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::Thursday, January 29, 2004::
㊋
Ad..ver..se..
We've had some lovely snow. I haven't made a snowball yet. It makes for a nice change of scenery more than anything else. Of course, it's also terraformed the landscape into a treacherous obstacle course - slippy slidey ice world style. There's no way I'll avoid falling on my arse at least once today.
I'm grinding my teeth with increasing vigour as dullard train announcers, company mass-emailers and over-zealous intranetters use the phrase "due to adverse weather conditions" instead of "because of the snow". I am reminded again of this essay. Why can't people just talk straight? It seems like the further I get from central London (I am working in East Ham today), the less comprehension these people have of the words they are using. It just grates a bit.
It's a general point, I suppose - people using long phrases as a direct substitute for the concise version that they understand - repetitively and smugly brandishing long words as status symbols. It's the same thing with racism (etc...) - new terms used in exactly the way as the old ones, concealing ignorant hatred under a layer of fat.
Bloody humans. The good ones are so few and far between...
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1:12:13 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life Rants
::Tuesday, January 27, 2004::
㉧
Composing Music With Computers
I bought this: "Composing Music With Computers" (Eduardo Miranda) (Damn! they've reduced the price by ten quid since last week!) - partly because of that long 'customer review' (which turns out to be the foreword rather than the writing of some exceptionally enthusiastic student).
I was actually looking for something to help with the assembly-process, or something to give me some ideas for sound-generation techniques, but this book is interesting me nevertheless. It's about programming computers to generate music, mostly on a note/phrase level, and employs a few dollops of set theory, probability stuff, fractals, chaos etc... The programming doesn't look particularly hard - it's mainly looking up possible notes or phrases from a table with varying probabilities. I may try it.
It also stated, early on, the handy (literary) structural sequence of "Initial Equilibrium - Disturbance - Reaction - Consequence - Final Equilibrium". That's the stuff I really need to learn about - I'm finding it difficult to make any structures sound tight without resorting to the standard 4/4s and verse/chorus stuff. I'm trying to make music that is a continuum - interweaved yet contrasty - non-clich?-ridden.
Unfortunately it is becoming evident, the further I get through this book, that a lot of what I am still thinking about on abstract levels has been done (or tried) by all those composers that I have heard bits of but don't really like - Xenakis / Cage / Stockhausen etc...
Even Bach, with his fugues -and formal grammars - it's difficult to connect...
There's a brief mention of bpms being in the range of human heart-rates, and phrases / bars operating on breathing (*In-Out*) timescales. Interesting. But way too abstract!
There was a very good quote about medieval musicians that I will put up here when I can find it...
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3:08:29 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Music
㊉
Chart Moves
I bought "Chart Moves" - a music industry based board game - it is, quite frankly, the most confusing game I have ever tried to play. It took about four hours to work out how to get off the starting line (once the starting line was identified) and I spent the first 20 minutes trying to deduce the cryptic rules from the lyric sheet for the supplied '12" picture disc' containing some evil rhyming songs about the rules of the game. Ah, but we got down to it in the end.
Jon finished with 176,000 'ecus', six silver awards, four gold, two platinum and two number-ones, whilst I finished with 2,500 ecus as a one-hit-wonder. Ah well.
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1:32:02 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
::Sunday, January 25, 2004::
㊖
Some thoughts I had over the weekend
Sanity is a protocol. Being normal means being normalised - means everybody can make a good first guess at how to interact with you (i.e. by not pushing you under a train or trying to hump your leg or not talking to you just grimacing and rolling cigarettes). Anyway - all I'm saying is that it is very difficult to interact with someone who is tripping, whether you're tripping or not, so that's why it's a good thing that everyone isn't off in their own world all the time.
However - we do live in an odd time. Hallucinations are no longer worked into reality in the way they used to be - no longer taken as evidence for gods or forces beyond our comprehension - there are just people on drugs, and that whole mystic truth is dissolved away, leaving a gaping hole in our ability to deal with the chaos of existence. Oh for the days when you could pray and then approach a difficult task with confidence that someone was watching over you. Something to thank - a way to interface with nature using the social apparatus that we're so good at using (compared to, say, Scanning Tunnelling Electron Microscopes or doomed space probes).
We can't escape our tendency towards conflation, so it's a real shame that those that we do have left are so lacking in poetry, symmetry and intuition :-(
That said though- DNA is rather lovely, as are some of those big equations, if you stare at them until they start moving...
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2:54:33 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
::Thursday, January 22, 2004::
㉩
Kenton Spin Doctor
I just got one of these:
I've been pulling my hair out all afternoon trying to work out the best way of using it with Propellerhead Reason.
Basically the patches you download from Kenton's website are very limiting (you can only control one of each type of rack unit) and counterproductively designed.
So if you just bought one of these then you might want to do this first.
- 1. Go to Spin Doctor Editor, download and install
- 2. Make sure you've got the MIDI Out of your sound card plugged into the Spin Doctor's input
- 3. Download my patch SmunkSubtractor.mid and Load it into a program in the Spin Doctor Editor
- 4. Click "Send Program". Now the spin doctor is primed for general use with a Subtractor
- 5. Start up Reason, make a Subtractor, and assuming you're using the sequencer port to play it, on Midi Channel 1, you should be able to start twiddling straight away! If you've still got the Virtual Spin Doctor open (and why wouldn't you?) you can see what each knob does.
Instead of making a custom patch that you have to match on both ends and map within Reason (you have to turn on "Enable MIDI Remote" to do that, by the way), this patch uses Reason's built-in MIDI Controller mappings.
I plan to upload my new layouts as I create them. It really does take bloody ages to create them!!
Anyway. That's enough trying to get myself in Google.
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8:10:22 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Techstuff Music
::Monday, January 19, 2004::
㉪
Smalltalk, anyone?
I don't do well with the 'easy' questions.
So, where are you from?
Um... Nottingham. But not really - I lived in Luton until I was ten, so which am I from? Are you asking because of my strangely neutral accent? In that case it's important... Otherwise I should just say Nottingham. Although technically, since I was born in Hammersmith, I am 'from London'... Gurgle gurgle...
Er... yeh. So um... What do you do?
Um... Well it's difficult to explain.. I [do I say I'm a musician? Isn't that twatty to say that? 'Oooh hark at her! A musician! Lardy dahdy dah! Have you sold any records? No? So you're not very good then. Fuckup.']... um I ... [what the hell do I do?!] um... Well I work for the council. Housing. On this 'project'... I do sort of IT stuff - database design and support and a bit of web stuff. And I run some kiosks. And I answer questions. I make graphs of statistics about our scheme. [Get on with it! What's do they call you? An 'ICT Development and Support Manager'. But that was made up to suit my strange skills, and I don't actually manage anything or anyone whatsoever]... oh, and (*mumble mumble mumble*) I'm a musician.
Musician, eh? What do you play?
Um. Well - a few things. Not all that well, um, trumpet, cello, guitar (hate guitar) oh yeah - um keyboards - drums - you know - whatever I can get at... I sort of don't have to be able to play amazingly well cos I can fix it on the computer...
Well what sort of music do you make?
Oh... um... It's kinda... breakbeaty [don't like the genre associations]... um electronica-hip-hop [not really either though] ... well it uses lots of electronic sounds against acoustic (will you know what I mean if I say..) organic... um... live instruments.. well - not live after I've finished with it... Um... Let's just say it's a bit like DJ Shadow but with more silly bits and I play most of the instruments myself and it would be better off in an electronica or dance section of a record shop than in the Hip-Hop section, cos it ain't got no rapping and I don't have the word 'dj' in front of my pseudonym... (*mumbling mumbling*)
...which is?
Um... Well it's 'Smunk'... Spunk? [Snunk? What?] No... it's like [Michael you twat!] "smoke"-"funk" [can't say 'funk' properly... who's gonna believe me?] agh forget it...
You need to work on that marketing thing...
*Sigh*... And How...
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11:54:13 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
::Tuesday, January 13, 2004::
㊯
Bloggoespho
I can't seem to find any more like minded bloggers. I'm not really involving myself in the linkspace that I've established here on Cinestatic, mostly because I don't have an awful lot to say about Pop Idol, Doctor Who or even George Dubya...
Where are all the other blogging musicians cum scientists cum amateur philosophers cum ravers cum Buffy fans cum programmers cum soul-searching depressionists?
Probably all just searching for porn. That last sentence should send a few my way then...
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3:22:15 PM :: permalink
Keywords: OtherBlogs
㉱
I can't deny it...
...I feel quite low about this N2 thing. Or lack-of-thing.
I'm back to sending out unsolicited demos again, and if this fails then I don't know what else to do.
Self-promotion? Euurrggghh.
I am looking forward to making some new tracks / remixes with the benefits of my faster computer / fat monitors. I'll continue to raise the standard until it's all tight enough for anyone to enjoy.
Here's a good story about my monitor buying experience:
We went into Turnkey, asked if they had any Alesis One MKII's left (259GBP) and the bloke said No, and I asked what else there was and he said "Fostex PM1s - they're ten times better than the Alesis. 339GBP. We'll beat the price if you find them cheaper anywhere else." and I said "oh ... well - I don't really know anything about them - back in a bit". Then we walked up to the internet café up the road, searched for these speakers on the web, couldn't find a review per se, but the specifications seemed impressive. Then I stumbled across a web page selling them for 299GBP and said "hmm - I wonder if they meant internet prices too?" so eighty pence later we were walking back towards Turnkey with a printout saying "I hope they go for this - it's worth a try". Walked back in, got served by someone else, showed him the printout, he said "okay" and we were out of there in 3 minutes with some spanky new heavy bastards.
80 pence to save 45 quid in 10 minutes! Love this information age!
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11:20:03 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Sunday, January 11, 2004::
㉹
Music to be discovered?
Hmmm. So second meeting with "N2" (Evolve/1st Avenue Records) wasn't filled with optimism in the same way as the first. Turns out this was the wrong label for me after all. I ain't no pop act.
I don't have a pretty face/ass/'songs', so there's not much scope for conventional pop-idol promotional techniques. Obviously. It makes me wonder why they got in touch in the first place really - my style is so different from all the other stuff they do that I had to assume they'd thought of something I hadn't guessed at. The best Trevor could do was suggest that I send it in to John Peel and let it be 'discovered'. I never really rated John Peel. He plays a lot of music of dubious quality, in my opinion (alongside some really great stuff of course!)
The offer to pay for pressing/printing and distribution is still open, but if they can't stick me in a proper studio then I have very little to gain from this. My 'album' will be passed on to a TV music licensing company at least - that could work; plus I've been given some vocals to do a remix of a track by "Salt Pervert" (5am Wednesday in Soho, where else is a girl like me gonna go --- We're going to the cubicle, going to the loo, and you know we always go down in two --- How comes I woke up naked with your dick in my hand---etc... Yeh. Nice.)
It's a fresh wind. I'm not really back to square one - this experience gave me the momentum to get loads of new tracks together and helped me to get my priorities straight (album first then gigs to promote it!). I also realised that if I really want to create crisper tracks and raise my production standards, I need a good pair of monitors (speakers) - I've been working with crappy hi-fi speakers for years, and lots of my production has been based on guesswork / experience of these speakers - I hoped that these tracks would always be in the 'demo' stage, and that I'd go into a proper studio to finish them off. However, if I'm really serious, this is a vital investment. So I borrowed some money and bought some Fostex PM1s yesterday! That was great fun: the rather petite Rachael and I traversed the run from Charing Cross road to Brixton with not-inconsiderable effort (these things weigh about 10kg/22lb each, and a bit of an armful). There are rather a lot of steps at Tottenham Court Road tube station! Rachael bought a little trolly and learned all about the subtle topologies of several pavements. My arms ache today.
Mmmm.... New speakers. They are very nice indeed. I can actually hear what I'm doing! Plus I'm commandeering my big computer (currently in my flat's living room for general use) to speed things up by a couple of hundred percent.
Yeah, so I've prepared a new mailing list to send demos to some proper weird music labels (Ninja Tune, Warp, Rephlex and Domino) and I feel optimistic about getting responses.
I'm gonna start working 2 extra days a month to give me enough money to live on.
Sheee. I think that's the main news headlines for this week.
The meeting didn't feel like the punch in the guts it could have been - I still feel positive (I reckon my music's about 67% good enough, and I know how to raise the standard summore). I am disappointed nevertheless. What was Oliver Smallman thinking when he first got in touch?!
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2:16:26 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Thursday, January 08, 2004::
㊞
I invented a tap!
A shower tap that controls the temperature of the water in proportion to the angle it is rotated. One degree of rotation equals a change in temperature one degree centigrade. From 0-360 degrees. It is perfect.* Shower 3 degrees too cold? No problem! Just rotate the tap 3 degrees clockwise! (Or was that anticlockwise?)
*WARNING: Do operate this device until you have been fully trained. Do not wash your children.
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2:27:05 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
::Wednesday, January 07, 2004::
㊧
Driving License
I'm doing a "European Computer Driving Licence" thing at work today. Surprisingly obscure questions (e.g. 'Who coined the phrase 'Information Superhighway''*and 'Can computer games teach useful skills?'** and 'True or False: The Microsoft Corporation owns the Internet') Not reading the course material makes things more interesting, but it's only my conscience that's stopping me occasionally consulting Google. You get a bizarre little passport thingy to record your test results and the glittering reward consists of a Framed Certificate and a little credit card thingy with a hologram on it. Wonderful stuff.
On the music front: My work mate said there might be some (reasonably hefty) fashion show commissions available if I'm interested. Could be a nice little earner, and postpone the need to go back to doing more hours at work.
It's all looking not-too-bad. Not much to be paranoid about. Which is nice.
Oh yeah - whorecull now exists as part of cinestatic (here) although I'm not sure when we will deem this to be "official". There's still some work to be done integrating it efficiently (along with the enetation comments that don't work 80% of the time).
What a thriving community this is turning into! [Arr no! I'm jinxing it! Arr!].
See you later folks.
*I read about Bill Clinton's pioneering adoption of the phrase only 2 days ago from James Gleick's "What Just Happened". But the correct answer, to my slight annoyance, was Al Gore.
** "The Typing Of The Dead"! What a game! The reason I can touch type! But have they heard of it...? Possibly not, though the answer was still "Yes", so no need for an angry letter.
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3:11:19 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Techstuff
::Tuesday, January 06, 2004::
㊇
Paranoiamality
I've been quite paranoid this week... Returning to my flat, seeing the lights off, the first idea that occurs to me is that some ultra-stealthy burglars are in the process of cleaning out my stuff and when I open the front door I will be stabbed in the neck. Opening my email I have a flash-prediction that a close friend has suddenly decided to send me a 10-screen-long letter describing all my inadequacies in great detail with pure malicious hatred, describing how their life has been ruined by my influence. Standing on the tube platform with Rachael I imagine that I might decide as the train arrives that I should scare her out of her hiccoughs by pretending to push her in front of the train ("saved your life!") but my grip is not tight enough and she falls onto the tracks, she scrabbles to get up again with "why?" in her eyes and the train hits her, and I collapse into body-wrenching eye-pushing devastated tears and the strangers on the platform descend on me and beat me to a pulp with their bare hands, and I deserve it.
Just the first thoughts that have been popping into my head in everyday situations. If something bad hasn't happened for a while, I get nervous. The more I have to lose, the more I expect to lose it (usually, somhow through my own weakness), the more I am afraid to take any risks. This is anti-complacency gone mad. Idiosyncratic habitual thought patterns whose influence I strain to escape from.
"Think positive!"
Yes. That would be a good default...
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3:15:06 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
㉲
Crisp Packets
Let's tidy that crisp packet away and put some stuff up here.
I've been reluctant to blog for a while because I've only been able to think of personal or sensitive subjects and I don't want to make a mess.
I been working on an album. It came together quite suddenly and is in the final stages now. I didn't manage to get any work done over the holiday season, but I suppose that was to be expected (I just read my frustrated entry from this time last year at my lack of xmas progress!). Preliminary hearings have been positive, by and large, despite my (inevitably) dwindling satisfaction with my work. I've been coming up against my laptop's frustrating lack of processing power (cos I've been using my other, much faster, computer and my expectations have been raised) - it's starting to feel like the weak link, especially where tweaks or sweeping changes are required. It takes ages to load my tracks to tweak a snare sound or retune something, and then I have to wait ages for it to render again. This is the downside of being 'nearly finished' - these small changes are much less fun than the big ones. I'm (half-) fighting my tendency to make stupid great changes to tracks when all they need are a few tweaks.
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3:14:50 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
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