do anything about it, is volume. My setup has always been lo-fi, which a lot of people think is a good thing because they think it's what the music is supposed to sound like. It's not. Lo-fi in this case means that you can barely hear the quiet parts, and the loud parts hurt your ears and have all kinds of clipping problems***. For a song like this, which has lots of dynamics changes, it's basically a death sentence. In particular, the intro had to be changed from an arpeggiated part (which sounded sort of like Pachobel's canon, actually) to the more lamer thing in this version. I actually tried to dub over it with an electric guitar part, but it just sounded worse, though it did give me the idea to do the solo.

*Sadly neither of those is a joke.
** I'll probably, talk more about this in the "Ray of Light" and "Watchtower" posts, so I'm just giving you the Cliffs Notes here.
***For one take, I set the recording levels to "automatic," which gave me headaches to listen to. It's especially bad since it was otherwise probably the best take I did, much better than the final one, and I spent a week and a half trying to get something even close to it.

"♦+Noise"

UPDATED, 12/28: I can't remember exactly when I decided to finish the suite(s). I think the idea occurred to me sometime around finishing Spades, but I didn't actually know what they would sound like until this summer. I went with the laziest possible creative choice— basing what the song would sound like based on the title (it's a surprisingly effective strategy— see "Programming," "Insula," "AAAAAAAAA"). "Clubs" was obvious, but "Diamond" can describe a lot of things (one of my rejected ideas was to do a math-rock song). In the end I decided to go with a lush, string-and-horn heavy style, sort of like you might hear in a Bond movie (with a healthy dose of Phil Spector in there, too).

As it turns out, that's not an easy style to imitate. And it was especially difficult to reconcile a cool, slow ballad style with the chaotic nature of a "___ Noise" song.

The key was nailing down the drums. [Hint number 1: play slow. Play like you've never heard of Keith Moon. There are no such things as 8th notes. Hint number 2: use a tambourine. I played mine by sticking it on my right foot, which also why there's no bass drum in this song. Hint number 3: use brushes. this will also make hint number one easier. Oh, and hit the cymbal, not the hat]. I basically recorded a completely different song, then had to redo almost everything once I figured out the drums.

Other things:
-Expect a lot more synthesized instruments in these later songs. That's partly a consequence of the kind music I was writing, mostly due to having a decent MIDI controller now, and almost entirely due to the fact that I had to record almost 20 songs without anyone complaining about noise.
-The "deflating horn" sound is caused by hitting a chord and then hitting a blue note at lower volume.
-There are, actually, vocals in this song, though I never intended there to be words. I was never able to really get the sing style right, so it's mostly "ooh"s and "ah"s.
-Garageband 11 actually has a guitar setting called "Spy Movie." A heavily modified version of it appears here.
-This is the first song I've (successfully) written in 5:4 Time.


DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: I cloned the drum track to change the panning, and made the 2nd guitar louder.

"Would?"

Usually I try not to do more straightforward covers; my opinion has always been that if people want to listen to the original song they can (and will) just listen to the original song. So even if I'm not doing something radical, I try to change the aesthetic or the tone of the song, usually to see how that effects the meaning.

But something with this one just seemed right. Even though it's basically the same as someone else's song, I sing it or play hear it and it feels like one of mine.

Also I knew it would be simple enough that I could finish it pretty easily.

[Clever joke relating to the name or subject matter of the song, or to my recent lack of blog updates]

"Insula":

As always, I will put words here at some heretofore-unknown later date. Probably in a couple hours.

Update, A Couple Hours Later: At some point I'm going to have to stop doing this reverb/surf type thing. Probably right after someone comes up with a name for it.

I think I've tried to record every day this week. I spent more time on Sunday playing with guitar effects than it took to write, record, and publish this whole song. My version of writers block is instead of not getting ideas, I get a thousand ideas, all of them shit. I think I broke through it last night, but by the time I could play anything (this is a fancy way of saying everyone else in my house was asleep) I had forgotten what I wrote. I'm pretty sure it wasn't that good anyway.

The reason I'm posting these rambling and incoherent* thoughts on writer's block is that I don't have much to say about this song. I like it. I like the ghostly sound of the steel guitar (that'd be the thing that sounds like a dolphin screaming). I like the way the static sounds like waves, which was actually an accident from when I made the track louder. I like the atmosphere, how it's somehow an idyllic island paradise and dark and creepy at the same time, an idea I totally came up with before anyone else.

*Those two words tend to hang out together a lot, don't they?


DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: More of the steel guitar, louder overall.

Something Different for Today

I have a question I want you guys to think about. Don't feel like you have to answer, because I'm not sure an answer even exists.

This is the first steam engine. It was built in the first century AD. It was considered a toy; no one could think of a practical use for it. We wouldn't build a useful steam engine for at least 1500 years after.

This is a magic spoon, which is basically another way of saying "ancient Chinese compass." It was built in the 200s BC; it was used to help lay out buildings, because for some reason every ancient culture thought buildings needed to point exactly north or south or whatever. The Chinese wouldn't build a compass specifically for navigation for about 1200 years.

So my question, which you probably already guessed, is this: is there a similar technology today, something trivial that, if we only used it in a different way would change the world, like the steam engine changed transportation and the compass changed navigation?

P.S. Happy Towel Day!

Let's Play "Count the Clichés!"

Band of Skulls, "Friends":

All my life [1] I've been searching for something [2, plus doesn't this line seem familiar?]
Something i can't put my finger on [3]
Maybe I've been living for the weekend [4]
Maybe I've been living for this cyber soul
But every friday just about midnight [5]
All my problems seem to disappear [6]
Everyone that I miss when I'm distant
Everybody's here

I need love [7]
Cause only love is true [8]
I need every wakin' hour [9] with you
And my friends* [10] cause they are so beautiful [11]
Yeah my friends [10A] they are so beautiful [11B]
They're my friends [10C]

All my life [1D] i've been wastin', wastin' [12**]
Wastin' all my money [13]
All my time [14]
All the time [14E] i'm waitin', waitin' [12F]
Waitin for the moment [15] you are mine [16]
The song about*** yeah I'm thinkin', thinkin' [12G]
Thinkin all the things that I've done wrong [17, "that" optional]
All the time yeah I was forgettin' [18 (commonly known as "the empty 'yeah' "))
You were mine all along [19, note that many adjectives and nouns can be substituted for "mine" here]

Then they just repeat the chorus.

Total score: 19 distinct clichés, plus 7 more repeated ones, out of 23 lines. That's a clichindex score of 83|108, which is no mean feat. Special attention also should be drawn for the whole-line lift (especially as both lines are in the same place--the first line of the song, no less), the lack of cohesion, and the generally nonsensical, ungrammatical, and illogical nature of the non-cliché lines. This is a truly impressive feat of mislyricism (so bad it inspired a whole feature).

If you have any suggestions for future Count the Clichés entries, feel sure to leave a comment or just keep it to yourself and make me do all this hard work myself.

*It wasn't a cliché until John McCain made it one.
**Not these specific words, but the cliché of repeating a phrase for no reason because you can't think of something else that fits.
***Sidenote: whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!

A Dare

Start at the beginning of Homestuck and see if you can get to the end today.



OK that's a stupid dare, but I've wanted to link to it forever (my main goal with this blog is to waste huge chunks of its readers' time, plus it's the best webcomic going right now) and today seemed like good day since it's the one year anniversary.

Also, check out the music, especially if you like chiptunes, which you do, because you're reading this, which means you're probably a nerd.

How many Times Have I Used "I'm Back, Bitches" as a Post Title?

"22 Minutes Before the Wall Fell":

UPDATED 4/22: Sorry it took so long I always seemed to have something more urgent to do anyway here's post:

I got the idea awhile ago to do a cover by request (bear with me it'll make since in a minute). Since it was my friend's birthday I asked him or a song. His first two suggestions were jokes. His first real suggestion I spent a day and a half on and couldn't get to work, which is a shame because I actually had really good concept. So I asked for a different song, which as it so happens is on my list of "songs that I will never cover because they're about something that really happened."

The fifth song was one I barely knew. I thought this would make it easier, since I wouldn't try as hard to copy the original. I tried a couple different concepts and ultimately decided to do sort of a slowed-down, atmospheric take on it, with lots of echoey vocal effects 'n' shit. But that was never really working, and somewhere in between the first take singing and the first instrumental track it turned into this metal thing, and then I realized I should delete the vocals and write something original on top of it (for about ten seconds I thought maybe it should be an instrumental, but some songs basically have to have words). There's a lesson here, but I'm not sure what it is. Maybe "creativity is weird."

As for the song itself I really like it. I especially like the way it ends, where it threatens to go into this kind of Zeppelin thing for like ten seconds, and then just stops dead. That was basically an accident of the way I write (I improvised all three tracks, drums on top guitar on top of bass). The noise after that, which is me hitting the microphone and knocking it over, required more forethought. The guitar parts were epspecically fun to record because I got to play with my new expensive toy, and just switch it back and forth on the "detune" setting, which is sort of like a chorus pedal on a rocker switch.

The one thing I'm not in love with are the lyrics, despite the fact that I somehow snuck in a reference to John Cheever's "The Swimmer" (required reading ftw). I'm a perfectionist when it comes to lyrics, which is one of the reasons try to avoid them*, and these lyrics are...OK. There's some good lines, some themes I kind of like, they sort of tell a story, but I don't know that they fit together all that well. Improvising usually works well for the instrumental parts of a song (or even the screamy parts that aren't words). I don't know that it works so well with the words.

*The other is I tend to write ten lines and then forget eight of them, so those songs end up perpetually unfinished.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: I made the vocals louder, but decided to keep them low enough to be unintelligible.

Hey, remember when I used to review shit?

I'm busy so I'm time-capsule blogging this from the glorious world of yesterday. That sentence was mostly an excuse to coin the phrase "time-capsule blogging". Some movie reviews I couldn't figure out how to fit in 6 words:

Almost a week later and I'm not sure whether I can really recommend Mirrormask. It's cool-looking (and also has really good music), and I like the fact that they used CGI so it's supposed to look unrealistic and creepy, since it'll usually end up that way anyway. As far as riffs on Alice in Wonderland, it's not as good as Pan's Labyrinth but better than Tim Burton's attempt at the story is certainly going to be. I wish someone would carry over my favorite thing about the book, though, which is that it actually operates on dream logic. Nothing makes sense; nothing even comes close to making sense, but everyone, including Alice, acts like nothing all that strange is going on.

I was a little worried going into Food Inc. that it would turn into some hippy vegan preachy thing, but I was glad to be wrong. It's not about why it's wrong to eat meat; in some ways it's not even really about food. Instead, at its most interesting it's about power, and money, and the corporate mindset and how we've unwittingly attached ourselves to this destructive and shortsighted system. But not boring like I made it sound. Watch it.

It's sort of weird that Kevin Smith is back in the news, or that he's in the news at all but anyway, I just ended up seeing Clerks 2 yesterday Tuesday (stupid time-capsule blogging). I think it may be his best film, with the caveat that I haven't seen all of them (Zack & Miri Make a Porno is on my desk, because my Netflix Queue is set up weird, and I'm not going anywhere near Jersey Girl). It's sort of a small, kind of goofy movie, on one hand very realistic (for a Kevin Smith movie) and on the other hand there's a spontaneous musical number. I think it works partly because of that, and also because the first two scenes and the last shot of it are really cool, which fits that rule about three good scenes and no bad scenes (and all three have no dialogue, which is pretty hilarious considering who made this movie).
Still, nothing he ever does as a director is going to top An Evening with Kevin Smith, if only for that story about Prince. Seriously, that's the movie you've gotta see.

In case you're too lazy to read all that, I basically said Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton movie) ‹ Kevin Smith movies (except Clerks 2) ‹ Mirrormask ‹ Clerks 2 ‹ Food Inc. ‹ Pan's Labyrinth ‹‹ An Evening with Kevin Smith ‹ Alice in Wonderland (book) ‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹ the story about Prince in An Evening with Kevin Smith

Some pictures I found on my camera that I forgot I took

Guess which one is the joke one:

The uke abides

"Grace":

UPDATE: I gave up being such a lazy jackass for Lent* (the fact that I didn't update with this a week ago should tell you how well that's going), so here's an attempt to explain this song.

I've been playing the ukulele for a while now (exactly a week to the day after "Rise," so what should have been the first week of SoTW Year Two, and yes I have OCD). So far I'm not any good at it.

I can't really explain the title of this song except to say that like pretty much everything else I do it involves cartoons and insomnia and misplaced ambition, and that's it NOT a reference to a people's name. What I can tell is that like "Chord Storm" this evolved out of something I would do while I was practicing, and in fact I had originally (drink!) planned to post them together, but didn't have time. The idea was to do a lot of different styles-- so there's a funk section, a drummed section, a metal section, a blues section a folk section a sort of minor key flamencoesque section and and fast, surfy, tremolo picked section, not necessarily in that order and I may have forgotten one. Which is why it ended up being so long.

That said I'm kind of disappointed in this song. There are some good ideas in it but I don't think my playing is very good in it, and I had some problems figuring out how the pieces should all fit together, and just getting a good take of it in general. I think it's one of the songs I've did that definitely could be a good song (I'd list "Dread" as probably the best example of this tendency) but isn't quite there yet. Which is fine; part of the idea behind Song of the Week in the first place was to generate ideas like that. I can tell I'm getting there, though, since I was practicing this one a couple days ago and I think that what I played then worked better in terms of like musicianship and arrangement to how this one is being. That sentence contains either too few or too many words.

There was no song last week because my guitar string broke halfway through recording Sunday and it took till Saturday for me to get out to the store. Totally getting over this laziness thing.

*Lent is sort of like Catholic New Year's Resolutions, except that it lasts 40 days instead of two weeks, and instead of "giving up smoking," you're "giving up smoking for Lent."

Let's see if I did this right...

"Zero":

Now if all goes according to plan, this should be the first song released in 2010, assuming you live just next to the International Date Line*. So doing this now seemed appropriate.

Astute readers may recall that I previously did a song called "One," with the idea that said song was played by only one hand. That and this inspired me to try and write a song with only one note, total. I couldn't call it "One", hence "Zero". Then I was all (and notice I've abandoned all pretense of a formal tone by this point in the paragraph), one plus negative one is zero, and a song was born.

I went back and forth on which part should come first. Ultimately I decided the original chord (A major 7th, if you're interested) should go first, both because it gave the song more attack and because I couldn't get them to sync up right. There were volume issues and the program I used to turn them backwards didn't record or play things back well and I had to figure out how to do the effects and mixing properly. It was a nightmare, especially for a song that took ten seconds to record.

*If you think that doesn't count, you're an asshole I have a song coming up at midnight in my own time zone, assuming I can get it finished in time.

Anyway, Happy New Year. I'll see you again in eighteen hours, either resolute and triumphant or shamefacedly apologetic.

Downloadable Version:
Rerelease Notes: Mixing-- echo, louder ending, eq.

SotW 2.0

"Programming"

(Featuring Jonny Greenwood)

And so year 2 begins, after an inexcusably long hiatus. Remember a few weeks ago when I said I'd be done really soon? I'm a liar. And I wasn't even talking about this song then, so I'm like a double-liar.

As with a lot of other Songs of the Week, this one started with the title. I thought ,hey "Programming," that can mean a lot of different things. And so I went from there and tried to reference those different meanings in the song, so you get stuff from TV static, to computer-y blips and bloops, to out-of-context quotes about individuality* (the church bells, however, are just there to sound good).

That said, this is probably the hardest song I've done yet for two reasons. The first is that I'm a shitty piano player, and 90% of this song is done on synths, so there were a lot of retakes (especially for the electric piano part, which is the first time I've actually had to write something down before playing it). The other is that this song falls squarely into two genres I don't know much about, namely electronic music and jazz.

Most of the jazz influence has stripped away; originally the horn part was supposed to be more frantic and bebop-y, but I couldn't do it with the software, proving Mr. Greenwood has a point. The electronic parts, of course, stayed in. My total knowledge of electronic music goes as far as not just calling it all "techno"; I don't really know much about samples or synths or what subgenre this falls into. In some ways I think that works to the song's advantage, since I could just do what worked for the song itself, and it stands on its own more (which, of course fits the whole "technology and individuality" theme I was going for).

I was trying to find something that sounded futuristic, but familiar; ten years gone, not a thousand (or to put it another way, The Matrix, not Star Wars). The biggest influence was probably movie soundtracks, but I can't think of a specific movie. I'm working on a Soundtracking Your Life song that's similar, I might try and go into more detail there. There's a connection between all these sentences, and if you can actually make sense of all this, you get a cookie. The problem is, I wasn't thinking in words when I wrote the song, and I'm not sure how to translate. More later, but about something else.

*Speaking of which, is anybody else still watching Dollhouse? Somewhere in the last couple weeks, they went from "interesting but flawed" to "best show of 2009."

Downloadable Version:
Rerelease Notes: Some minor mixing stuff--fewer gaps, mainly.

"Variations on a Brushstroke"

I can't decide if I like the Windows 7 version of Paint or not. On the one hand, I can do stuff like this*:

On the other, it seems like they took out twice as many features as they put in, which is why I don't do the logos in Paint. At any rate, it's still good for doodling.

*Have I posted that one before? I feel like I might have, but I don't remember doing it.

ADDENDUM: Why is Blogger (which is owned by Google) an even bigger pain in the ass on Chrome (which is made by Google)?