February, 2006

Boom chucka boom chucka...

Yeah, that's about as accurate of a description as anything for the things that have been going thru my head lately. With all the experimenting I've been doing in the recording studio (which, oddly enough, isn't really able to record more than 2 tracks at a time just yet) I've been spending ridiculous amounts o' time learning just how, exactly, one can put together sounds so that they translate well on tape. Er, CD. Well, you know what I meant. Basically, I've been just playing with drum machines and mixing boards, and soon I'll be finshed and bored with all the things I can do with default sounds, and graduating into original programming. One of the reasons I've been spending so much time fiddlin' with preset sounds is simply because - to quote filmmaker Kevin Smith - "I'm just lazy, dude." But in my defense there are thousands of ways to program a drum machine, and I'm looking for the one way that most emulates my lighting programming, so that I can tie the two medias together with as little effort as possible.

Sounds tricky, right?

Outside of that, really haven't gotten too much accomplished. In fact, I've hardly been on the piano very much lately. Tsk. However, when I do sit down, it's always with a sheet of graph paper, a couple of pages of music theory copied out of a book, and the idea of teaching myself chord progressions. Obviously, I can't reprogram all those machines until I really, truly know the most effective ways to tie tones together into complimentary arrangements. Also, I need the freedom to compose new arrangements live on the fly, which isn't that difficult in theory, but...

What else? Well, let's see... I recently reviewed a DVD by DJs/musicians

Sasha and John Digweed that was, unfortunately, less than favorable. On the plus side, I've just polished off two positive articles on the Velvet Underground and Bill Hicks. Of course, the links will be posted on the Words section as soon as they're available.

Also, I wanted to point out the appearance of the Mix CD section that's been recently added to this site. Have you seen it? Yes? No? Well, head on over there, give a listen and then drop me an email telling me what you think. No lawsuits, please.

Finally, we watched a few interesting things on the DVD player recently...

Mr. and Mrs. Smith was surprisingly entertaining for a blockbuster-style flick. Jolie + Pitt are a lot of fun together (something I'm sure that people who read People magazine can atest to). The Island was a neat little sci-fi movie that was riveting for the first hour or so, but quickly degenerated into a typical Hollywood action flick and the story fell apart. But man, that first hour is cooooool. Corpse Bride was, uh, well, it looked great, and the story was potentially good, but the characters just fell short of what would be expected of them to carry the ol' plot along. Sigh. Typical Tim Burton - great visuals, weak story. I really need to stop wasting time on his work. Downfall - a drama set in Hitler's Berlin bunker during the final 10 days of WWII was almost riveting for the subject matter and acting alone. Pacing-wise, it did drag a bit, but still a fascinating topic nonetheless. And, uh, I recently picked up the re-release of Mad Max, which was a much better movie than I remember. I was never that fond of this one, preferring the Road Warrior, but I must say - seeing the widescreen (and oh my is it a wide one) and hearing the original actors' voices makes all the difference. In case ya didn't know, the American release of Mad Max was overdubbed in its entirety to remove the Australian accents, which is absurd when you consider that they really don't have a difficult dialect to understand (unlike, say, Irish ro Scottish). It's definitely worth the ten bucks.

Whew. Can't believe I wrote so much this month. I should save something for next month, after all - it'll be here pretty damn quick. (Friggin' February.. mutter mutter mutter..) So I'll leave the info about the books I've read on the cutting room floor for now.

Stay tuned.