sometimes lately I just want to scream. [and run far far away into oblivion].

submitted.

Not sure really what to say. Burnt out I guess. Nights til two a-m. Sometimes three. Pretty much yeah. But in a good way if I suppose.







Yeah in a good way stuffed in the corner of my living room.

It's been a pretty solid couple months.

But it's off to the orchestra at the eleventh-plus hour the score all hundred-and-forty-six-or-something pages and a recording.


And looking back to it I remember these particular bits and pieces. In my bedroom maybe just folding clothes or something a long time ago hearing the introduction this huge orchestration of symphony and furious piano fortississimo and all. The chord progression maybe before that a simple arpeggiated piano line with some modulation thrown on top. A little orchestration to go along with. Then eventually maybe three months ago the main theme uttered on the Bechstein in E minor starting all quiet and building up to this raging thing of sorts landing on a F major at some point the ending everything. Building the orchestrations around that from this noise in my head. Painting the bricks of the fireplace all of a sudden stopping to go over to a mic by my living room window singing some vocal melody line eventually transposed and sung by someone who can sing much better than I. Going back and forth between the kitchen and my corner to record another idea. Writing out this part or that to play on the piano scratching in pencil notes or chords to go with it spinning around to record the idea erase try another take over and over and over and over.


All of those bits and pieces now bits and bytes on a tired hard drive maybe just maybe someday something more reverberations in a music hall perhaps created instead by real instruments real musicians and such.




...




After everything though all of it I sit here in the dark now just listening to this noisy recording made late one night the tube preamps adding some warmth though to the Bechstein some theme or other in C-sharp minor unmastered unorchestrated unanything and lean back in my chair and close my eyes and fall into it like nothing else not a finished song having spent months and months composing and finessing but no rather some three minutes of me improvising on an old piano in the dark.






But here then is the full recording of Singularity or in two parts over on my reverbnation page whilst I close my eyes to the sound of an old Bechstein.










... many thanks to James for his tireless efforts of hauling it down to my place to deal with me asking for just one more take just one more take the song would not be the same without your voice ...



* image of humanoid Robonaut 2 [R2] courtesy of nasa.gov/

After six or eight or I don't really know how many weeks taking over my life the score is complete along with a rough mix that I will spend the next week or so polishing and mastering.










But for now ...










... for now it is finished.

Singularity in the key of E minor ...

We are like a star collapsing

beyond our understanding

beyond our comprehension

extrapolated rapidly-accelerating returns

integrated artificial infinite change

the world to pass ...

... to know the mind of God is to know ourselves ...

Now to just finish the laborious orchestrations ...

a snapshot of sixty-three bars.

I came across something a bit ago that - well - actually piqued my interest. Rare perhaps I don't know.

Well rare in the context it has to do with music (umm - cos I'm quite picky about the little amount of music I perceive to being acceptable to spending my time listening). And rare also as it has to do with perhaps my own music. Never easy to put out there and such but an upcoming composition competition for Seattle Rock Orchestra - whom I have been following for a while now as their style and direction seems to fall in line with my - well - symphonic rock-type of music project I am currently and continually obsessed a bit with - did catch my attention.

Already working on a song I have taken to calling 'Singularity' which is - yes - based on the theory of the technological singularity where mankind potentially evolves from carbon-based neurons to silicone-based hardware - it seemed at least partially logical to just step up its production and composition in order to potentially enter it in this somewhat unique opportunity-of-a-competition.




Singularity like a star collapsing beyond a point in accordance with the law of accelerating returns. Of integrated semi-conductor complexities. Event horizons. Feedback loops. Theoretical computations.

It was mostly just an idea in my head based on a simple harmonic minor tonic-fifth progression. Scrawled in my notebook five sections ... an introduction - middle one - middle two - orchestra - and finale. A piercing flute on the final E minor of the intro. Emphasis on the diminished A. An idea in four-part counterpoint amongst the strings during the orchestra section. A voice. Soprano-alto-tenor-bass choir. A rock ensemble and strings and flute and oboe and clarinet and bassoon and French horn and trumpet and trombone and percussion and timpani in E and B and ...

... and of course piano.

Of course piano. Three-four triplets up and down the keyboard for the first minute-twenty before a fortissimo E minor introduces the first of the middle sections.

And that is all I have for now.

Sixty-three bars. And much work to be done. So enough rambling and back to orchestrations.

the theory of the singularity.

It is just an idea.





A theory.





The singularity. The still-hypothetical emergence of artificial intelligence through technological means. An eventual merging of technology and human biology of sorts. A point when computers are no longer in our pockets but rather we ... become ... the computer. Of course we will not realize when this happens and so the very idea of the singularity will form more as what has been termed an 'intellectual event horizon.' We will not see it coming. It will have already happened.







As autumn is now in full swing and I am wrapped up for the next six months indoors it is time to move forward with this project of mine called Carbon. There are three songs on the immediate to-do list. And a fourth close behind. All ideas are both sketched out as well as compiled into some rough samples in Logic.


This is one.


The first. This idea of the singularity. A minute-ten. A chord progression in E minor. An enormous furious piano scales and thousands of notes as fast as I can possibly play. Up and down the keyboard. Hammering on the low end. A raging orchestra. Brass. Strings. Timpani. A huge C major. A symphonic choir. And a voice. In my head still but trying - as in all of the stuff I write it seems - trying to rise above it all.

prelude in c.

So it was a while ago. Maybe a few months. Practicing Hanon I sort of got tired of it and just started playing this arpeggiated C chord and came up with this little melody I obligingly and I guess quite simply called Prelude In C.

It really is nothing at all. Just rambling when I should have been practicing. I played it too quickly in places during this take. I messed up a note or two.

I hear it all quiet on a huge piano the spaces in between the notes. The rests at the end. The diminished chords. Then launching full-on into the song Isolation a few hundred decibels louder after an interlude with heavily-overdriven guitar.

But for now ... for now I'll leave it with its simple end.

(Prelude In C available for the time being only from that link)



_cheers





(image courtesy of nasa.gov)

introduction.

This piece I am calling Introduction (Live) is available for streaming and/or download on my reverbnation page (or above right in the widget).

---

Apparently 'introduction' in Latin is - well - 'introduction' (as well as in French, another language I like to use for titling). And to think I was going for something that sounded cool ...

But Latin because of this verse I came up with today -

prope finem

opus est in

tamen illic 'nos tempus

to go along with this completely random idea I worked up today in Logic.

So it takes some imagination I must admit. A theatre (or heck an arena). The lights slam off and the place goes dark. Silence. More silence. Then this loud static. In and out. Joined by a four-part symphonic choir chanting the Latin phrase above. And it builds. More samples. Lots of smoke. MIDI-controlled lights timed with the static and tubular bells slice through it at points strobes fire in sync with it all. Videos flashing also in sync. Of polygons bending and warping and fitting themselves together colliding and rockets lifting off and photos of galaxies.

But anyway ... just an introduction of sorts. Whatever nonsense I heard in my head to introduce and then launch into Ferocity And Fragility. And a few more tricks learned whilst mixing this in Logic all thrown together in a day.

---

... actual website under construction but coming soon ...

ad infinitum finis.

"So I stumble across your blog and I'm astonished to the point of sorrow at how beautiful this stuff is. All of it. The music that is somewhere between the sound that the Universe makes as it spins, and the melody that exits two lover's mouths as they kiss. 

Incredible. All of it."

So it is finally finished. A piano sonata of sorts and a concerto and a rock song all rolled up together somehow. It is called Ad Infinitum. It is available in three parts (sans vocal line of course) for streaming/download on my reverbnation page.

---

And for some reason this one means something. I don't know why. Maybe cos I've been telling myself all this while that I needed at least three demos before I could start really putting this sh*t out there. Maybe cos this one stretched every fathomable ability I have performing, composing, orchestrating, recording, mixing and mastering. Maybe cos it seems to come closest to this mess I always hear in my head. Every day. Whilst walking back and forth between offices at work. Doing dishes. Running. Trying to sleep. Trying to concentrate on anything else.

And so this is the third.

_cheers

ca-den-za
n.
1. An extended virtuosic section for the soloist usually near the end of a movement of a concerto.
2. An improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist, usually in a "free" rhythmic style and often allowing for virtuosic display.

[Italian, from Old Italian, cadence; see cadence.]




Cadenza often refers to a portion of a concerto in which the orchestra stops playing, leaving the soloist to play alone in free time without a strict, regular beat and can be written or improvised depending on what the composer specifies. It usually is the most elaborate and virtuosic part that the solo instrument plays during the whole piece (think 'classy predecessor of the guitar solo'). At the end of the cadenza, the orchestra re-enters and generally finishes off the movement on its own or with the solo instrument.

Some notable examples of cadenzas include the first five minutes of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto in B-flat minor (with it's enormous chords), the beginning of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto in E-flat major (where Beethoven in his typical style specifies the performer to play exactly as written rather than improvise) and - of course - the incredibly difficult and quite monumental toccata-like (or simply 'virtuosic') cadenza in the first movement of the infamous 'Rach 3' Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in D minor.

ad infinitum.

... to continue forever, without limit, non-terminating, repeating ...

So the inductive hyphothesis goes 'if a statement holds true for some n, then the statement also holds true when n + 1 is substituted for n.' The proof was written over a millenium ago to prove in part the validity of Pascal's triangle which is a brilliant but simple array of binomial coefficients that continue ...

... ad infinitum ...

we have traveled to distant stars

searched through mirrors at who we are

at where we are from

at where we have come

our infinite sequence is one

by inductive proof must continue ad infinitum

This is just the first part. This was the easy part. The second part and ending will be my most ambitious orchestration and recording yet in an attempt to feebly put to soundwaves what I hear in my head.

MP3 sans straining vocals is available for streaming and download on my reverbnation site.

_cheers

ferocity and fragility.

MP3 files (the song had to be uploaded in three parts) available for streaming/download on my reverbnation page. Or playable from the widget at the top of the column on the right ...

---

The idea.

Finally. It is finished. I posted the intro a while ago. But this is finally the whole thing. A song in three parts fourteen minutes long. A piano. An orchestra. A choir. A band. A voice. And now it is finished. This is just a demo. This is just the beginning.

[is there still hope for us?]

[is there still time for us?]

we torture ourselves

we have all this fear

we have all this rage

we have lost ourselves

through our course of action

our ignorance sustained

what have we learned

what have we to say

of how

of how

we have lost our way

and we

and we have lost our way

we must be the ones to save us from ourselves while there is still time

there is still hope for us

(if we learn)

there is still hope for us

(if we see)

there is still hope for us

The voice singing to the rising crescendo above the orchestra and choir as it builds and builds and builds and builds and builds there is still time for us.

...

cheers

an infinite regress.

Aristotle argued that knowing does not necessitate a paradox because some knowledge does not depend on demonstration.

To explain he writes ~

“Some hold that, owing to the necessity of knowing the primary premises, there is no scientific knowledge. Others think there is, but that all truths are demonstrable. Neither doctrine is either true or a necessary deduction from the premises. The first school, assuming that there is no way of knowing other than by demonstration, maintain that an infinite regress is involved, on the ground that if behind the prior stands no primary, we could not know the posterior through the prior (wherein they are right, for one cannot traverse an infinite series): if on the other hand – they say – the series terminates and there are primary premises, yet these are unknowable because incapable of demonstration, which according to them is the only form of knowledge. And since thus one cannot know the primary premises, knowledge of the conclusions which follow from them is not pure scientific knowledge nor properly knowing at all, but rests on the mere supposition that the premises are true. The other party agree with them as regards knowing, holding that it is only possible by demonstration, but they see no difficulty in holding that all truths are demonstrated, on the ground that demonstration may be circular and reciprocal.

Our own doctrine is that not all knowledge is demonstrative: on the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premises is independent of demonstration. (The necessity of this is obvious; for since we must know the prior premises from which the demonstration is drawn, and since the regress must end in immediate truths, those truths must be indemonstrable.) Such, then, is our doctrine, and in addition we maintain that besides scientific knowledge there is its originative source which enables us to recognize the definitions.”

~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (Book 1, Part 3)

And of course with all of this in part comes a theme. It seems I cannot help it. Two themes actually. Both enormous. Both exploding. Raging. F-sharp minor. Progressions. Over and over. A Bechstein enormous sound here in my living room windows open eyes no doubt blocks away rolling what the F is all that racket!? An enormous orchestration. An enormous symphonic choir. All going on this in my head tonight must quiet but cannot. Cannot. So I must apologize.

ferocity.

This is part of the mess. This is just the introduction. This is nothing.

And there is an MP3 linked here in case the player does not work.

I must now finish the piano cacophony that comes in after this introduction. And then the rebuilding and utter crescendo of all the instruments this all just came to me by accident out of nowhere like everything else of course and at last then the ending symphonic and slow and beautiful and haunting and wonderful probably only to me but that is okay key signature and tempo changes and a Bechstein in a corner alone and an orchestra and all of this shit once in my head then in Logic now out there.

cheers

this mess i hear.

For whatever reason it just looks messy. It is messy. And I cannot seem to get the arpeggio or the huge massive minor theme or the quiet simplistic motif or the interlude or the cadenza or the looping synths or the strings or the strains of a Bechstein then huge triple forte chords or the samples or the ending out of my head.

... someday I will actually finish this mess.

strains of herodotus.

I probably should not post this cos it was thought up and recorded in a day. Sunday morning this simple totally basic pathetic arpeggio in my head so sat down at the Bechstein for a bit. Played. I don't know I liked it totally basic all pathetic. Looped it to itself. Then to some strings. Banged the ending on the piano. Some change to B chromatic then to end on E♭ minor. Quick mastered the 2-track but very rough. As always just an idea. Just an idea that conveys nothing or so I think. If anything this is less messy than the other song I am working on which is totally jumbled and crazy right now in my head. And the dozens of others some enormous cacophony I cannot quiet down. I still hear it looping. I hear a voice singing rising with the music to some total crescendo lyrics scrawled ink in a notebook lying on top of the Bechstein its ebony scratched and worn. I hear the enormous E♭ minor chord. I hear a louder orchestra than Logic or some digital domain can contain. I cannot get this out of my head but must go to sleep. For now.

We gaze beyond the veils

beyond the seas beyond the stars

we seek to find the light

to find the way to hold what is ours

beyond our sorrows beyond our pains

to prove in time our finite loss yields infinite gains

like histories before us we strain

we strain

we strain

we strain

we strain

...

An MP3 file is linked here. Cheers. Goodnight.

mastering.

So I originally got this dual 1.0GHz PowerMac G4 I call Carbon, what ... seven years ago or something? So I could learn InDesign and Photoshop. It came pre-installed - Photoshop 7 and InDesign 2. The Apple 17" Studio LCD monitor is now the proud display for my 800MHz PowerMac G4 server I call Iridium (the minimum G4 CPU that boasts gigabit ethernet). Upgraded last year to a 23" Apple Cinema so I could have some more screen real estate for Logic (should have gotten the 30"). Done with Photoshop and InDesign. They aren't even loaded on Carbon, kept lean with minimal apps (OS 10.4.11 is enough of a resource hog) to keep Logic humming with twenty-plus instrument tracks, busses, masters and such.

And so tonight, a new art ... mastering.

The subject is that minute-forty I posted a couple weeks ago (even though I have continued working on the multi-track adding more and more music to it but have not yet bounced that down to two tracks). Brought in the two-track mixdown and then bussed in an adaptive limiter on top of a multi-band compressor to the stereo instrument track then some linear EQ on top followed up with a second adaptive limiter to eke out just a little more headroom to the master channel. Just trying to bring up the noise floor and dynamic range. Awesome. Called up the spectrum analyzer to check out the frequency range as I looped the loud intro and the quieter middle. Over and over. Add a multimeter to really check out the frequency distribution. And Logic of course lets me save all of my plug-in settings so when I ultimately finish the song I can re-apply all of them to that new mastering session. Maybe tweak them a bit more.

This G4 never fails to amaze. Neither does Logic. Seriously. I get made fun of periodically for my older Macs and my three-versions-ago software. Whatever. I keep my machines lean and mean. The fact I bought this piece of software on Ebay for something like a hundred-forty and it is seriously a recording studio inside of my Mac is incredible. This particular song is definitely taxing that very Mac, but I am making sure to run the Onyx cleanups and keeping it at peak performance. Have to go in and periodically freeze tracks but all is well.

Hmm ... now I would like some bigger monitors. Yes, definitely. The key to mastering is listening on lots of different speaker sets. Headphones. In the car. Little speakers. Big speakers. But it is decidingly difficult trying to master on little M-Audio 4" monitors. They're good, but not that good.

Soon.

just an example.

So I have been thinking a lot about stuff and the fact that I have been writing music for a while now to myself in my living room on my Bechstein and in my head and in Logic and that is all well and good except it is no longer good enough. When I was in my twenties I was writing music. Songs like Radiohead or Suede or concertos for pianofortes and orchestras. When I was in high school I was writing piano sonatas and this instrumental concept album of sorts. All of eighteen years old or so I went out and wrote a letter to the guitarist Marty Friedman to ask if he would want to collaborate with me. A year later he replied sure send him a tape. I never followed through. When I was ten I wrote my first song. Uh, yeah. And up until roughly three years or so ago I was convinced it was all crap. Well, maybe not all of it. The concertos for pianoforte and orchestra were impressive albeit incredibly daunting and I had come comfortably to the realization that they would end up being finished much later in my life when I had lived and had time to fully ingest and then reformulate into music and motifs and orchestral power larger than life all of those experiences and ideas which to me was perfectly fine.

But these songs that have been going on in my head and now transposed onto the Bechstein and in Logic have been bugging me because I am quite convinced they are actually not crap. Which is believe it or not one incredibly huge step for me. I tend to think everything I produce is crap.

But anyways this is all really just to say recently I finally stepped out from behind my walls to start networking to find other musicians that may see and understand my vision and be able to collaborate in a way that is impossible just me at my piano in my living room. It was tough posting MP3s. Not because I think they are crap. Well, partly they are because they are a fraction of what I hear in my head. But sharing does not come easily. But since it is out there ... I felt like those MP3s really did not give a glimpse at maybe what I really have been working on.

So I threw together this minute and forty seconds of sound tonight to hopefully give anyone who comes across my reaching out to get a better sense of what I mean when I say however it is that I describe this stuff in my head. 'Symphonic Rock.' Something like Muse. My often-used adjective 'furious.' I don't know.

After the intro and the time/tempo change the singer comes in. Moments of delicateness. And then it builds. And builds. And builds. Overdriven guitar arpeggios up and down. Furious piano arpeggios and those big fat chords! Drums beating harder and harder. The driving bass line comes back in. Vocal line soaring. Rising and rising. Crescendo. Crescendo. Crescendo.

It is not finished. It is still just a fraction of what I hear in my head. It is just an example.

Linked file is here.

cheers

from form to function [remix].

Another line of notes, written for a song on which I will always be working. Coupled with an idea provided by a friend the other night deep in discussion about the idea of advancement of the human species. My mind so focused on the technological aspect I did not consider any other sides of the story, until she brought up an interesting point about a different sort of human advancement not relegated to neutrons and electrons (well, isn't everything but an analogy meant to convey a technological aspect of sorts).

How about, she offered, we forgive the debts of nations unable to pay them? What if, say, we learn somehow not to bicker and wage war against one another over petty differences? How about treating all people equally, and putting an end to discrimination, bigotry, intolerance? It was her opinion that any one of those would signify an advancement of our species far more profound than any new-found technological prowess.

She made an interesting point. A good one, in fact. And so in my struggle to come to terms with lyrics for a never-ending-work-in-progress song, I grasped at ways to put into words this very idea. Just as the unanswerable questions I threw out there like will we be traveling at or near the speed of light by the end of the twenty-first century (read: will that even be possible?) - likewise, is it even possible that somehow we can end intolerance, cruelty of our own kind, discrimination? Can we see past our insignificant differences to realize the enormity of our likeness?

And, if so, does that pose an even greater accomplishment for our species than any sort of technological advancement?

per aspera ad astra.

Less ambiguous but still ambiguous. Still working the idea out in my head but some of it laid out now in Logic oddly enough a very heavy sound whereas when I first heard it in my head it was just piano and then slowly grew to have orchestrated synths but maybe this is just another version or a different version overdriven arpeggiated guitars and all and who knows what will become of it. Or maybe start with a quiet piano low in the tenor section as always rising rising rising to an enormous crescendo to what I have recorded an orchestra and a band playing furiously a voice rising higher and higher above it all to come to a crashing ending where the song is all in C♯-minor but right at the enormous end a three-note progression then ... the B major sustained held out (with perhaps an intermittent G♯-sharp minor) until a triple-forte crash of the big C♯-minor chord and a decay of them all. I will have to cull through books and such to find lyrics for what is going through my head but will get there. Will get there. Just a piece for now ~

we have held the sword of Damocles

known the fortune it perceives and now must finally repreve

we cannot translate we must proceed ad astra

we must proceed ad astra

ad astra