Water carrying + music making today. Which reminds me, I need to update my iPod.

My CD player finally bit the dust yesterday, which albeit troubling isn't that bad.

*moment of silence*

Alright, so awhile ago I got lcd soundsystem self-titled from the library, and I was not impressed. That was dance music that offered nothing unless you were a hipster on drugs at a nightclub, which I guess was the intended audience. It hung over the same melodies again and again, featured almost no songwriting at all (Daft Punk is Playing at my house, MY HOUSE ?) and took years. I should honestly delete everything from that two disc slap-in-the-face except two tracks-- Tribulations and Great Release.

Tribulations was a dance song that didn't suck and Great Release was a dark horse, heavy piano chords over this bubbling drum machine on every eighth note and soft drawn out vocals and a legitimate build. It was frankly a great song if a slow to get off the ground.

lcd soundsystem's second LP Sound of Silver came out a few weeks ago, and the two songs I've heard are a sea change from the dance!dance!dance! crap Murphy was peddling. This stuff has surprisingly solid lyrics, admitted dance tendencies but plenty of greatness to counter any faults. It's seriously awesome stuff. All My Friends is a much dancier but no worse Great Release with a veritable army of hidden layers, and Something Great is a surprisingly spry well written music fest with listless vocals and glockenspiel.

Also All My Friends which I heard today uses pretty much the anchor line of one of the new LoaF songs (which I wrote yesterday) verbatim. All I'm saying this new EP will probably be influenced by this, but that is a good thing.

Naturally the library has no plans to order Sound of Silver, but whatever.

Sorry for the music ramble, anyone who is reading this.

Also this has finally spurned on untitled playist 13. Go figure.

It's now spring break.

I am spring broken ?

Anyway, we had food in three of my first six periods of the day today, and that's not counting orchestra where we watched pirates again.
I got into concert orchestra by quite a comfortable margin; ranked 6 out of 22 which is much much higher than I would've given myself. I'll take it. I'm gonna edge out with a CP-less B in the class for the quarter, but I have shows upcoming. All is good.

I was listening to the recording of the concert tuesday, and we didn't sound as bad as I thought. Yes, the first chair violins are too loud and pointed; yes the band can't really count, but at times it sounded really good, like a real orchestra, albeit one that would fall almost comically out of tempo with itself.

One thing though: THE TIMPANI PLAYER MUST DIE.

Moving on, I've actually kind fo got my break and weekend planned, so good things, I guess? Whate'r.

Days are good though, and B+H is coming dangerously close. Yes.

My goodness, they've redone the LJ post thingy.

I swear, I'm a lurker on my own page.

Okay, here comes am honest attempt to post here much more often.   I swear.

I think I've been listening to music too much.  Just awhile ago, I was listening to M+K's Silver Tiles and the NCAA tourney was on and the shot clock buzzer went off and I thought to myself, 'thats a B natural'.  It is, by the way, 'cause it just went off again and Bushels is on and it's in G but no dissonance this time.  Again, too much.

That's alright, though, I think.

Less alright is the very reall chance I could technically be getting a C in Orchestra this quarter 'cause I haven't turned in culture points.  Not a problem, I can write up Baby&Hide (excitement! show! new album!) and Arcade Fire (yessss) but still, that could require some explaining.

Anyway, spring break is shockingly almost upon me (which means music work at strange hours of the day + night) and I don't know what to say.  Anyway, per usual with music related things, I am equally excited (to get some work done) and appalled (I have to get work done).

Whatever. My band now has ten friends on Myspace.  ADMIT IT I'M A SOCIAL EXPLOSION

I have been meaning to post here for so long.

Oh well.


Anyway, you should have noticed an awful lot of time spent on GarageBand. There is a reason to that-- among other things, February is record producing month. As such, I and a couple thousand others are make some albums. The goal being 10 tracks+ 35 minutes+. I'm shooting for thirteen tracks, maybe fourteen, of which I have half written.

half started, too.

In other news, I'm probably gonna ask to order stuff today. Sorry. Time is a factor here.

So. It's February already, and I kinda wonder where the time went. I've been running into these more and more lately.

ALSO: New Whiskers music, mostly tentatively finished, including my violin on Felled Forest, two songs with a new vocalist dude (Anymore + Waiting) and a song about polar bears on the tundra.

Now to turntable dilemmas: This isn't actually MY money so here you go. There are two turntables on the KWfunmarket, and they are the one I asked for and its bigger older brother. The one I did ask for is a remarkably good turntable for the money, however it has one unavoidable flaw: It is a belt-drive turntable. What is a belt-drive turntable you ask?

There are two kinds of turntables: direct-drive and belt-drive. Direct drive spins with a motor directly under the disk allowing for an impossably long shelf life with great accuracy, the downside being slight motor noise. Belt-drive circumvents the motor noise with a small motor away from the disc and a rubber belt hooked around it to turn the vinyl. Here's the problem: belts are notorious for slipping, causing strange and inconsistant RPMs and eventual strecthing out, which thus sticks you with a useless player about 6 months in. a belt'll run you the cost of the player in the first place.

There's the AT-LP2Da, belt drive and mysteriously without any Amazon reviews anymore for $88 dollars (down from 200).
There's also the AT-PL120, direct drive, 4.7 star average reviews on Amazon, average six year lifespan, $188 (down from 400)

Thoughts?

SO. Back to school, and I could have been to bed two hours ago. Generally there's a purpose for this (some sort of crazy tech work), but not so. I'm fine with that.

I need to write my thank yous to cash a hundred dollars. Honestly I'm not sure why I have such trouble with them. Perhaps it's the feeling of insincerity, not in the thankfulness sense, cause sure, I'm happy for the magazine I'm not terribly interested in and the cash-money. I really am. But it doesn't work well on paper.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm gonna separate the Baby&Hide tracks; the songs weren't as genius as at the record store but there is some really good stuff. Also, I've digging up the shins lately and I must say two things:
1) The new single is terrible. Awful. Four and a half minutes without any melody at all. Subpop, WTF?
2)The truly troubling thing is all the old stuff is/was genius. James Mercer's voice, sprightly guitars, PROPER keyboards, it's great. I was able to find that their old label Omnibus has a lot of old vinyls AT CHEAP PRICES (first EP + first single + Oh Inverted world 12" + Flake Music's* 'when you land' 12" = $28, shipping included. Considering all are awesome and in varying stages of out of print, quite a steal.

Anyway, that is all.

*Flake music is the Shins before they were the Shins. The same line-up, but sounding decidedly from the nineties. Score!

Ah. A new year. Strange, no?

Things to keep watch of... VINYL! Despite never having heard a vinyl record, I can say one thing. They're really quite pretty. (Full size art! Etchings! LINER notes! Relative obscurity! All good!)

Music (and unfortunately quite a bit, what with the Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, Bloc Party, Frog Eyes, a bevy of Final Fantasy, Emperor X in every format short of holographic disc*, Modest Mouse, RADIOHEAD, and Wolf Parade, [and you know Spencer'll have another disc out on one of his many side-projects]) Not counting other releases that may happen (Arms, Baby&Hide, etc.)

*if by that I mean a one sided 12" (etching), two separate CDs, AND a DVD 7" (what?) all with Separate tracks. Damn, Chad, is this the karmic equivalent to you handing out 7 or so 'Central Hug/ /s' at the clock tower?

ALSO, as it turns out, my mad synthetic skill(z?) are helping the Whiskers too, who knows how much I'll be doing that. Along with me finally breaking down and buying a violin pick-up. (whats a pickup, you ask? ask wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_%28music%29)

And yes. I still maintain that a cell phone color 'Cracker' would OFFEND NO ONE. NO ONE AT ALL.

is here. Crazy, no.

Through miracles of ingenuity I managed to create a brief dinosaur comic montage running with God as a fan of The Wire and T-Rex with money issues. It actually turned out pretty good. Also on that list was the first (and only?) known recording of my musical powers. There is some bad stuff there (vocal takes on Wilderness) but enough actual musicianship to go around.

One last show this year as it turns out. As a bonus, it takes place at a record store. Ideally, once I get my record player from the black market I could play some of my growing vinyl collection.

All in all, a good day.

I just finished my feature. I read the old version and just decided to rewrite the whole dang thing, but now it's got cohesion and interesting quotes and it reads well.

YAY.

So. Snow fell. Quite a lot of it, actually.

As a result, half the school didn't show up, so it ended up being a leisurely day.

And now, a detailed log of today:

0) I walk to school, ending up with a half-inch of snow in my backpack, to sneakers filled with snow, and no feeling in my extremities (mainly feet). They came back eventually.

1) We sit in math. Halfway through this impromptu study hall, the teacher tells us we have no actual work to do.

2) In a grueling test of my Spanish knowledge, we watch forty minutes of Buscando a Nemo and have to decipher ten verbs used in the running dialogue. It is insanely difficult, and I spend thirty-five minutes just watching the movie.

3) Larson isn't there, (apparently she got in a minor car accident) so we do twenty minutes of grunt work and read part of a play. Yet again, a hardcore period of scholarly achievement.

4) We watch a strange eighties-ish slapstick war movie in Orchestra. Tim Matheson is in a bunch of scenes, leading to confusion and a strong feeling of deja vu. Oddly enough, Mr. Hastings was here, he
just didn't feel like teaching.

5) Gym. We have yet another sub. Our class of 20 (down from 36? 40?) breaks into four teams of five and plays field hockey. My team wins 6-0, with even me scoring a goal (lefty to boot).

6) Journalism. With the same sub from 3rd hr., we read the Daily Herald.

7) Social Studies. I learn for the first time that the back walls are collapsable in 241, and we join the regular sophomore class to play Trivial Pursuit. We win 18-15, and I accounted for eight points of our total. Now let's test you, dear reader... (These are the ones I got right)


What nerve connects the retina to the brain?
Which newspaper's reporters broke the Watergate scandal?
In tug-of-war, what is the term for the last person on each side?
When rolling two die, which number comes up most often?

And to be honest, I can't remember the others yet. Oh well.

8) Due to a curious lack of teachers we get Mr. Trent in Biology and do half-an-hour's worth of work and get the rest of the period off.

And that was my day.

( answers )

I'll be formally doing a Bloc Party cover, so... what song do you think?


More to come later... I need to do laundry.

Perhaps it's that it's not that late yet, or that I just had a glass of chocolate milk, but I kind of found this funny.

I opened my gmail Inbox and found that I, humble I, had been chosen as the "STAR PRIZE WINNER!!!!!!!" in a lottery I never entered.

Nice try, though.

I don't post here enough.

Anyway, if you saw last week's episode, we discussed the moral problems with asking for things.

The answer to that question could be explained most easily with this morning's first real conversation.

****************************************

INT. Kitchen.

Mom: I read your Christmas list.

[awkward pause]

Mom: Kinda [insert vaguely snide adjective here], don't you think?

[awkward pause]

****************************************

And she's been pissed at me all day.

Oh well.


On a brighter note, a new Frog Eyes song came out today, and it's awesome. It's called the ambassador and they played it live for us. I took a picture of Spencer's hand arpeggiating crazily. It's really very good.

I'm going to say this now: I really don't like making Christmas lists. I'm not good at asking for things, and I'm pretty confident that's a family pre-requisite.

That's one paragraph with four I's, and even I think that's pushing it.

Generally speaking, this is a little easier 'cause you used to get all the ridiculous videogame requests and then a couple CD's [etc.] and so on.

This year's themes include a myriad of vaguely obscure EP/LP's, a couple pieces of [mercifully cheapish] prints, (assuming I eventually get my room back {cue footnote one} *cough*) and then the fiscally ridiculous route {cue footnote 2}.

Then there's always the cash I ask for that everyone assumes I'm joking about. I do need bankroll, being a concertgoer and my expenses have steadily risen.

In short-- AH!
Nevertheless, there are worse problems.

******************************************************************

{footnote one} This whole room situation is very odd. The dilemma being that:

a) I would like my room back a little.
b) Assuming I can actually procure some rent, this would be my most steady income. No kidding.

I'm fine with this couch anyway.


{footnote two} The fiscally irresponsible being the thing I intended to ask for anyway; the behemoth loop pedal RC-50. What do I say?

"Well, now it's priced all the way down to the non-premium PS3! You know, it's all affordable now...", nevermind that I'd still need to get a semi functional amp and clip mic. (not that those are the hard ones to get; thru strategic pill rebates I could cover that)

It's not exactly practical in the main, secondary, or even tertiary sense of the word, BUT ISN'T THAT THE FUNCTION OF CHRISTMAS ANYWAY???!??!?

Utahraptor: Actually I think there was this jesus kid you see...

*******************************************************************

{footnote three} Anyway, once I find some art y'all will have another mix CD to play in the car, my actual untitled mix number 7 but only the third or so to actually end up in the vehicle. This one flows, I swear.

*******************************************************************

{footnote four} So, what do you want for Christmas? A safe prediction could be perhaps maybe some WW shizzle + whatever I come up with.

Speaking of the original thing, it'll be tough to beat last year's Blocked by Owner. I'll try.
*******************************************************************

That's it. Really. The p key is still screwed up, by the way, and so going back and fixing the letter is a story in itself.

The moral of the story being that maybe perhaps just now it could be a good idea just to



sleep.

Sitting through a five minute long Blessing of the Elements, (!) it occurred to me why I despise the new pastor so.

To put it bluntly, she's a show off. Whenever she does anything, anything at all, the focus becomes her. In the middle of hymns, you can hear her mic as she sings. She improv-ed this ridiculusly long Blessing of the Elements, and it was both bland and patronizing.

This is the same problem to happen to the once-respected show TODAY. It used to be about the news. Even with Katie Couric a star, it was a good-natured news program. Then the ten-cent-whore Meredith Viera came on, and it morphed to her show. I DON'T CARE about her idiosyncracies, or the way she takes her coffee, or her inability to rock climb. I don't. NOw the show is CRAP, from that to its "news items" which basically consist of the following:

a) A study has come out that... (generally a month or two later we learn the study was pointless/fraudulent/wrong/etc.)

b) Is your love life [insert adjective]? Well we have an expert...

IT'S CRAP. Crap, I tell you.

And Al Roker kind of scares me.

They being the dogs. They're moody, bark too much, are deathly afraid of everything, etc.

I need to change subjects now. Mom was watching this new ABC show, Ugly Betty, and it was horrible. The writing was bad, characters bland, actors stiff, and managed to be melodramatic as well.

(As I type this, a new ad appears. ABC renewed What About Brian?, the Barry Watson show. How desperate can you be? Seriously, this is grasping at straws.)

Nails were a nightmare, the dogs uncooperative and mean, barking at everything, but I managed two nails on Snickers and one on Toby. At this rate, I will collect twenty dollars by the fifteenth. Joy. I know.

(Part two: They aired a promo for the film Marie Antoinette. I could see it, but it looks brainless.)

Tell me someone got that joke. It's true, though. Really.

Sunset Rubdown tomorrow. Yay.

Ah. It's been awhile. Again.

Anyway, I do actually plan to post at some time, but not now.

A thing I've been randomly getting back into is the Tony Hawk series of games, so now I am going to see if I can see a trailer of the new one.

Hmm...

Peace out.

So. My first day of recording has gone, and I'm kind of excited. Not because it actually sounds great or even good, but at this stage you could play it and someone not in Shapes and Sizes could recognize it.

Which isn't to say I'm even close to done yet, I still have to record the crazy ending, another bass line, all of the guitar, pianos and vocals(!), to go with ragtag drumming, but it's somewhere and that's pretty awesome.

The microphone rocks by the way.

I need to go reassemble the living room now.