| 2008 2007 2006 YGP (2005-2006) HISTORY | The Means |
Friday, December 1st, 2006
Did I say, "a little amp in my future"? Maybe I'll just use the little amp in my basement. It's not quite as little as I'd prefer, but a few minutes of work last night seemed to prove that I needn't buy any gear right now - I just need to consider using what I've got a little differently.
Then, off to a pub to visit with old friends, one of whom has returned to New England to bury a loved one. This will dominate the agenda for much, if not all, of the weekend.
Thursday, November 30th, 2006
Damn, this cold is persistent. And severe. Everyone wants to know if it's the flu. I still don't know the difference. The most annoying feature this past week is a left ear full of... something.
Monday night was a trip. I arrived well-early in hopes of scoring a little stage time to set up and (you may laugh at this) maybe even soundcheck. Instead, we were met with the same manic vibe I recall from years past at Cafe 9 - a recollection I'd kind of blurred into my own potential for mania and stagefright. Set up time at the Cafe 9's Monday night show, by default, takes a back seat to the priority of getting acts on and off stage instantaneously - a priority whose pay-off I would question, personally - and in this instance matters were complicated by our being neither a solo act, nor an acoustic act, as was apparently anticipated. None of this had been mentioned when we were booked, so we all ignored the disconnect when we noticed our set being advertised as such a couple of weeks ago. Anyhow, the business end of all this rambling = I had no sense of my guitar sound until the first song began, whereupon I had the very strong sense that it sucked. I also had no sense as to how much of it was being inflicted upon the audience until after the show - quite a lot as it happens, enough to scare people out of the room. All of which leads me to wonder why manufacturers go to so much trouble to put faders and knobs all over their mixing boards when, by and large, they are ignored...
I managed to have fun despite knowing full well that we'd (mostly) performed poorly. Our wives/ girlfriends had joined us and were in good spirits, the audience was kind, and Trace, again, managed to reach at least one person through all the technical problems. I've since heard the recordings and seen the photos, and I can offer my final verdict: Junkie Stir was really appalling, especially the entirely tuneless vocals; Trace was good, but not as good as it seemed to me in the moment; One More Red Nightmare was not as bad as I imagined it to be - we faked our way through OK. Lastly, the singer is quite ugly and makes really odd faces when he sings OMRN.
Listening back to recent performances at Smokin' Sandies is like night and day. Cafe 9 is a really weird-sounding room (maybe because the performers aren't exactly in it) and whenever we record there, the vocals dominate the mix, this time despite complaints that we were over-the-top guitar-heavy in "real life". Hmm... This is definitely a venue suited to traditional acts, with the PA handling the traditional task of carrying the vocals, and the performers otherwise carrying their own guns to the stage. It doesn't have to be that way, but I am plainly bucking the trend at my own (and the other Means') peril.
So now I've been scared into reconsidering my guitar set up. Going straight to the board gives me a lot of flexibility with a minimum amount of gear, and I remain convinced that it can work. But there are just so very many ways to make it not work. Counting on a soundman is suicide at these tiny little gigs. It's ironic that the only way I can see my Guitar Rig to PA approach working reliably is if we were playing serious venues with time alotted for proper soundchecks, at which point my stubborn minimalism would become largely superfluous. Gotcha. So maybe there's a little amp in my future after all.
Lazy since. My latest vice: a new CRPG called Gothic 3.
Monday, November 27th, 2006
Idling a little low today. Thanksgiving was happy and bountiful, but also difficult given this persistent illness. Tzu and I have been trading some flu/cold/plague variant back and forth for a couple of weeks and it has evolved into a considerable foe. Bad timing, as Tzu's parents were expected for Thanksgiving - their first visit to our home - and no small amount of cleaning, shopping, and cooking were in order. On social occasions, they are inclined to stay up quite late playing games and talking, and this has no bearing on their inclination to rise at the crack of dawn - by which time I was the walking, coughing, dribbling dead. I returned them to the airport on Friday, then crawled into bed until Sunday morning. In that time, I was in turns convinced that I would need to have all of my teeth removed, that I would never swallow again, and that I would go deaf from infection. The dreams were equally entertaining.
So tonight, the Means are playing a short set at Cafe 9. I'd looked forward to this performance, my first time there in - wow, 4 years?? But in my present condition I have no idea what to expect. I haven't sung a note in more than a week - breathing is challenging enough - and could only practice guitar briefly last night. Anyway, in recent performances I've found my singing to be as haphazardly pitchy as ever, and my guitar playing is perhaps not what it was, but my sense of time and place - more simply, my attention span - is much improved. I owe this last bit largely to work in Guitar Craft in recent years. Ironically, I suspect that I owe the decline in my electric guitar playing, in part, to that same work (but much of this can also be attributed to simple laziness - or we could be kind and call it a shift in priorities.) Tonight will be an interesting test as to whether this improvement in attention holds up under duress. The formerly common incidents of "time travel" where I forget what measure I'm counting, what verse I'm singing, what song I'm playing, what instrument I'm holding, etc. are far less common then in 2003 for instance, but today sitting up without drooling requires considerable effort, so anything is likely.
I hope, at least, that we can get a decent mix on stage and to the audience. I've been changing too many variables at once with the Guitar Rig setup, and at our last performance the audience complained that they couldn't hear me - and one trusted listener recommended that I get an amp. Not the response I was hoping for.
Wednesday, November 15th, 2006
Lots of yardwork on Saturday. My left wrist pretty much useless until Sunday morning, when I prepped for the Means like a kid cramming for exams. Didn't make it past the first chapter, which in this instance meant playing Wicked World over and over. Was definitely not up to the solo...
Either way, Sunday night was a pleasant surprise on all counts. The band was just clicking. Tim arrived with his thoughts very well-organized, and we all benefited by establishing our immediate and not-so-immediate goals, in terms of practice time and performance. We got through all the material, with time to have dinner together, and made it out to the open mic where we performed 6 pieces. Most importantly, we rehearsed and then performed Spilt, thereby pulling it out of Limbo. With the possible exception of One More Red Nightmare, I think we did justice to all the songs. Trace seemed to really connect with some of the folks at the bar, or perhaps the cheers were coincidental. The audience was somewhat larger and considerably more discerning than last time. For the band: several compliments, one hug, and one person trying to convince el jefe that she meant "wanky" in a good way. Hmm...
Thursday, November 9th, 2006
Let some time slip without writing. Too much to try to back-track with any kind of thoroughness. Watched Zappa Play Zappa, carved pumpkins, that kinda stuff.
All 3 Means fell ill this past week, so no rehearsal, no performances. I did, however, finalize the structure of Spilt, including an acceptable bass part for the solo break. This was facilitated by a tiny new recording interface that allows me to geek out in the dining room as effectively as in the basement. That's the good news; the bad news is that our Chinchillas fill the dining room with enough dust to kill any electronic devices in range instantly (per my estimates.)
Queensryche tomorrow night. Not wowed by the latest album, but I do like Mindcrime (I). I hope the sound at the Oakdale is louder than usual - you shouldn't be able to chat during a heavy metal concert.
Friday, October 27th, 2006
It feels like things are easing up, finally. Of course, I felt the same way around this time yesterday, and then all Hell broke loose(r). The only good thing about this week - or, arguably, the very worst thing about this week - is that I did not experience the passage of time at all. It was like one singular, sustained bitch-slap. It's Monday morning, ow, ow, quit it... hey, it's Friday.
Dragged myself to jefe's for band practice last night - and he seemed like he was running on fumes, too. I didn't play anything of consequence (excepting one take of the intro to Trace which we all agreed - a first - hit the mark) but it was an interesting excercise in communication for us. We used a bit of sheet music Tim had provided as a basis for structured improv (and I'm suddenly reminded of a guitar teacher who would refer to my frequent mistakes while reading music as "composing".) Later, I proposed a new bed of chord changes to serve as a solo section for Spilt, and we got into a good discussion about the actual meaning of the song vs. the purpose of the solo. At this point, I'm just throwing shit against the wall, hoping some of it will make a pleasing sound when it hits, but Tim is not going to let me off that easy. Good for him.
I've neglected to mention: there are new clips of a Yorktown Guitar Project performance on the YGP audio page and... yeah, I'll just say so... some of it sounds quite good.
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
Christ what a week. Death by day job. A hacker decided to hit us the same weekend a big software upgrade was underway. So I come in Monday, already expecting a heavy workload, and walk directly into the Perfect Geek Storm. It's Wednesday afternoon and I'm just coming up for air.
Too much coffee, not enough sleep. No creative work or even practice this week. Just work and recover.
Friday, October 20th, 2006
If you're reading this at all, it's one small victory for me. I bought into some new server space and the web site (perhaps moreso, the webmaster) is experiencing growing pains. URL forwarding and Nameservers and various other things I'd just as soon not know about. The Means site is limping along, but the Yorktown Guitar Project site seems to be having a tougher time of it.
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
A very long weekend for me - took the first three days of the work week off - and not uneventful. First our furnace blew up, flooding the basement. Repairs kept us busy on and off for a couple of days. I'm now convinced that the basement will continue to flood bi-weekly for any number of reasons until I tear out the carpeting I installed last year.
Our beloved hamster, Pearl, passed away on Sunday, breaking Tzu's heart and in turn my own. We gave her a very nice burial, with flowers and treats, and tears.
[This] Means performed in public on Sunday night, for the first time since January, and for the second time ever. The crowd was not intimidating, comprised as it was of the soundman and a couple of guys who'd strayed from the bar. But it was a fun set in a good room with (surprise!) an excellent PA. And the guy running the show - an open mic - had a great attitude concerning my unconventional setup. I was happy with the performance overall. The originals were solid - if I had to guess: good, even. And where the covers failed we were able to identify a couple of simple problems, which were addressed to good effect during last night's practice.
Notably (though I didn't actually notice until this morning), this was the first time I'd ever performed with a laptop, after so many years of talking about it. I'm pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it went, and how good everything sounded. There's still a little something lacking tonewise when I reach for a solo, but I'm confident I can get it dialed in. Thanks in part to Live 6, the process of refining my guitar sounds and organizing the other voices available via MIDI has become very organic. It feels like the instrument is adapting to me as much as the opposite now, which is very refreshing.
Friday, October 13th, 2006
I have never so wished I'd worn earplugs to a concert as to last night at the Melvins'. My first real tinnitus scare in about 4 years, and man it's a doozy.
If I were a cop in a buddy movie I would say something like, "I'm gettin' too old for this shit." Also, I would be one week from retirement, with a bullet in my shoulder... but I'm gonna make it.
Friday the 13th in October. Gotta love it.
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
Developing browser-based software for public consumption is a good recipe for ulcers, male pattern baldness, et al. A new release today was promptly met with a huffy complaint. Paraphrased to enhance intelligence: "...Your website did not [function properly]. I suspect this is because I refuse to use Microsoft [Internet] Explorer. Lost a sale. Sorry." (Notably the last two sentences could have been replaced with this one: "Please submit this order.")
As a bug report, this is perfectly legitimate; as an Op-Ed column I find it somewhat less compelling. Let's summarize:
You suspect you experienced an uncommon problem due to your using an uncommon browser? What an excellent hunch, and perhaps informed by your experiencing problems elsewhere on the web? Yet you cling to said browser as if some noble political bearing were implied? Ahh - presumably because Microsoft is the Great Evil Empire™ and all. So you run Firefox on a computer whose components are primarily manufactured in some sweatshop in Indonesia. Way to save the world, asshole.
Oh, who am I kidding? I'm as huffy as the next guy. Likely worse.
And in my personal life, more broad Karmic strokes. Will someone please buy Karma a roll of masking tape? And perhaps find Karma a good therapist, as Karma's memory is absurdly long.
Good, solid band practice last night. Melvins tonight. Where I expect no one shall be able to hear me growling.
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
Back from London for some time now, but shying away from any voluntary typing due to wrist issues... complicated by tons of non-voluntary typing... all of which could lead to... Involuntary Muscle Contractions?
Celebrated the 2nd Anniversary of my wedding last night. Today, the air is cool and the sky is gray in a comforting way. Much to be happy for, even through the haze of excess caffeine.
Not to belittle his transgressions otherwise... but first and foremost, Mark Foley has single-handedly destroyed public radio. Is anything really news for a month? I don't know whether to be pissed or grateful that coverage of North Korean nukes pales in comparison to that concerning some horny old Republican.
Was all revved to up to drive out and gig with the Means tonight, til I found out the gig would not be there, and neither would the Means. Basement del jefe it is, then.
Friday, September 22nd, 2006
An actual convergence of all three Means on Wednesday night. This was both productive and pleasant - the ol' 1-2 knockout which will keep this band afloat. At the end, we agreed to start "hanging around in bars in hopes of exposing ourselves in public." And if that ain't a lofty aspiration then I can't think of one.
Watched a very powerful film last night and chose not to cry. This could mark the beginning of a whole new trend for me...
Now, then - London.
Monday, September 18th, 2006
Did I say, "the grand scheme of human idiocy"? I guess I meant: "this weekend".
Friday, September 15th, 2006
More and more difficult to read the news. Sometimes all I can think to do is pray.
In what really ought to qualify as "lighter news", but in the grand scheme of human idiocy probably will not, the Pope has managed to incense pretty much the entire Muslim faith. The offending words (not his own, but rather a quote) speak to Mohammed's famed call to arms against unbelievers. I don't carry much love for "spiritual leaders" who profess the need for violence, but it is notable that much blood has also been spilled for Christianity. Judge not and all. Nevertheless, this response caught my eye:
“Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
Well, I'm not even going to get into the irony (except to claim that I haven't), but let's begin with the obvious: should it really be that easy to encourage violence? This is supposed to be a matter of faith - perhaps our highest faculty. Can't we at least rise to "sticks and stones may break my bones etc..."? Hell, even the atheists know that one.
As far as I can tell, all this crap amounts to the same religion in the first place. But every time a messenger arrives with the Word of God™, we screw it all up and worship the messenger. And then we get back to killing each other.
But getting back to the silly little life for which I can only be grateful... The autumn weather has really turned me around. The first cool spell of September came and I felt my entire nervous system relax about three notches. Enjoying the slow pace and my various hobbies. Strange (and often unsettling) that a life like mine can be passing alongside the lives I read about in the news. It's a small world, but there is plenty of room for disparity.
A little eureka moment in NST last night, while working on a solo for Splilt. Trying to find some workable phrasing to make my NST improv sound like "me" (at least insofar as my OST improv sounds like "me") I realized that if I let go of the predilection to position the first finger over the root of a scale I'm working with and - in this case - apply the fourth finger (that's the pinky, not the ring finger as you pianists might expect) as such, several essential blues phrases become available in a comfortable, and therefore expressive, way. There's the root under the pinky, and on the next string up, there's the 5th, flat 5th, 4th, and 3rd, just waiting for bends and pull-off runs resolving back down to the root. Two strings up, of course: the 7th and another root. Good stuff, don't know why it took ~20 years to find it. (If you aren't already shaking your head and saying, "duh...", then go try it!)
Thursday, September 7th, 2006
Woah, hey, where have I been?
Difficult to sum up the weeks I've let slide since writing here. Tons of rain and some dramatic flooding. Associated home improvement stuff. Yawn. Coasting along for the most part: working the 9-5, tinkering mildly in the basement, etc. A long weekend featuring visits from friends I hadn't seen in ages...
A second Means rehearsal at jefe's place last week - a positive experience. Although it's a shame to see my sprawling, shiny new basement underused, it is refreshing to play in a place where I don't feel so... accountable... for every little thing. I pretty much arrive, set up my little laptop, and shut up and play my guitar. Easy. (We shall see whether this vibe persists once el jefe takes on recording.) The band is sounding mostly solid even having taken on some more challenging covers. We're treading water on account of our staggered traveling schedules, but there is much hope for world (or perhaps New Haven) domination in the Fall.
Struggling with an ear infection these past couple of weeks. Missed Rob Zombie's visit to Toad's place on account of this. Had been looking forward to seeing John5 play guitar in person.
Back to London at the end of the month. Tentative plans with GC pals seem more tentative than ever. I imagine I will be asocial by default.
Wednesday, August 16th, 2006
Sold my car yesterday - a car I hadn't actually driven in many months, but a car that held some personal significance for me. I'd ignored it for too long, but when the sale pressed me to get things in order - for instance, to start it - seller's remorse kicked in hard. But that's not what kept me up last night. What kept me up last night was the general sense of violation that accompanies "commerce" with strangers.
It would seem I asked too little for this car; within hours of its posting people were fighting to buy it. It got a little unsavory and it was hard work just trying to "do the right thing." I promised I would address the inquiries in order. Inquirer #2 so wanted the car that he thought I'd be swayed by the grade point average and sporting activities of the nephew who'd be driving it. Bizarre and slightly creepy. (I remember a lawyer once tried to rally behind my innocence in a traffic offense by asking me whether I played football. Ain't justice grand?) He also explained that he liked to be "precise" about things, as if this implied things should be precisely as he liked them. Beneath the "helpful uncle" exterior I could sense a bully pulsing away, bordering on aggressive. (Even the nephew, occasionally calling himself, sounded a little spooked.) Yet I remained sympathetic, besides which, he was closer and a surer bet than Inquirer #1. So I called I1 to explain the situation and guage his position. I1 was "100% certain" he wanted the car and would be there with trailer shortly. I shut down all other inquiries - not an easy task - only to have I1 arrive and...
Haggle. And I knew that to take a dollar off my price was wrong given the desperate line of potential buyers behind this guy, but just to MAKE IT STOP, I caved. No significant amount of money, just enough to make my skin crawl. I'd have paid twice the amount I conceded just to fall asleep last night. But I'm left wondering why people insist, regardless of the circumstances, on dickering (remove 2 letters strategically, in private company) around with one another. I was not aiming to profit - in these matters my M.O. is to be fair or better, in order to keep things simple (not least for myself.) When the other party fails to recognize this, or act in accordance, I lose twice. And this is the haunting, recurring conclusion: I let people off too easily, just to get them out of my face.
Happily, I have surrounded myself with people who are better than that, but when I cross paths with strangers, it usually costs me something.
More words on this than intended, but that was pretty much the whole night. Got the car sold very quickly. Cleaning house big-time. Wanna buy a guitar?
Tuesday, August 15th, 2006
Right up to Thursday I was struggling with the question: whether to contact my Guitar Craft friends in London who've so graciously invited me to dinner etc. on my next visit. I've never been comfortable imposing myself, except with people I've known in a personal capacity for many years, and elements of Guitar Craft culture complicate this further. In any event, the matter was taken out of my hands - I got the news concerning security at Heathrow on Thursday morning, and by afternoon our trip was off.
The good news is we're still reaping the benefits of the timeline imposed by the travel. For two weeks prior Tzu and I rushed to get the house in order. A new room is finished in the attic, and the utility half of the basement is now every bit as clean as the studio half. (I will spare the returning reader any further photography of my basement, knowing that the empty space is probably most exciting to myself.) This left us with a relatively sprawling weekend, during which I fiddled with my guitar setup a bit, and prepared properly for last night's Means rehearsal at casa del jefe - the first in weeks.
Rehearsal went well, barring one specific, unexplained MIDI failure, cause TBD. I think we benefited from the time off; I know I benefited from the time off. The existing material sounds strong, excepting the solo in Spilt (which - now that I'm paying attention - sounds more like a hole in the middle of the song than a "solo".) And we've added a cover of One More Red Nightmare which we got straight through on our first attempt - I was pleased; jefe was just thrilled.
After rehearsal 2/3 of the Means dropped by Cafe 9 for a beer per. Instead, wound up with 2 beers per, and 2 gigs - a short set in November and a full set in February. Another timeline imposed, hopefully again with benefits to be reaped.
Monday, August 7th, 2006
Meaning to start writing again... though it's easy enough to question the necessity of this. The distance between the Means is precarious right now, and maybe that justifies keeping some words available here. With every day that passes without an update, I would expect the already small readership to shrink (fast approaching a count of 0.) That's an argument for and against maintenance, I guess, but I'll just go with "for".
The last couple of weeks have been very busy. In the summer it is suddenly everyone's birthday at the same time. And we've been very busy with home restoration projects. Cleaning out attic and basement and scrubbing and painting... much like the work I did in October. Days and days of heavy lifting to the dump, all in the midst of a serious heat wave.
Practicing has been uneven but productive, I think. The test will come next month, when the Means reconvene in el jefe's basement. Between business travel and vacations we're not likely to meet any sooner.
Next week: back to London.
Thursday, July 20th, 2006
Last night: celebration, rest, bicycle training, MIDI guitar tweakage. (1 guitar successful, 1 guitar requiring further investigation.)
Tonight's missions, should I choose to accept them: Entertain a guest arriving from TX, practice (with focus on Means' covers), work out (also trying to scale down the instrument which is this aging person.)
Wednesday, July 19th, 2006
Last night's watchword was: "scalability". Having acheived a workable "full setup" over the weekend, I set about addressing the need for something very, very, very portable (allowing that most guitarists would consider any laptop-based rig uncommonly portable.) We will soon face the prospect of open mics and such where setup and "sound check", such as it is, take place in less time than you will spend reading this sentence. Sometimes literally. So, in addition to a laptop plus footpedals plus various doodads and AC adaptors to achieve an unusual (and hopefully enjoyable) variety of timbres, I devised a configuration that will meet the most basic rock band requirements - a cleanish sound and a heavyish sound - with nothing but my guitar, my laptop, and the cable between (and the wildcard that is the house PA, of course.) Biggest concession: no synths. But this will provide a comfortable stepping stone toward bringing a complex, unproven setup out to suspicious soundmen and innocent audients.
Tonight's mission, should I choose to accept it: minimize ghost notes from the guitars' MIDI outs.
Three years to the day I first met my wife - a blessing.
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
Spent the weekend in the basement, at war with gear and trying to hang on to some shred of faith in the creative process. Saturday and most of Sunday were quite bleak, with me occasionally surfacing for air, to complain to Tzu, and to threaten to sell everything, give up music, etc etc etc. The next logical step having paused to consider "Why Guitar Craft?" perhaps? "Why guitar?", "Why music?", "Why get up in the morning?" I felt like I was running on pure inertia - playing guitar because the basement happens to be full of them, in the same way you might wash your car because, well, you own a car. This is obviously not enough.
So I tore apart and built a few different rigs, boggled and raged at the myriad ways in which they only just barely fell short of my needs (it is difficult to imagine that the endless parade of "this would work if this were not broken, so we'll just use this except that this is broken..." were not intentionally engineered by some sadistic genius), and had nearly given up when I found the final permutation of software, amplification, MIDI and hardware control that I've been playing for the past two nights.
Late Sunday night something clicked. I had attempted to shift the focus of my rig from GR2 to the Vetta, and failed, then arrived back at GR2 with just the right combination of footpedals to manage patches, their volumes, the looper... Then I began to play, quite loudly. The tones I was getting were just amazing - liquid but punchy and articulate (Jeff Beck came to mind) - and I played, without a doubt, the best guitar of my life. There were several moments where I thought, "that was the best note I've ever played." This experience, after so much frustration and essentially a musical drought, felt related to crying, but not so passive. Guitar time since has been less a matter of practicing than of assaulting this solution outright - guitars, laptop, and all - until it can prove itself as responding, reliably, like a musical instrument. (Monday night was not so awe-inspiring as Sunday night, but neither did anything break.)
All amounting to this: playing the notes, and feeling their meaning (in fact "meaning" is an insufficient word here) is primary. The recordings, and even the songs, must serve that primary thing, not the other way around. Get it backwards, and you are going to run out of fuel.
So in light of this new epiphany, I'm suddenly more interested in filling up the Gigs page than the Audio page. But even that is secondary.
Meanwhile the news gets thicker and thicker with real problems to make a hobbyist's Blog look all the more absurd. And closer to home I read that at least one former YGP member is managing difficulties far greater than my own. I send my best wishes.
Friday, July 14th, 2006
I think I came a little too close to congratulating myself in my last entry, with an ironic outcome: the new track was removed from the audio page before there was even room to post its announcement. On our shoestring budget of $0 (less than we have but perhaps as much as our audience would justify), the MP3 and my notes concerning the MP3 - last week's contribution to the journal - could not coexist. Yet another Heisenberg-ish Catch-22. No matter. I returned from a long weekend out of town and listened - mainly in horror - to this new mix. Best case, irrelevant; worst case, embarrassing. Back to the drawing... er, mixing board.
Said weekend out of town had other consequences. A. I tore up the studio in order to bring along gear which I might have predicted I wouldn't have time to use. B. the Means missed a week's rehearsal. Trying to patch things together and regain my stride last night, I fell on my face or my ass or probably both, and was very distraught by the end of the evening. Ready to shitcan the whole effort until about 2AM, at which point my brain went into re-engineering overdrive and I couldn't sleep for the visions of MIDI controllers and preamps dancing in my head. Blarghh.
Present condition: indeterminate.
Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
Well, well, well... less than a week after I got all tough with myself, and there is a new MP3 on the audio page! I make no claims of being "finished" with said MP3... there are all sorts of mix problems, and a very mysterious compression anomoly that makes it sound like Tim missed a beat where he didn't - I swear it, I have the original tracks! Anyway, it's a start. I obviously needed to start working on my end-game anyway; maybe next go will be faster and I can get a little more level out of the final mix.
This is something of a milestone, since it's the first time since this site went live that you can actually hear the current lineup. The new version was recorded live excepting a second guitar to fatten things up, and dubbed vocals (which sit a little awkwardly on top, at the moment.) Ironically, I can't post the journal entry I'm now allowed to write, because our little corner of the server is full. It's always something...
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
No more journal entries until there are new MP3's on the audio page. And that's final. (Slaps self on wrist...)
Monday, June 26th, 2006
Not quite right this past week. I've been somewhere between discomfort and pain since that last dental thing, and work is really grinding on me. Stress through the roof; I can feel it twisting around under the skin in my face. Must... re... lax. On a positive note, I played a bit more guitar than usual this weekend.
Tzu has a new job (hurray!) and el jefe has a new house!
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2006
Brutal time at the dentist. 3 fillings and more laser on the gums. Tzu asked if it hurt, I told her it hurt my wallet. (It did.) But to tell the whole unmanly truth, I also pissed and moaned all night, and she brought me ice cream. Mostly I was exhausted, and nauseous from swallowing my own spit for two hours... Yah, TMI. Make you wonder what you're doing here? Me too, actually.
Finally to the basement for Means-prep - where serious anger management issues arise (and I'm not sure whether they recurred or just persisted at work this morning...) For students of the anger = fear philosophy, it's obvious that what scares me is the way time will just slip away when I'm trying to get something that ought to be simple done - a process that's pretty much a given whenever I'm in the same room with anything with a power cord.
Good news from Tzu, just now - more later.
Tuesday, June 21st, 2006
A miserable day yesterday, which I tried to remedy by way of a couple of beers - big mistake. Drinking is always a roll of the dice; you'll either feel a bit better or much worse. And the older I get the more the dice seem to be loaded against me. Nothing so romantic as a deeper depression, or even a hangover for that matter. Stupid old-man stuff like painful gas is what happens when I roll snake eyes nowadays.
We wrap it all up with an infuriating night of no sleep. *&$#@ traitor AC. !$##@ cats. *)#$#&^$ spastic chinchillas. &@#$@*&@# ancient Indian (sic) burial grounds. No sleep whatsoever. And I'm off to what I expect will be an exceptionally fun dental appt. in a few. My mission, should I choose to accept it: do not nod off, and do not vomit.
Made some progress on mixing down last month's Means on Monday, have not gone near it since. Postponed rehearsal as I was not prepared to make the most of it.
Thursday, June 15th, 2006
Joined jefe and Tim at Cafe 9 last night, to see our old friends Pthalo perform. They put on a fine show, and when I called for an encore, they tossed out a completely unexpected cover of Fairies Wear Boots! Which pretty much made my whole day.
Other than that, some bicycle time, some acoustic guitar time, and I copied a bunch of data over to my laptop so's I can listen to Means rehearsals whilst geeking out at work. Harder than I'd imagined - I keep realizing a half hour's gotten by and the music has made no specific impression whatsoever. Frightening for all sorts of reasons.
And then there's this, from a discussion elsewhere regarding (I am not making this s*** up) a genre called "HappyCore":
him: I want to blow my brains out when I hear that. Seriously.
me: I want to blow my brains out every time I hear a new name for a sub-sub-sub-genre. (They pop up about hourly now.) Isn't it all getting a little too granular? What passes for a genre these days used to be called a "song title". Maybe I'm just too old to keep up...
him: haha... try and look at Ishkur's guide to electronic music ...
me: Afraid to look. I'm pretty sure my head will just explode, and then what will I do with all these bullets?
me again: I looked. Now speaking to you directly out of the hole on the top of my neck...
Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
the Means last night: JS, Spilt, Blossom, (Blossom, Blossom...), April Showers, (April Showers, April Showers...)
Not bad, but my solos were consistently stinky. For a guy so obsessed with guitars, I'm playing very little guitar lately, and it shows.
I ignored all the security alerts I got at work yesterday, went home and promptly downloaded a "Windows Update" that infected my PC. So, no recording last night. Probably for the best - the Means have been filling up considerable hard drive space, and I scarcely have time to listen back to all of it, let alone sift out the good bits.
I feel like we're ready for a performance challenge - there's enough material and some of it is solid. But logistics (from equipment concerns to job schedules) all but rule out the open mic scene for us, which means we'll probably need to leap-frog into a full-length gig. This gives me the butterflies; excepting our one little outing in January, I haven't played electric in public in two and a half years. I remember it being a lot like chewing gum and riding a bronco at the same time. Anyway...
Tuesday, June 13th, 2006
"Creative time is the future reaching back, pulling us towards it." -Robert Fripp
Or, you could read from a source that goes much further,
here.
Oh, how the weekend got away from me. Aside from a few chores, I couldn't muster the energy to do a damned thing. Worse - I couldn't even muster the energy to enjoy my sloth. There is never nothing I want to do, but in this state of exhausted boredom that was the illusion.
Fatigue is winning the battle. Trouble sleeping in this summer heat. The AC in the bedroom has joined the other side. Either that or our bedroom was built over an ancient Indian [sic] burial ground. The room is consistently hotter than any other room in the house, and hotter than the outdoors, no matter how many electrons we waste there. And I'm pretty sure we ran out of O2 weeks ago. The door remains closed against shedding cats and spastic chinchillas. S.O.S.
the Means are on for an early visit tonight - rescheduled in support of more realty adventures del jefe. And I have nothing new to offer. This terrifying pattern continues: a week slips by, then another. The time between Means arrivals in which I might write, mix, practice even, seems to compress down to nothing. I know that's not the truth - I'm just spending obscene amounts of time "resting" - apparently with little effect.
Friday, June 9th, 2006
Quiet night last night. A bit of housework, some time on the bicycle, and a little resistance training (formerly, "weights".) Then we wound down for the night by playing video games. (Until very recently I felt compelled to distinguish between "video games" and "computer games", but the distinction between the two is all but nil at this point.) Tzu is still very addicted to World of Warcraft - whereas I seem to be over everything except Ableton Live for the moment - but misery loves company LOL, and I was too tired to play guitar anyway.Everything seems back to normal today, with the assholes in the other cars where they belong.
Thursday, June 8th, 2006
Means last night. Lots of improv - which occasionally sounded good, but if I were to be even remotely honest, did not represent much intention on my part. When I become aware of how little I'm doing beyond selecting timbres, wanking in little pentatonic boxes, and playing the most obvious of chords, I also become aware of how shallow my vocabulary actually is. I can always work outside that vocabulary altogether, but then I have to struggle with the sense that any monkey could do what I'm doing. But which is worse?
We also put some focused work into Trace, and Tim's April Showers, and ran Junkie Stir once for fun. JS pretty much works out of the box - it's easy and it sounds cool. Trace is more challenging but we're reaching a point where I feel satisfied with it pretty consistently now - which is a big deal IMO. April Showers is coming together, the weak link having been my guitar tones; I was finally pulling them together as we were wrapping up. I wanted to spill Spilt but el jefe had to strike the PA - he's using it to run sound for Dave Brubeck this weekend. Neato!
Tired today. In fact, I noticed that I was the asshole driver not once, but twice on the way to work this morning. Take away the driver bit, and it's probably been an on-going condition.
Wednesday, June 7th, 2006
I went to bed last night in this mixed state: feeling elated and feeling like a horse's ass at the very same time. All because of a computer program which is hardly news by now: Ableton Live. See, I've had demo versions of this app. laying around the house for - literally - years, but I never bothered installing it, figuring a) demo versions are always a bother, and b) how different could it be from [my already paid for copy of] Sonar? (Enough to justify a brand-new learning curve?) But my tale gets even more idiotic: when I began to see a need for a program specialized for live performance, I ran out and bought Project 5 without testing this application named... Live... which had been underfoot the whole time! Hello? And then proceeded to struggle w/ P5 for about a year.
So it is with mixed feelings that I report that Live is the bomb. We got a "Lite" copy with Tzu's new keyboard controller, and I could ignore it no longer. I got it properly mashed together with Guitar Rig 2 and began to experiment. After about 30 minutes of "WTF?" assimilation... bliss. This is purpose-built software design at it's best. Stripped clean. Everything is where it ought to be, and the more you don't think about it, the more everything just seems to work as you'd expect. In fact, I'm using v4 at the moment and I like it so much I'm afraid to upgrade to 5.
Note: GR2 combined with Live makes for the Mother of All Looper Rigs.
Made some cool music in hurry last night and can't wait to see how this will translate to band rehearsals... and beyond. But Christ I can be slow on the uptake sometimes...
In other news: Professional stressors I should rise above and/or ignore. Gaining weight again.
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006
I just visited Robert Fripp's diary at DGMLive, and was interested by his comments about soundchecks and the quality of play without repercussion, especially after noting the energy we, the Means, felt after our friendly meeting on Saturday night. One mouse click later the little aphorism at the bottom of the screen read: "Remember to play." I might have been reminded a bit sooner, but hey - now I have a tagline to go with having learned the hard way.
No guitar last night. That time was spent editing and mixing down MP3s of Saturday's little experiments. One of the things that was happening while we listened back and marked up our raw recording that night, was that we were recognizing specific qualities and coming up with funny little titles. This process seemed to make the music more identifiable, more tangible for me - more like an accomplishment perhaps? Tim said something about this even as I was recognizing it, about how he liked to develop a sense of the purpose of the music he was recording or something to that effect. Part of me (the bad cop?) would call this putting the cart in front of the horse, packaging music that is not complete, and not entirely intentional, but part of me also sees where this process of propping things up a bit can be quite inspiring. And both parts are slowly realizing that demanding that a song be good before it even exists leads to years of inaction for me to regret.
Anyway, the piece that most interested me (which I alluded to yesteday) came in at about 17 megs, unfortunately about 8x too big for the free space available on my web service. And probably about 20x too big for anyone to really listen to anyway. I'll have to leave a little more of that one on the cutting floor.
Besides that, lots of housework and some dumb TV.
REPLY VIA EMAIL SHOW/ HIDE REPLIES
marc-
sad to read in your journal that you feel your guitar craft disciplines are not having the intended effect on rehearsal. i wanted to respond that i think in fact they have made a huge difference already in our focus from week to week.
we have all been making a better effort to communicate goals each time we get together, meager though they may be. there has been greater frequency of rehearsing minute details, anything from 4 bars to an instrumental segment, which indicates to me a greater concern for nailing down the basics before getting "[being] dream theater next year" (your words). taking those kinds of pains for a few lousy beats is the kind of thing that real ensembles do... choral and jazz ensembles i have performed with come to mind.
there has been a marked improvement in each individual's creative output in the last few weeks. jef and i continue to build a unique rapport as a rhythm section, and are eager to take risks and build upon song ideas. we owe considerable thanks in this to our free-music excercises of late. while i have long been an advocate of this, it was your idea to implement it, as was recording it, and i think it will only continue to yield better results. as you probably know, i don't ordinarily have the patience or bravery to record and listen to everything, but it's greatly enhancing my experience. we're building new ideas and listening to each other.
i would go so far as to suggest (and i have before) that we "plan" improvisation in our set once we get out to play for an audience. sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. there are a few tricks: 1) practice it enough so it's easier to jump into the intensity that occurs at the height of the improv. 2) create signals and prompts to direct improv -- simple hand signals to trigger changes in dynamics/tempo/intensity/instrumentation/etc., or the "name game," like you described in your journal entry about our last improv session, except someone says beforehand "now we're going to make believe we're composing the soundtrack to movie x. 3) know when your improv is going nowhere and call it off before the audience leaves.
also, i notice you listening more and playing less throughout rehearsal. this is not to suggest you over-play, at least not any more than any of us does. but as a fellow singer and guitarist, i know the difficulty in letting the tune breathe instead of just belting out your part. i mean, of course the guitar and vocal melody take center stage! it's rock and roll, that's how it fucking works! but lately i can feel you taking a step back and giving everyone their turn, so to speak, then reigning it back in to accomplish whatever the point of the song is... the group as a whole, and it's individual components, can only benefit and grow from this.
believe me, i aspire to discipline in practice. it was and continues to be part of why i love working with david chevan in cmo... i hate dumb rock guys who don't know when to put their instrument down! since i began playing with him almost 5 years ago, i have longed to bring discipline to the rock bands i've been in, just to maintain some sanity and sense of order. hell, if it were my choice alone, i would have us rehearse 2 or 3 times per week. but order has destructive capabilities as well as the necessary ones. so much creativity is bred of chaos, and an abundance of order can be stifling.
anyway, my point is that there is a heightened sense of purpose lately when we convene, better channels of communication, and in general a good vibe. there is still room for improvement, for the allowance of both order and chaos. it will come in time. be positive, we're making good progress.
i hate journal writing, but consider this an entry, if you are so inclined.
-gos
Wow, Tim - thanks for this very thoughtful reply. I'm very, very happy that you're feeling so positive about the band's efforts - hell I was happy enough that you stayed on! - and I don't want to be misunderstood on this: I do recognize the progress we're making, and I am feeling positive myself. Some of the qualities we're developing are common to my GC experience and some of them are more universal to the creative process - particularly a group endeavor. As for the elements of Guitar Craft practice which I feel I failed to bring to the table... well these are very specific things and they're rather difficult to express except by way of prolonged experience. That I hoped to present them with such immediacy, and while in a rather uncertain state myself, was poor judgement on my part. I think if I get my own shit together, and continue to enjoy the process we have, these qualities may present themselves. But we'll need to be paying very close attention, as they tend to speak quietly (and we tend to play loudly LOL.)
Thanks for the permission to use this on the site. I think posting a reply of this quality will definitely add to the value of the journals section.
P.S. I dig your improv suggestions, especially number 3. :)
Monday, June 5th, 2006
The Means met on a Saturday night for the first time. This is an idea we've been kicking around for quite a while, as working on a "school night" simply provides too little time, and that much being time where very little energy is left in any of us. Fine if there is a clear task to accomplish (learn X, or record Y), but a study in improbability as far as the creative process is concerned. Saturday lets us stretch out a little more, and relaxes my "pissed off" reflex if I sense that we're getting off-track. An important shift, since getting off-track is a big part of the creative process. (Slowly trying to get a hold on this concept.) For instance, eating homemade guacamole was a highlight of band practice this week. Maybe Tzu is already in the band?
Letting go has been the big Means challenge for me, lately. On return from Argentina I had this hope that I could carry some part of Guitar Craft into our practice together, but this really didn't bear out. Maybe it was unrealistic, optimistic, maybe I didn't have the strength or the vision to carry that energy in a room with two other personalities playing (and sometimes not) two very different instruments from my own, each with their own concerns and experiences. At first the group, Tim in particular, seemed receptive to the ideas I offered, then this gave way to satire (often my own), then the satire obviated the thing itself. I was disappointed, but maybe it's for the best that I let the band go where it will.
So Saturday was... playful. Lots of twiddling virtual knobs and letting the effects do the work. Lots of very simple playing while we focused on getting good sound. (And, as for my diabolical new tuning, and the question "Where will this take me I wonder?"... an answer by way of bashing on open strings mostly, and accidentally channeling Red-era KC. So a direct, if not particularly concise answer to this question will be available in MP3 format shortly.) jefe called on Sunday morning to say thanks, saying that this had been one of the best musical experiences of his life. Wow! Yes, it was good fun, and he and Tim were playing well. If I would hesitate to say anything as superlative as that, it's probably just that I was taking it a little easy myself. Which was apparently the right thing at the time.
But I was pretty charged too. Spent Sunday morning editing recordings, trying to setup band sites on Soundclick and MySpace. Finally gave up on both. MySpace, in particular, represents everything I've come to hate about the web. Unnecessary complication, blinding cross-advertising, a general artless ambition. It does offer incredible exposure, but I'd rather be unexposed than associated with all that madness. Further, MySpace is global, which highlights the recurring difficulty that "the Means" is not a unique name... Yes, thanks to technology we are now all pains in one another's asses without ever even "making it".
The corrollary to my corrolary to Warhol: "In the future [eg. now] everyone will be famous for fifteen people."
If you click on this fun little link you might just get a taste of the rush Jackson Pollock felt way back when... without making a mess of your garage. But since you've had it so easy, you'll have to be paying really, really close attention LOL.
Friday April 2nd, 2006
Massive burnout at work. Much to say about this that I wouldn't be comfortable posting in a public forum.
Tony Levin played Toad's on Wednesday night. He played a nice piano and vocal number called "Fragile as a Song", which he introduced with a great anecdote about Peter Gabriel's work recording music with apes, and about their surprising comprehension of human language. The story alone was worth the price of admission.
The other Means showed up a couple of songs into Tony's set. It was really interesting being out with them in a venue we might be playing in a few months. Really put a different spin on my sense of the future with this group, to be standing at the edge of a stage and discussing practicalities. Much more to say about the Means but no real time to dig into that.
I've resumed fiddling with the Variax in hopes of getting some usable multiple-tuning setup out of it. I've had this idea of using a tuning that sits somewhere in the middle of NST and OST, so that the detuning algorithms needn't work so hard. When I started looking for a best happy medium, this cool tuning presented itself: tritones up from a D, with a m3 on top. That is: D, Ab, D, Ab, D, F. Extremely diabolical. So now I have a guitar that can sound mediocre in two tunings, and yet a third tuning to confuse myself with. Where will this take me I wonder?
Bought Tzu a little keyboard controller for her birthday and now I am thrilled to see her playing with softsynths and sequencers and having all kinds of fun with it. She has much better patience with technology than I do, and I can already see it paying off for her. (And last night, while I was throwing a little tantrum because I couldn't get a Bluetooth mouse to work, she did something I can't recall anyone ever doing for me before. She fixed my computer! A rare treat indeed!)
Tuesday May 30, 2006
"More later." Considerably later. Still not feeling adapted to this process of writing. Strange that it would feel so foreign; it's not new, nor has it really been all that long. My best theory is that some part of the difficulty stems from having no sense of who might read this, and from having a sense that maybe no one will.
I looked back on my last YGP BBS entry to try to get some sense of... not continuity after all these days... just literary momentum. I felt a little ashamed to see that part of that text reads like a parting blow at something I've loved so much in this life, Guitar Craft. I was almost taken by this impulse to dance around and recant, but then I remembered that something felt very true, at least in that moment, in the few vague words I committed there.
This weekend I resumed sitting and practicing in earnest, for the first time since I returned from Argentina. Amazing the degree to which I simply collapsed, into and maybe beyond rest, after that course. I guess I got a good taste of "civilian life", and I'm pretty sure that's not for me. So where does this leave me? It leaves me with more than I intend to type 2 hours prior to a Means rehearsal. More later.
Monday May 22, 2006
A perfunctory first sentence (fragment) for a perfunctory first journal entry. Not sure when or whether this will feel "right" again, in this - the post-or-perhaps-between-aspirant-Crafty passage of my life - while I remain suspicious of all but the most plainly necessary commitments. These presently being: my marriage - and in lesser extents - the job, and the Means.
So no journal commitment then. Just a friendly weblog to keep myself conscious of various investments in the passage of time. And to keep in touch. Were that I could talk the rest of the Means into the same exercise...
And then... plenty to say but no words for the moment. More later.