the power of strangers.

t h e   P O W E R   o f   S T R A N G E R S .

A friend of mine over IM the other day about her burgeoning yoga classes without realizing it no doubt said something offhand that left me thinking about it ever since. Simply she wrote ~

i need strangers to know that i exist

We were talking about her website and the Facebook and how though only friends of hers had bothered to 'like' her page in fact none of those friends had yet to come to a single class (umm, myself included). I think of this as I get random suggestions or invites or such to like someone's photography or artsy or whatever page (I don't usually bother). Not that there's anything wrong with that. Sending out a suggestion that is. But I wonder do they not realize the uselessness?

I too in fact did that a couple of years ago. Sent out an invitation to a group of friends on the Facebook (I did at least take the time to handpick a couple dozen or so) to like my music page. Within a couple of minutes though of sending it sitting on the couch afternoon sun streaming in I quite literally felt sick to my stomach. And really really stupid. Cos I realized the uselessness of it. Right then at that instant. That it was not going to do me a bit of good if some guy I happen to work with listens to my music and likes it or doesn't.

And I do not mean to categorically dismiss small random acts of magic.

But the two key words in that phrase are 'small' and (more importantly) 'random.' The odds that Dude X from work happens to know someone who happens to know someone high up the food chain in the record business are fairly small and (if it were to be the case) would be very very random indeed.

Not to say impossible. Just statistically about as likely as me being able to fly to the moon by building a spacecraft in my garage.



So back to what she said. About strangers. And needing them to know she exists.



That is the reality in that one little sentence. It definitely takes more work. To get strangers to know you exist. It's easy to send out a silly Facebook invite and maybe a little ego-enhancing rub to get a bunch of (I'll argue meaningless) likes. And thereby definition of 'easy' by extension fairly useless. It's much harder to think bigger. To find ways to reach out to complete strangers.

I don't yet know how to do that for certain. But just as certain I need to with this music I must write if I want it to support me (I do). As does she if she wants her yoga classes to support her (she does).



I'll need strangers to know I exist.

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.

audio at last.

In order to celebrate the arrival of No. 8056 I had taken the liberty of ordering a couple of condenser mics before it arrived. This evening I was finally able to set them up. Record something. Weird listening to the result. The only time I've recorded a piano was maybe twelve-plus years ago on digital videotape which I transferred to an audio cassette now old and scratchy-sounding full of hiss.

So it's weird.

Weird listening to a recording of my piano that sounds exactly like my piano. I squeezed the mics in over the strings. Adjusted the gain just below clipping. Inserted a touch of reverb and EQ and played something simple.

I'm not sure what it is about microphones and recording but they and it are just cool. Up until now Logic and its piano samples were my way of capturing ideas usually late late at night. But now ... now I will be able to record the Bechstein.

Awesome.

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)

a strange kind of love.

And there it was.

Randomly I just put on some strange mix tonight house quiet so dialed up the volume on the stereo and came across a song by Peter Murphy (of Bauhaus fame) and stopped in my tracks.


That was it.


Or really really close. The idea in my head of how the voice sounds for my music. I love his range - how low he goes (how he hits that E2). He never gives the presence of the dynamic range I hear in my head for my own stuff, but leaves a sense it is possible and just instead chooses to sing restrained and holds back. It is a fitting soundtrack for the night ... turned up quite loud to let the reverb of his voice fill the room from all directions ...

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

to be or not to be.

There are those people some of whom I know intent on letting Fate run its course. Holding true and steadfast to an ideology that embraces a notion that whatever is going to happen to them will happen without their intervention or doing. And so maybe they languish waiting. Maybe not. Maybe what they are expecting to happen happens. Maybe not.

And of course there is an equal and opposite force those that live on the other end of the spectrum. Pushing their agenda to no end doing whatever it takes. Shameless maybe. Successful maybe. A bit of both maybe.

Nothing wrong with either. Cos like with all of our differences we humans we need all of us each one - the meek and the strong. And everything in between. Those who hold back need someone to push them here and there. Those that push need someone to reign them in every once in a while.

I remember it being hard to share my photography. I don't know why. It was personal at one point I think I recall but not sure. But then I slowly started bringing it out. Did some shows. Even sold some prints. Started posting to Flickr. Not sure why it became easier. Maybe cos I thought it was all crap anyway so who cares? I didn't any more. Convinced to the core and to the end all of what I have photographed and will ever photograph has already been done better and certainly the photos I have taken are no different and no better than any of the other hundreds of thousands of photographers doing the exact same thing.

But with music. With music it was always different. It is different.

Yes I am realizing I need to break out of this shell I have created and lived in most of my life. But maybe only maybe and only because I can permissibly make the slight but certain distinction between a photograph of a mountain photographed millions of times already and a strain of a melody conceived somewhere only in the recesses of my mind that I find a way unbeknownst even to me to figure out and render shabbily on a age-old worn Bechstein grand.

Out of a perceived sense of obligation I feel the need to share it as it does me no good playing this all to myself on this old piano here in the corner of my living room. What I've put out there has been difficult in part no always because it is but a fraction of what I hear in my head. Always enormous. Always overwhelming. Always grander than even sometimes I can envision so much so I feel at times to go mad over the immensity of it all.

But I can share it only to a point. I realize this now. I made one drastic mistake blasting out a lame and pedestrian suggestion to my small Facebook lot. Never again. Felt sick after. Maybe not sick. More just gross. I realized quite suddenly and quite powerfully just then something I have known all along in any regard: that I am not that opposite force. I hold back. I am not one to push myself on others. This is not to say I cannot when the time is right step out and seek out others in which to help as I understand and though perhaps begrudgingly accept as a whole other and just as vast and just as enormous of a challenge. I know that I can with the understanding as difficult as it is to admit that I cannot do this entirely on my own. That I can accept. I just write music and play a bit of piano.

That's it. That's all I ever want to do.

And so thankfully maybe there are those others maybe just a few or even one or two that can support those of us who just do one thing and one thing only and I will be fortunate enough to find them. I will continue to record and post music but not push not ever in the hopes to find those few people who may see this same vision I have but am not always if ever the best at putting out there. In this new paradigm of the age-old business of music I hold on to the belief hopefully not naïvely there are still some out there that want to find talent for what it is and want to help develop it. To be the ones to push for us. For ultimately in the end maybe there is one person one person somewhere who will hear one of those strains of a melody heard from some place in my head and be blown away as I have over others melodies and who would not have had I languished. Waiting.

studio update.

Not sure how it came to be but back around the end of 2008 I decided quite matter-of-factly that I was going to invest in a way to record my music. Not sure how I landed so matter-of-factly on Logic Pro but I don't remember it taking long. Maybe cos I work on Macs. I remember being surprised I could pick up a copy of (at the time) one version back for around a hundred and fifty. A whole recording studio more or less for a hundred and fifty bucks. Cool.

And then I got lucky finding a controller. I went into Guitar Center to take a look at the one I had in mind and discovered a much nicer one in their used section (had a scratch but who cares) for the same price so I grabbed it. I also remember having a fun time trying to carry this sixty or seventy pound keyboard out the store and opening the door (it was a little awkward) while two dudes that worked there sat and watched me have a hard time. Sigh. Guitar Center sucks but whatever. I make a point not to frequent it, and less of a point of ever actually buying anything from them.

Anyway.

So with a pretty sweet controller tossed on top of the Bechstein and Logic installed on my aging but still rocking G4 dual 1 gig, I grabbed a little desk from Ikea that sorta worked and plopped it in the corner of my living room behind the Bechstein and set up shop -

It worked. Kind of. But as I recorded more and learned Logic more it got old standing to play the keyboard. And not being able to reach the top octave and a half or so on the Bechstein cos the desk was kind of in the way. And having to look sideways while recording. And having all that stuff on top of my piano. And so on.

So I scrawled out a wishlist for this year. Another 23-inch Apple Cinema Display so I can see even more of my arrangements. Bigger near-field monitors (it's amazing though what even sitting and, well, actually facing the ones I have is and how much better that sounds - yeah, I know - brilliant). And a burlier computer since my trusty G4 was showing its age.

So I scored a five-ish-year-old G5 (not the one I wanted, which would be the dual quad-core two-and-a-half-gig monster) but for next to nothing and it seems to do the trick for now. And then set out to find a keyboard stand or desk that would suit my workstation needs. So (sigh) I headed back to Guitar Center to check out what they had (before ordering from somewhere cheaper online of course) and it was while roaming through their stuff that I realized hey - I could make a double keyboard rack work by just leveling the top tier and using a shelf from Lowes I already had set across the supports. Done.

The next complication was finding a stand that put the height of my keyboard as close as possible to the height of the Bechstein so I could just swivel between the two. Apparently they don't really make stands to be played at while sitting as in - like - on a piano bench. But moving past the too-tall X-type stands and onto the (thankfully even beefier, according to the reviews) Z-type stands - there were two options and I found a screaming deal online at Musician's Friend for one under a hundred bucks. So it's now in my living room corner -

At its lowest height it puts my controller's key tops about an inch higher than the Bechstein's. I can live with that. Next - those bigger monitors (either KRK or M-Audio - the KRKs sound flatter which is perfect for mixing, while the M-Audios have a bit fatter bass and treble which sounds better for sound reinforcement while playing ... ). They'll probably need to go on stands but I already have a pair picked out. And that second display.

And to keep working on this next arrangement ...






cheers

upgrade #1.

So with the recording and mixdown of Ferocity And Fragility it became painfully clear my trusty 1.0Ghz dual G4 - my first Mac and the one that has been my Trusted One - was spent. Well, not entirely spent. But not up to the task of thirty-plus Logic tracks all loaded down with effects and such. And I really want to move on from the supplied Logic samples to much better ones for piano (namely, a particular Bechstein sample I have in mind) and orchestra (and possibly symphonic choir) which require significantly more CPU and RAM. Significantly. They are enormous.

So an upgrade to The Studio was in order. Namely, a beefier Mac and bigger monitors (to come soon) to properly monitor and mixdown.

This is not the one I really have my sights on (which is the G5 2.5Ghz quad core - read EIGHT processors on four chips loaded with 16GB of RAM) but I could not pass it up and hopefully it will work in the meantime -

A 2.0GHz dual processor with 2.5 gigs of RAM that I will upgrade to eight gigs if it passes the test ... which is to run through F&F without having to freeze every track (the test will be to leave all of the non-piano sample tracks unfrozen while at the same time being able to leave at least one of the, uhh, three piano samples running unfrozen and ready for editing).

So time to pick another element from the periodic table in which to name it and to properly add it to the family ... And I still will likely get that G5 quad monster in the near future but without loss of this one - I can enable Logic's node capabilities and use its two processors over the LAN to help with the computing.

...

Oh, and Uranium passed the test (all tracks unfrozen CPUs operating below redline with some headroom even to spare) -

And without fail I am working on another song project incorporating more instrumentation and orchestration to be uploaded when it is finished (or as a sample beforehand once it is at least a bit further along).

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.