new audio idea, cover of tusk that shane was supposed to sing and flaked. i put vocals on it and pushed it to mp3 today
this is more audio scribbles. the volumes are utterly fucked, everything is too loud and the compressor is freaking out throughout it. this is what happens when i’m excited while mixing
in semi-chronological order:
tSS – like beasts fucking, sketch
the first finished, complete song of mine is 15 years old. it’s a 3 minute or so demo/tracker/techno thing
v|scosity was one of my first writing pseudonyms, and the song was gl cause at that point i decided that i would name all my songs with as few letters as possible to make them unique. i gave up after one more, called ‘fl’, trivially.
the song was originally called “glimpse within”.
(it was originally an .IT file, i converted into a mono mp3 using interpolated sampling)
a short list of song names worse than fall out boy’s “Carpal Tunnel Of Love”
1 – Leg Brace Yourself For Love
2 – Arm Cast Away In Your Love
3 – I Will Love You Tumor-row
4 – Oh God You Stabbed Me In The Face With A Gun And Now I Keep Bleeding Love
5 – This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race
so life is a performance. yes, we choose our role moment to moment, and yes it would be disingenuous to say that our choices are really limitless. being human and herd animals we are limited but what we feel is the limit of what others expect of us.
but that’s a tangent though. life is a performance, and as it is a performance there is a certain quality to it that we call authenticity. it’s hard to pin down, but i ran across a few things that got me to thinking about it
so let’s start by talking about alt-sex cause people love alt-sex or so i’m told. at the defcon jeopardy game (drunk social event for hackers) there was a girl there whose job was to basically dress up like a dom and hit people who answer incorrectly. she (and all the previous incarnations of her) did a great job, people had fun, cheering was had, but at the same time it was clear that she wasn’t a domina, not really, and i was wondering about why exactly.
it’s not a question in context in this case, i’m not speaking of attempting to subdue a room full of boisterous drunks, i’m talking about the reaction i had as she was still walking in before hand. it was one where the instant reaction was ”aww, sweetie, i know what you’re going for and you certainly dressed the part, but you’re doing it all wrong. no idea how, but you are”
the dom thing isn’t attire or any physical action, in the end it’s something that’s an immediate emotional reaction. you either instantly understand upon seeing the person, or you don’t. if they don’t broadcast this authenticity in the first moment, there is no way to sort of back up and try again.
i guess i don’t mean in the first moment, but in the first moment it’s “turned on”. it is a performance and an act. keep in mind that those words don’t mean it’s “fake” to me, just that it is something we consciously choose to do. it’s fake only in the sense as our performance of being students, teachers, parents, or children is fake just because it’s possible for us to theoretically not act that way.
and i’m not saying that this is about some magical quality that comes from being in a culture. that’s stupid. it is absolutely possible to fake the performance with enough authenticity to make it real to anyone, but you would find that as you do so, you would no longer be faking it. yes, it’s catch-22ish. as soon as you pretend it well enough, you’re no longer pretending.
example 2: i was at a show not too long ago, 3 bands played. 2 of them were ‘normal’ to me, 1 of them the singer and frontman never felt like one. he dressed like a frontman, he spoke one, he sang into the mic, but at no point did i believe it. again, the authenticity wasn’t broadcast.
this is something i’m a bit hypersensitive to now that i’m fronting the band for real. the live show is a double performance, the band pretending to be the band, and the audience pretending to be the audience. if the singer can’t act like a band, soon the audience will feel stupid acting like an audience. there’s words that we use for it that vary from genre to genre, ‘energy’ being a common one, ‘feeling it’ is another, ‘getting us’, whatever. in the end it’s ‘we believed your performance, you believed ours, and we chose to have fun tonight’
another example: nerd core. yes, i’m taking, you kicking and screaming, from bdsm to geek rappers. let it go.
two rappers: mc chris, and mc plus+
mc chris:
mc++:
(what the hell, we don’t get pics of the girl dom but we get two nerd dudes?)
life’s a bitch, deal with it. btw, i originally wrote “pasty white dudes” but having googled him i now realize that mc plus+ isn’t very pasty. thanks for making me lose a great phrase.
so here’s the thing. i believe mc chris. and i don’t mean that i take what he says literally since that would include believing he owns a batmobile with a mcdonald’s inside, but the authenticity of his performance is there for me. i’m saying that when he talks about being a geek, i emotionally relate to him. i don’t feel it from mc plus+. and i’m not questioning mc plus+’s street cred, inasmuch as that term can possibly apply to someone who not only never claims to spend time on the streets but in fact claims to never leave their bedroom. i really believe he is a geek in real life, but his performance of being a geek doesn’t feel authentic.
“how can you possibly come across inauthentic at being yourself?”. because yourself is an act. because this requires performing a swagger and not just being geeky. and because there is more to this bravado than simply stating it and having the balls to hold a mic in front of a crowd of people, and that something is enjoying it to the point where you forget you’re only pretending to be enjoying it.
fourth and last example, this guy:
tim minchin performing “if i didn’t have you”, at the secret policeman’s ball.
btw, that’s officially my favorite love song of all time now.
there’s a geek culture thing to this song, like him trying to explain the word special as he’s using it, those 3 lines have more honesty in them than pretty much all other love songs combined. not just in what he’s saying (cause for all i know whitney will in fact always love you and is just as truthful), but in how honest his performance of it is. it’s someone who first screws up by saying his girlfriend/wife isn’t special, then tries to dig himself out, then realizes that even more importantly he’s now being ambiguous about what he meant by the word ’special’ and the best way to explain that is with statistical analysis.
this post probably would here go on to start talking about dimitri martin and his palindrome, and then finish on comparing the comics smbb and “the warehouse comic”, but at this point i finished showering and stopped pondering this.
oh, and also something about how our ability to detect authenticity being in part our exposure to the role at hand. i’m positive i have a different standard of authenticity of a domina than 99% of defcon, probably 95% one way, and 4% the other way. or thereabouts.
here’s a hacker jeopardy pic in either case:
dear internet,
i’m certain that you are just as big a fan of the new bands in the metalcore genre of music as i am, drawn in by many of its appealing factors, including:
and many many others. bands like this one, brought to my attention by steve k:
thank you steve.
as so, internet, you might be surprised to learn that some older metalheads have a hard time taking this genre seriously and refer to it as Crab Core. i have made these original content gifs using the above video in order to help explain it. please use them wisely.
(mac users: my safari renders gifs too slowly. if the bouncy bouncy isn’t bouncy-ing as well as it should, use firefox)
3 songs that are less cheesy than they first sound. first listen to the song and glance lyrics, then turn the page upside down to read the reason (edit: nevermind, upside down is not working, i’ll make it white text so select it)
atmosphere – fuck you lucy (youtube, lyrics)
reason: lucy is his alcoholism
common – i used to love her (youtube, lyrics)
reason: ’she’ is hip hop culture
assemblage 23 – disappoint (youtube, lyrics)
reason: the song is about his father’s suicide
- -
tangent, i used to think the lyric in disappoint was “i stood on your shoulder’s while you drowned” which to me is an even stronger line
this stupid one and a half minute thing took 2.5 weeks. whatever.
the sketch is done, song will be downhill from here
the shaolin signal - life is supposed to hurt (sketch)
never forget that all the work paradigms that you’ve been ever taught or forced into (in case of programming, things like extreme programming or scrum) aren’t some sort of mathematically proven theorems or empirically checked models. they’re simply one guys idea of how a group should work, that happened to work in his group
if you find yourself constantly striving to match a paradigm, back up. maybe you’re not really meant to work that way. do you have something that works for you?
keep in mind though, some people really might not have a method that works, in which case anything that involves structure might be beneficial.
one random example from my own life: my email. i spent a stupid amount of time attempting to stay on top of sorting email because i was told at one point that organized email is important. i tried tags, rulesets in the hundreds, smart folders, all at the same time, and the results were dismal. best part? i never used it. i never once said to myself “oh, i need this communication from the prime minister of ukraine, let me look under “prime ministers”, tagged “ukraine” “. no, i’d just go to the search bar, click “From” and type ytymoshenko@gmail.com. ta-da.
new solution? 4 inboxes (i have 4 mail aggregating accounts), total of 2 regular folders marked “important” and “not”, and 1 smart folder. the rule for the smart folder is:
- if the email is unread, or the email is in folder important, show it.
the only folder i look at is the smart folder. all unread emails are in there and disappear after they’re read (technically, they disappear after i close the window, which i do as soon as i’m done looking at mail), unless they’re something relevant in which case i drag them to the “important” folder. once they’re solved/answered, they’re dropped in either “not”. every blue moon i drag all emails from the inboxes to the “not” bin, just in case things go bad if the inbox gets too large.
that’s really all i need from email, it works with my actual work flow, and actually uses that CPU power this machine has. i imagine this would work even better with gmail, but at work we have lolexchange so eh.
different example of this: i have a bizarre music writing method. i work in these bursts where i write and record for about 5 hours straight, in which time i like to be alone with no one listening, then when done, i leave it alone for a week while sending it to half the people on my IM list to ask for opinions on what they think of it and where it should go
somehow the conversation process is what lets me mentally decide where it needs to go. it’s silly, but songs which i don’t talk about end up piling up as minute long fragments that never went anywhere. songs i do, end up growing into actual songs. well, not immediately. they go through a bunch of cycles of this. some more than others.
(btw, apologies if you happen to be on the “hey can you tell me if this works? what do you think of the cut up trumpet loop?” and are annoyed by it. just let me know, i wont be offended)
in any case, yes, don’t get obsessed with following footsteps of others, just set a similar goal to what they had and find what manner of movement works best for you. but don’t use that as an excuse to be lazy either.
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