Post 99: The final frontier

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

"Taps"


Just one more until the two-part hundredth postacular event. But more on that story as it breaks. Right now, musical things are afoot.

I kind of don't want to say anything about this, else I'll ruin the surprise. It got started just as a guitar test, and it pretty much still is. I wanted to try out my custom effect (mentioned in a few previous posts) with some genuine surf guitar. It sounded kind of generic, so I started trying other stuff, and the whatever-you-want-to-call-it that came out is this week's song.

On an unrelated note, the NBC chimes and"Taps" use more or less the same progression. So I threw that in there as a joke.

The only real problem I have here is that three minutes is probably to long for a noise test. But whatever. It's not like you have to listen to the whole thing.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

Post 98: Liveblogging Pokémon Platinum, Part 3

ok so so far today i've caught everyone's favorite useless pokemon, magikarp. they should just rename "the ugly duckling" to "the typical magikarp". also i got a fishing rod. that's how i caught it. should have said that part first.

also i taught all (well, two) my pokemons rock smash so i can use it on that douchehole roark. then i levelgrinded for a while.

...lots of looking at charts...

for no real reason, i listen to "save the population " three times in a row. i believe this is the first sign of insanity. but having passed the fifth or sixth sign long ago, this worries me not.

i catch budew. how do pronounce that? bud-YEW? ba-DOO? something completely nonsensical? looks like that's the one.

"What? Kricketot is evolving!" it seems to have turned into a cricket violin. i remember what carl sagan said about artificial selection. did kricketune grow to look like a violin because humans bred for that trait? because we slaughtered the others? you think about it that way it stops being so cute.

almost accidentally, i catch a psyduck. i didn't even know they had those here.

ok i'm ready. my kickass pokemon are ready to kick this ass in the ass. bring it, roark. also i'm saving first so i can cheat and not lose.

i win. as it turned out, i could have just used piplup instead of teaching four of my pokemon rock smash. actually, i want to see if that'll work. [resets system]

maybe. piplup died and i wasn't taking chances with the others, though i probably could do it. also i had to use all my potions. going to try again...

i did it! without changing my strategy at all. which makes me wonder how much of this game is just luck. last time, my opponent weakened my defense too much, completely at random. this time, a critical hit almost made me lose everything sort of. luckily i'm so awesome and technically undefeated that it still didn't matter.
"What Piplup is evolving!"-- sure picked an appropriate time to do it.

i think Prinplup, nee Piplup, needs a break now. and i just finished my Cosmos (episode 8! only five remain! exclamation points make even boring things exciting!). i'm going to go watch tv.

Post 97: Liveblogging Pokémon Platinum, Part 2

Sorry about the abrupt way that part one ended. My Internet crapped out all of a sudden. All you missed was I caught a Starly and my mom gave me a journal and JOHNDOEs mom gaved me a parcel. So let's go.

9:41: "Gotcha! BIDOOF was caught!". I'm gonna call him Bidoof.

"DREW found an antidote!" I should probably return it to whoever lost it, poor guy.
"Sandgem town: the town of sand." Oh, like how Seattle is the city of sea. Wait, that's not right.

Dawn's going to show me how to catch a pokemon. i feel guilty telling her i already know how. also, there's no option for that.

hooray, five free pokeballs! everyone wants to hook the DREW up with free stuff. except i already bought five. and used two. boy am i dumb.

"you're a pokemon trainer, and our eyes met, so we must battle!"-- talk about lampshade hanging.

the new animation for quick attack: pokemon runs in a circle, and then runs in my general direction. cool. also i win pokebattle! i is undefeated!

i don't know what Shinx is, but i'm really mad i couldn't catch one.

ok i got one. i think it's supposed to be a lion, but inexplicably blue. maybe it got too cold?

on the other hand, the animation for pound is a little red smudge appearing on my enemies forehead. from now on i'm calling it "smudge".

10:12: i catch kricketot, which appears to be a cricket in a suit. it's my new favorite.

WTF is a Burmy? it's like a unicorn and an acorn got caught in an atom smasher. except any product of that should rightly have "corn" in its name.

I find a potion, and reflect on its implications. are there any other forms of magic in Sinnoh. my brain says no; my gut dissents.

Dawn wants to show me around the big city. by pure accident we run into some crazy man who thinks he's an "international police". i get a "vs. recorder", but coming from a creep like that, who knows what it actually did. oh well, i'm sure i've seen the last of him.

there's two guys outside, "trading pokemon" right on the street. what has the world come to?

i get a town map. i try to think of something funny, and draw a blank.

i proceed to show those douchebag schoolkids who's boss. serves em right for trying to learn things.

i talk to some clowns and get something called a poketch. yep, that's normal.

JOHNDOE wants to fight. again. sigh. i win, but that stupid Turtwig needs to stop using withdraw. jerk.
man Zubat is a big fat cheater. i should probably get one.

"Piplup learned water sport!"-- Piplup learned to Jet Ski? It's bad enough I can teach it to surf.

"Zubat was caught". now i can be a big fat cheater. also i can get my ass out of stupid route 203. ps why do they even bother having wild abras if you can't catch them? just as a tease?

why is Budew smiling at me?! does it know something i don't?!

what water sport does: makes fire attacks work less. that don't do much when you're fighting whatever a Budew is. so i just keep using pound.

"Zubat learned Supersonic" -- hey, now it's actually useful

one sided fight: abra (knows one move, teleport, and can't use it) vs. zubat (knows two moves, one that confuses abra and the other, leech life, is super effective and healy-doing). them's my skillz.

ha, "Lass Madeline", if that is your real name, you take your fancy gym badge and your Psyduck and you go home and tell everyone who's boss! (hint: me).

i got an hm06(rocksmash)! and i can't use it yet. that's kind of dickish.

random dude wants to show me where something is! isn't that Dawn's job?

JOHNDOE just used the phrase "like seriously serious". also who's his dad? and why is he so oblique about talking about it? i bet it's amnesia. plus stupid gym leader can't stay in the gym. (frowny emoticon)

"Oreburg City: City of Energy"-- at least they didn't call it "city of ore". also wondering what's up with the weird slopey-roofs in this town.

Random townsperson named his Psyduck "Yellow"...but its evolution is blue... but its name is Goldduck. my head spins.

The Oreburgh mining museum is as authentically boring as a real mining museum. I liked that their "how coal is made" segment is completely accurate and has no plot significance whatsoever. although i feel there should be more of an acknowledgment of coal's environmental effects.

update on the sinnoh housing crisis: every building in Oreburgh is commercial. they must all commute.

I got a yellow shard!

...What's a yellow shard?

I catch an Onix. which is surprisingly hard. for some reason all my pokemon know are normal type attacks, which are "not very effective". also i had to use something called a dusk ball. at least i only needed one.

you know what's a weird word? "mine". it means three things, none of which have any relation to each other. oh well, back to fighting Zubats.

i catch a geodude. is there no pokemon i can't catch? it would appear not. or maybe it would appear so. that's one of those things where you can put a positive or negative, i don't think it matters.

The gym leader is named Roark. did his parents name him that as a joke? an guess what type he uses? at least "Brock" is a real name.

also he's all "hi this is what rock smash looks like you have to beat the gym leader to use it p.s. i'm the gym leader bye." get some manners to go with your dumb girly hair, dude.

hey, it's the guy who stands by the entrance of the gym and tells you how to win! i remember him! don't the gym members get tired of him?

hey, this gym has a shortcut! oh well, i can one-hit kill these guys with bubble. i shall fight.

...which is what i almost do. it went so small you couldn't even see it, but i digress. still undefeated after two fights, using four moves total (all of them bubble). time to fight Roark.

I lost. twice almost, but i reset before i lose any more money/ battles. my undefeated record remains intact through cheating.

i beat the easy two guys and decide to check out the underground...

...nevmind, can't go there yet. just some wi-fi fighting stuff.

I catch a Machop. I'm working an angle here.

I catch another one so I can trade it for Abra. this is all hilarious I know. but then i put them both in the computer and spend five minutes trying to sort out which was the original.
OK, that was funny in my head. It's 2:35 AM, give me a break.

woman named Hilary trades for my Machop. get to see trade animation for first time. it's truly an astounding experience which can't be described.

I catch Ponyta. No real reason, just wanted one. Also my Cosmos is over so I should probably quitslashsleep now before this stop sense make purple monkey dishwasher.

Post 96: Liveblogging Pokémon Platinum, Part 1

Why? Because:

a) I think my Rock Band 2 liveblog is one of the better things I've done here, and
a1) The same reasons here as there. Video games are too long to be looked at holistically; with a few exceptions, most can't just be finished in a day or two, and some never ever end. so I prefer to write about them as I play them.
b) Pokémon isn't something that demands your full attention; you can multitask with it. I thought this would be a funny other task.
c) I haven't played a Pokégame since Gold (though I think I last played it like two weeks ago). I want to see what's changed, and take you, gentle reader, along for the ride.
d) I found out about Bulbapedia and plan to use articles like this one to game the system (this is also how I got tricked into replaying Gold).
e) I've always thought it would be hilarious to overanalyze something something that, at its core, is made for children. My original idea was Harry Potter, but books are for dweebs and gaywads.
f) Nostalgia, I guess? Also, it is a pretty good game.

Refresh for updates. I'll be watching Cosmos on my laptop, to balance out my lowbrow with some highbrow.


11:23 PM: Turned on DS. DS Lite is too ritzy for me.
11:25: Man, this game is loud.
11:26: "Press Start"
:27: I mute it. Also, some old dude named Rowan wants to show me how to use my DS. I decide to humor him, and afterward wish I paid more attentioon to what X and Y do.
:30: Rowan tells me what Pokemon are. If I lived in Pokeworld, wouldn't I already know this? Disbelief suspended.
:31: I am a boy. But what's my name?
:32: Oh, right. My name is Fucktard Drew. Well, actually, DREW.
33: And wh can forget my friend, JOHNDOE? P.S., what's up with his hair?

dude, JOHNDOE has like ADHD or something.
"the x button opens the menu" (too lazy for caps or timestamps from here on out).
hey, it's mom. she wants me to stay out of tall grass, which makes me wonder how people leave this town. maybe it's like in that twilight zone where the kid sent people to "the field".

11:42, Route 201: Eat it, Twinleaf Town. We're out of here, man!
11:43: Guess they were serious about that tall grass thing. Also, Carl Sagan just called Pluto a planet. Oh, how things have changed.

Question sort of answered. Nobody has Pokemon in Twinleaf Town.

Some Dawn chick brings Rowan his suitcase. She doesn't wont me to have no pokesmons. me and JD show her, we're all like, hells yeah we's getting pokemons. I can already tell she's gots the hots for me.

I choose Piplup, going by the famous "always bet on penguin" rule.

First thing JD wants to do is fight. I can already tell he'll be trouble.
"Piplup used Pound!"
"Turtwig used withdraw!"
I win, thus proving that the best offense is a good offense.
"Piplup grew to level 6!"

Carl Sagan explains how we know the Earth is round. It involves shadows.

Hooray, running shoes! Those would have been nice three generations ago, Game Freak.

JD and me are gonna catch a legendary pokemon. this should end well.

...or it would, if that cyrus douchebag wasn't in our way.
JD just called them P-O-K-accent-E-Balls. He's my new favorite character.

i fight a wild bidoof, which looks something like a superdeformed beaver. not that kind of beaver.
then i ko me a starly in some bird-on-bird action. i'm 3 for 3.

"piplup grew to level 7!"

all these f'in bidoofs are getting on my nerves.

oh, hey dawn. what, you want to give me a tour? listen, i think for now we should keep this a purely business arrangement, k? k?

rowan gives me a pokedex, but he's kind of passive-aggressive about it. yeah, i'll take good care of it. i'm not tarded.

"...i get a thrill when i'm with a pokemon"-- no comment

Dawn would "be happy to teach [me] things". told you guys.

uh-oh. that guy over is dawn's father. he seems kind of passive-aggressive too. listen, man, i can't help being so cool and sexy. it's the hat. the stupid, stupid, hat. also, i got a tm 27.

How do pokefolk live in such small houses? dawn's house has three generations and two beds, and it's the biggest one so far. no wonder she wants to hit the road so bad. and don't even get me started on these one-room shacks. you'd think the serious housing crisis in Sinnoh would be a bigger deal.

you ever notice with the pokecenters, you get on the escalator going to the left, but get off going right? that don't make no sense, from a practical standpoint.

i spend ten minutes drawing my signature on my trainer license. doing so, i become one of three people who didn't draw a penis.

Post 95 (for real this time): Snark

I wanted to link to this but couldn't find a subtle way of doing it. It's good. Meaty enough to chew on but no so dry and flavorless it becomes inedible. Sorry, I'm hungry. Anyway, it made me think about how I write here and stuff, & I like to think I'm pretty good about avoiding out-and-out meanness or assholocity (not so much with the made-up words). Whatever, I'm kind of busy, so I thought I'd do the link thing instead of a full post, at least right now.

Are you ready to eastern-influenced ambient prog rock?!

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

"For the Birds":


This song is a testament to what you can do with production. If you listen to the pure, unprocessed tracks, it's probably the worst thing I've ever put to record. But when I apply my super secret* homebrewed effects package (last heard here), it turns into something that's actually kind of cool.

The idea came when I went outside, as I do about three times a year, and heard some birds singing their bird songs. I remembered a trick I had been working on with a recorder, to try and make it sound like a birdcall. It's complicated but it involves muting and covering part with your hands and harmonics. So I wanted to use that.

My self-imposed challenge with this song was no guitars, no bass, no piano. Also I have a sore throat so I couldn't sing. So the lead part became the recorder part, which is pretty dumb because I can't play the recorder, and for the rhythm part, I layered a lot of drums. By drums, I mean a tambourine, an upside-down trash can, and a water cooler (empty). Real drums are expensive. Also for good measure I threw in some rainstick and a children's toy. I don't know what it's called, you spin it in a circle and it makes a whistly noise? Somebody help me out here. I used it in "I ♥ Noise", too.

Anyway, the drums sounded really bad, so I was going to just put this up as a failed experiment (since that's essentially what it was), but first I decided to play with effects. And I kind of liked how that, sounded, and it turned into this.

*It's not that secret. Using Garageband, turn on Track Echo to "Vintage", Tremolo to "Mono Tremolo", Echo somewhere between 38%, and Reverb to 86% (I think. It's kind of hard to tell, so you can probably fudge the exact numb3rs). I call it "Wall of Sound", but you can call it whatever you want.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

Song of the Week Week, Part Seven

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part seven (of seven, obviously).

"Writer's Block Blues":


It's over! I made it! Suck it, haters! In your collective face!

OK, so I wrote myself into a corner yesterday when I said I wouldn't do another cover. Stupid me. That meant I had to write an actual song.

Anyway, I tried this other thing bu it wasn't really working out, which I believe is a phrase that's shown up in six of the posts in this series. I put that on hold and starting goofing around, playing blues guitar. And I was just gonna do that, bu I realized, last day, I should do something special.

So here is the first song I've ever recorded with words that I wroted. It's not the first song I've ever written with words. I have assloads of those that I haven't done for one reason or another, mostly because they're not finished, or they'd require more time and money then I can devote to this project right now, or they're so awesome that they'd spoil music for you forever and I'm holding them back for your sakes (there's maybe only two or three of that last kind).

I thought it would be funny if my first song with lyrics was about trying to write lyrics. I love meta shart like that. One idea that I've been thinking about all week is--actually I might do it later, so I shouldn't spoil it. Also, I enhanced the realism of the song by coming up with the lyrics on the spot, and also by mumbling words so they would turn into mush. It was totally intentional. Not just bad singing. You guys are dumb, you'll buy that line, right?

Here is the lyrics, since you can't tell them from hearing them:

{slide guitar noodling}
{regular guitar noodling}

I need some words.
To write my song.
Cause right now my song is only
Thirty seconds long.

I need some lyrics.
To make me sing.
I need some words gonna...
They're gonna ring.

I need some lines.*
So I don't get lost.
I need some lines, I'm gonna--
I'll pay any cost.

Oh no. [howly noise]
Yeah.

{more noodling}
{more slide guitar}

I need inspiration
I need [unintellegible**] salvation, whoa-ho-oh
I need a word to sing about I need a line to sing about I need another chance.
I don't even kow what that means.
{a little more noodling}

* *Or maybe I said "rhymes"
** I was trying to say "some" and I kind of choked on it so it came out as "them" or maybe "damn".

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two
Click here to see Part Three
Click here to see Part Four
Click here to see Part Five
Click here to see part Six

The odd thing about iron

Shouldn't it be pronounced "eye-ron"?

Or if not, spelled iorn (or maybe ihorn, so you know it's a long "i").

Song of the Week Week, Part Six

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part six (of seven, obviously).

"Hawaii*":


I was tired. Tired because I actually worked today and got home really late, but also tired of using guitars. I like to do different things with each of these songs, and all of them this week have been pretty guitar-heavy**. I was trying to think of what I could do besides guitar, and wouldn't take very long to make, and I came up with: guitar.

But, it's not really a guitar. It's a Hawaiian lap steel (guitar), the first electric instrument ever***. Steel guitar has kind of a bad rap because its mainly associated with country music, which is fair, although obviously that's not the instrument's fault. So I wanted to do something different, to prove it, I guess. To defend my little bought-at-a-thrift-store-because-how-often-do-you-come-across-these-for-fifty-bucks-answer-I-don't-know guitar. My original idea was to do something that actually, sounded, you know, Hawaiian (the song's title is an artifact of that), but I didn't really know where to start. My other idea was to do something bluesy, but instead I came up with these kind of freeform experimental lullaby thing, which I like better. Also, at one point this song had words, but it lost them along the way. That's it, I think. I'd probably say more, but hey, tired, remember?

*You can say Hawai'i if you want, but it makes you sounds like a pretentious douche.
**Also lots of covers. I wanted to do another cover, but then I thought, four covers in seven day (especially four in row?). People are gonna know think you can't write your own songs.
***Mine is not actually the first. I imagine that's in a museum somewhere, or burned up in a fire.

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two
Click here to see Part Three
Click here to see Part Four
Click here to see Part Five

Song of the Week Week, Part Five

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part five (of seven, obviously).

"Don't Stop Believing*":


Since I just did a "sensitive" cover of a rapcore song, I thought I'd turn things around and go with its spiritual opposite (its exact opposite is a yodel version of Muzak, oddly enough): the indie-rock cover of a cheesy pop song. As with before, they can be serious, joking, or possibly both, but unlike last time, I'm too tired to find examples. This is like my fifth song attempt today**.

Anyway, Journey turned hardcore punk. Uh, the trick is to just do whatever. I just took four of the chords and played them the whole time (E5, B5, C5, and A, if you like to play along at home). Originally I actually used the solo, but it sounded bad and I took it out. Which is unfortunate, because it's actually my favorite part of a song I'm otherwise ambivalent about.

*Note that I spell it with a "g". Journey does not.
**In case you're wondering, one of them is half-finished and might serve as a future SotW, one was badly recorded (and kind of tuneless) and was deleted, two were different attempts at this song (one was in a different style, and the other was the same idea, but with the guitar and vocals recorded separately. I couldn't get it to sound right so I did them both at the same time). The last one I actually finished, and still might post later, probably as a bonus song for part seven this week. Don't get your hopes up, though, because it's crap.

Also, here's a list of the most-commonly used words in this blog. I think it's a little skewed because it's only showing recent posts, but I'm guessing the biggest ones ("song" and "one-- which a just used twice in on-a single sentence)

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two
Click here to see Part Three
Click here to see Part Four

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

Song of the Week Week, Part Four

(Presented in SparkleVision (TM))

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part four (of seven, obviously).

"Gerudo Valley Theme (Electric)":



This one I've wanted to do since week one, and I finally did it.

Originally, this was just a straight version, but I started playing around with effects (drink every time that phrase has come up in Song of the Week) and ended up with this cool, sixties-y guitar tone*. Then I cloned it and made that the bass, and I was done. Not much else I can say. I heard it in the game and liked it and it's the most guitar-heavy Zelda theme, so that's cool.

*I can't help but expect this to show up on a Tarantino movie soundtrack.

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two
Click here to see Part Three

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's the same. I think.

Song of the Week Week, Part Three

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part three (of seven, obviously).

"Sleep Now In the Fire (Acoustic)":


OK, so we all know that thing where a musician (it's usually singer-songwritery types, not bands), will do a cover of a hard rock or rap song, and they'll slow it down, change the melody, strip it down to just piano or grandpas guitarses? You know, how sometimes it's* a joke, sometimes it's dead serious, and sometimes it's impossible to tell, but no matter what, it's a huge cliche** (is the accent on the "e" or the "i"?)?

I wanted in on that action.

You can definitely file this one in with the "joke" ones (if nothing else, for my impression of Tom Morello's ending solo). The weird thing was originally this was going to be on piano but I quickly re-learned how bad I am at piano (good enough to waste an hour trying, but not good enough to make anything tolerable). This guitar version, by contrast, took all of one take, which if you've listened to i talready, should not at all surprise you (at one point you can actually hear me stop and scroll down so I could read the rest of the lyrics. At others, especially the first verse, you can tell where I was trying to figure out how to fit the lyrics to the melody).

I wanted to do this as a twofer with "Testify," but I would have had to retune my guitar and couldn't find my tuner. If you want to hear my acoustic cover of "Testify," please send me money so I can buy a new one and also buy candy gas.

One thing that turned out surprisingly well is that this song is oddly Dylanesque, mostly because my singing is so bad***. If you actually can sing and want to cover my cover, please, please do. Here are the chords, you probably already know most of them:

----E: D-ish: & A****
C |-0-|----|----2-|
G#|-2-|-0--|----3-|
D |-2-|-0--|----2-|
A |-2-|-0--|----0-|
E |-0-|-0--|------|
B |---|----|------|
and the chorus part is B|-55-3-5-3-5-| and then it's E|-55-3-3-5-5-|, and some variations on that (pretty much the original song's bassline, transposed to guitar. For that matter, the chords are from the original, but pushed down a few keys). For the solo-ey parts, just make up something as you go along, which is what I did.

*Damn you, Coulton!
**Except when I do it, of course.
***How do you make it so the breathing isn't as loud?
****The first two show up throughout the song, but the third is only near the end of the chorus. Also, let's try and make the D-ish chord (or the G-ish, for those of you using standard tuning) sweep the nation.

Click here to see Part One
Click here to see Part Two

Song of the Week Week, Part Two

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part two (of seven, obviously).

"Duel"


This song arose by accident. I was trying to come up with something and accidentally did the intro riff. Then I was all, that's cool, what would that sound like a little lower, and a modified version of that became the response riff. And then I was all, maybe I should take a break from dissonant noise experiments and make something that's actually shaped like a song? And, lo, "Duel" was born.

This one is intentionally pretty simple. High bass riff, low bass riff, then both kind of pulse for a few bars, then a guitar comes in and then a guitar solo. I think it's in G, or at least the solo is.

In a little more detail, it's some thing like this:

G|-11-12--|
D|--------|
A|--------|
E|--------|
and then E|--3-2-3-0-0-| or something. I can play it from memory but I don't know the exact order they go in, and I'm pretty sure the guitar part doesn't even use real chords (one of them is G5, but the others, I just played whatever sounded good).

The hardest thing here was coming up with a name. I just went with this one because it was simple,m like the song itself, and somewhat descriptive (because it kind of sounds like two basses fighting each other, metaphorically of course).

Oh, and you can choose not to believe this, but I took that cloud picture myself. With a cell phone. For reals.

Click here to see Part One

Slowly Catching Up to TV Reviews, Part II of an Even Larger Number: Fridays

Yes, I'm stilling doing TV blogging. It just sort of fell out from under me and I'm trying to get back on the wagon (or off the wagon. I forget which is the good one). This one's a double, because one of the shows is new and the other I'm only one episode behind on.

Friday Night Lights, "New York, New York":

So what happened was, I was watching these on the premium, snooty, watch-before-everyone else DirecTV* versions, on an tivo**. I got up to here, and they just stopped recording. Not dicking around. That's really how it happened. DirecTV has one show that you can only watch on their boxes, and they can't make it show up in the guide to record right. So I watched this one on Hulu like five minutes ago.

I could go on about how the main theme of this episode is perserverance stubbornness, and how that gets exemplified in Jason and Coach et cetera, but instead how awesome was that part with Street and Riggins in New Yrok? Seriously. Five minutes of the best fish-out-of-water stuff ever to show on television. Somehow both hilarious and enlightenating how little those guys have seen outside of Dillon. Awesome.

*Sadly, that's actually how they spell it.
**TiVO: brand name. Tivo: generic name for any similar device. Tell your freinds, if you have any.

Dollhouse, "Ghost" through "The Gray Hour":

"Ghost":


Well, I liked it. The general--or at least the most vocal-- consensus is that the show is terrible but we should stick around until it gets really good, which is supposed to happen in episode six. The remarkable thing about this opininon is how little basis it has in actual fact. It reminds me how much people seem to hate the "cage" episodes on Lost (the first six from season three) despite the fact that at least five of them are pretty good, and the real worst episode came after they were over. I think it's more about expectations than it is about the actual show.

Let's be honest. "Ghost" is not the best episode of television ever. That's not what I'm talking about. But it was very good on its own merits, and it sets up a lot of cool stuff for later.

I think the problem a lot of people are having with this one, especially, is that people are used to seeing cop shows every week*. So the nerds (the ones who bother to go on the internet and complain about shows) think, new sci-fi show is doing a kidnap story? Lame. Crime stories are for old people. We can see those anywhere.

As a nerd, I can sort of understand this viewpoint. But at the same time I can see what they were trying to do here. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing: in order to make kooky sci-fi show accessible to people who haven't been reading about it on the internet for the last six months**, they present it as something familiar: a crime story. Anyway, next episode.

*It should be noted that there aren't actually any cops in this episode.
**Or was that just me?

"The Target":


The problem I've been having with this show is, like I said, it feels like I already know what was coming. I half blame the internet and half blame Fox's promo people. This show seems to like its twists, and I feel like too many of them have already been spoiled to me. Maybe you'll be luckier.

That said, everything else here was good, better than the last one. I liked that they're setting up Boyd as the sympathetic guy, but it does raise the question of why he still works for all these assholes (my Crazy Theory is that he's also been brainwashed. What's yours?). The other thing I like here is that they're not wasting any time moving the Alpha story forward, which was a nice surprise.

"Stage Fright":


Again, what was interesting here wasn't the Active-ing itself, which so far has been pretty good but not noteworthy (and here was probably the weakest of the first four) so much as the little details piling up around the edges: the Actives have both their own personalities and their missions, and one hand might not always know what the other's doing (it makes more sense if you just watch it). This sort of lends more support to my Crazy Theory (see above). Also cool: the suggestion that Echo might be evolving or something. My Crazy Theory Number 2 is that she turns into a crazy psychic who kills people with her brain, because, hey, why not? And the Victor thing was pretty cool, probably 'cause I managed to not have it spoiled. So yeah.

"The Gray Hour":


This one sort of answers the question about why hire an Active when you can just hire the world's best safecracker. The world's best safecracker will take the money and run; the active won't. Although this raises the similar question of why not just hire four actives, but whatever.

These ran kind of short. Hopefully I can go into more detail with later episodes.

Song of the Week Week, Part One

[Song of the Week is a "weekly" feature which is supposed to update every Thursday Friday, but almost never does. In it, Drew records a song, or attempts to record a song, or gives up and writes another movie review.]

So what I'm thinking is, I'm about 7 or eight weeks behind on SotW. And I need an impetus (if that means what I think it means) to do a post every day again, which various factors have been keeping me from doing. So hey, I thinks, I'll just do a Song a day for a week and kill two birds with one incredibly time-consuming stone. I have no idea if I'll actually follow through, but here's part one (of seven, obviously).


OK, this is a long story. I was gonna try another kind of song but got frustrated and wanted to try an experiment. The idea here was to play with speeding up the tracks, so I recorded a couple tracks (bass and tambourine/guitar) at 40bpm, pretty much just trying to play various riffs to see how they'd sound speeded up (I was going to do it up to 240 bpm, but ultimately went with 120). For good measure I used the auto-key-changer from C minor to G major, mostly to see what it did (as it turns out, nothing), and played a bit with with panning and echoes.

Here's the original (stick with it, it gets better):

I ♠ Noise (Slow):


Here's the studio-processed version, which actually turned out better than I thought it would. It gave the guitar parts this odd, flute-like sound which I kind of liked.

I ♠ Noise (Fast):


I want to make these available for download. It would make a good ringtone for someone you hate. If you know how I can do it, please leave a comment. Otherwise I'll have to figure it out myself.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: Both are the same.

Six Word Reviw time

Almost Famous:

What was real? What was faked?

Word Word Word Blah Blah That's This Post's Title

So I couldn't find out the whole story here, but essentially it goes something like this. A Grad student from CalTech went on Facebook and checked out people's stated music preferences. He then compared them to the average SAT score for the collidge they attended. The result follows:


Now, we must concede the methodology is incredibly flawed, starting with the obvious selection biases of the SAT itself, and its discrimination against the poor and minorities and all that shit that someone else would bring up if I didn't do it here.

What I thought was weird is that I listened to all five Counting Crows albums* yesterday. I'm zero percent kidding 100% not kidding. Well, I only listened to the end of...too much detail, too many details. This isn't Twitter, I don't need to blog every molecule of my being.

*From best to not-best:
Recovering the Satellites: 2 or 3 awesome guitar solos, great use of Beatles-esque Mellotron, lots of angst, which for them, is a good thing.
Hard Candy: exactly as the title says: sugary pop mixed with hard rock. It works on balance, though "Up All Night" probably would have made a better ending.
August and Everything After: refreshing, clean, layered sound compared to the music of the day. The grunge era was truly lacking in accordion. Also this.
Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings: the main weakness here is that a lot of these songs sound like their older songs. For a late-period album, it's at about the same quality as the earlier stuff, which is abnormal to say the least.
This Desert Life: not actually bad, just takes a lot of work to get into. One of those "for fans only" albums. Ironically, "Hanginaround" is probably the band's poppiest song.

Also: free new made up word:
Motron: I don't know what it would mean, but I'm going to start using it as often as possible.

Some things I found out about.

I shall give no explanation:

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That last one's not a link. I had an extra keyboard row and left it in for consistency's sake.