I am really fascinated by electronic music again, lately. Mostly strange, obscure spin-off genres that showcase odd tempos and radical ways to even think of how you’d play a synthesizer or a drum machine. And it’s pretty fun, exploring like this. I might try something of it.

LISTEN TO ME

I wiggle my mouse, letting a laser sensor detect movement and send small electrical impulses down a copper cable via the universal serial bus into the front of my Apple PowerMac G5 where two IBM built PowerPC 970MP processors detect that movement and jolt to life together in unison, propelling my desktop computer to 2.0GHz per processor as it cycles through billions of calculations a second to frantically run the UNIX foundation that supports Mac OS X as a platform that flexes it’s muscles and hosts Core Audio that can detect my M-Audio audio interface over the universal serial bus and supply the electricity needed to not only power that input/output interface, but supply the extra 45 volts down it’s cable to my Nova where it powers the electronics and diaphragm of the microphone so it can receive and interpret sound pressure levels emitted by my Marshall Valvestate S80 amplifier who listens for the signals made by my Gibson SG guitar.

Where my hand and pic grazes the strings of it that vibrate at different frequencies depending on where I restrain those strings on various points along the guitar’s fretboard. the dual, plated humbucker pickups below the strings sense those strings vibrations with electromagnets wrapped in copper coil that generate small electrical signals that are routed inside the guitar, being coloured by the density of the wood and the coil of the strings as they pass through volume and tone filters that I could control with my hands with knobs on the face of the instrument and zaps on out through a 1/4 inch cable into my solid-state amplifier where those signals are sent through semiconductor circuits that use a combination of valve and solid-state technologies that create a unique overdriven sound and route it out to a pair of 12 inch speakers in a cabinet that continue to shape the sound before it expels outward as waves of particles and energy through the air and collides with my Nova microphone where it is then converted once more into electrical energy and is blasted down, through my I/O’s analog to digital converters that change electrical signals to digital information so my Macintosh’s Core Audio engine can read those packets of information and allow Logic Studio to route and record that information to my hard drives that are spinning at 7200 revolutions per minute.

All of this happens behind a graphical interface that allows me to modify, warp, change those recordings into a coherent “mix” where the guitars are spread out over a wide stereo spectrum and it’s harmonic content controlled with multi-band equalization so that the drum kit, who is a interface and algorithm with over 20,000 different samples of a given drum kit that interprets how I play my midi controller into different drum recordings, in real-time, to arrange different percussion patterns can eventually get mixed and summed with the recordings of my guitars in a mathematical algorithm where it is then converted, compressed and saved as an individual MPEG-Layer-3 coded file that I then upload over the TC/IP network that spans the entire fucking globe to a website that I own and run for a small-as-shit fee, so that anyone on the infinitely accessible internet can decide if they have the time to listen to what I had just spent the time creating or read what I had just self-published. for free.

EVERYONE.

everyone takes everything for granted, all the time.

and as much as I find the possibilities of what can be done with our technology inspiring and truly amazing.. I find it sad and very disheartening that nobody knows that it’s there. or what it actually does. or the effort it took to get it to where it is. or that they can do these kinds of things if they took the time to look into it.

So I’ve  moved back into the city, this week. It’s been a long, long time since I had a place to live where the high-rises of downtown Vancouver were something I could look out over my balcony and marvel at. In fact, it was the apartment on Haro St with my Dad, would be the last time that happened.

I’ve since had a place in White Rock, and two in Burnaby and…  they never really felt quite, completely right. Granted, my bachelor pad I just moved out of was brilliant but that’s probably because I was truly self-sufficient and on my own for the first real time. No room-mates, no family, just me and myself and however I could make ends meet. I completely recommend just diving out on your own with no extensive plan or experience and just getting a small, cheap apartment and going at it by yourself for a while. Completely. The freedom, is delicious.

BUT, I’m back in the city and it’s about time I got down to work. You can expect to hear some singing from me and a friend of mine in the next few months, and you can expect the drum kit and electric guitar will most likely be left out of the equation. Once I get a new mic stand… since the one I have doesn’t hold the Nova quite right…

In any event, here’s a thing I did the other night, inspired by all of this. Hope you like it:

Untitled Idea  by  Dizavin

So, I’ve been rather absent of late. This is because as of November 29th, I’m moving in closer to the city! I’ll be shacking up with my girlfriend in a larger apartment so her and I can bank more money and have more resources to do more stuff. Like do a little upgrade to the ol’ home studio, in my case. I’ve got a pile of new gear in the shipping room at work that just came in, so once I’m moved in I’ll be rebuilding my workstation to incorporate this new stuff. My existing mic is getting replaced with a Nova that I’m going to mount in this shockmount and pop-filter, and it’s getting piped into a new FastTrack since I’m now only ever recording a single XLR or 1/4″ at a time nowadays.

My controller is still a Kontrol49, and I doubt that will change anytime soon. I’m still very, very, happy with that board and if it ever broke, I would simply buy another one just like it. But, I do intend on setting up a dual tier stand so I can have my MicroKorg back and more involved, as it’s kind of been gathering dust for the past few months.  Hell, I might even build a cool little rack to house my interface, outboard guitar effects board and an XLR & 1/4″ cable patch bay.

Or maybe even buy that damn bass guitar I keep telling myself I’m going to get so I don’t have to bug other musicians I know to borrow theirs. (The last band I was around enough to borrow one from, Fake Shark, I haven’t heard from in ages and are probably off doing who knows what and Oddchild are often far too busy to lend out gear. hrmphf.)

The software is still going to be the same since I’m sticking with the G5 tower for around another year or two and Logic Studio is still going to be the same. the plugins aren’t going to change either, so it’s basically a nice, new set up of recording hardware. This will help out a lot with some of the ideas I have for the next few months, regarding music.

Hopefully not too long after I move The Lab and rebuild my workstation, I can get back to work on a cool electronic idea I would like to have out by the end of the winter.

It’s been a while since I’ve put out some music. In fact, it’s been about three weeks since I estimated I would be finished this album. But hey, better late than never, right?  So here it is:

Download It Here

This was written between March and August, 2009. It was initially a little bit of fun to try and make some old-school, electro-punk and quickly became a fun project that took on a life of it’s own and developed a bit of a theme and a name that stuck in my head whilst recording it. I spent a few early mornings and late nights recording this in my home studio creating this thing and I eventually came to the decision to experiment and release it completely copyright free and see what happens. I’m kind of a nerd about that sort of stuff.

So, there’s some ideas I have with spreading this around I want to play with as well. So that should be fun. But, either way, take this and listen to it, share it, give it away or use it in games/movies/videos/samples. Whatever you like.

My 2008 Mp3 pack is up and online! This one has a bit of a story to it, also. 

Back in ‘08 I had about 7 songs that I was going to throw out onto the web and I suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure with only 2/3 of the material backed up. I was able to get the G4 I was using at the time back up and running fairly quickly… but all of my vocal takes were gone and two of the songs were totally lost. Needless to say this bummed me out quite a bit and I sort of stopped making music for the better part of a year until that winter when I was able to pour out 3 new “piano & drum machine” songs and was able to wrap up Empty Spaces. I ended up giving that one away for free during the Christmas break. For some reason, it felt fitting. 

Inspired again, I set out shortly after to start writing and recording again with what will probably be my next addition in a few weeks. The pack may have an actual name or it may just be the “2009 pack”, but either way, I felt prudent to add the work I did in 2008 to the Archive Page and let people hear what was done at the time because I still think it sounds pretty good as a set of instrumental songs, even after having the project almost completely implode on itself.

Richard over at Urceus Exit has put up a new single called The Worst Things We’ve Become and I have to say, it’s pretty dang catchy! I really like it and I’m sure that you will, too. Oh yeah, it’s up for free it would seem. So there’s also that.

Alright, since I’m still trying to work out the kinks on my music archive page (downloading via clickthrough doesn’t quite work as of yet. I’m going to fix that ASAP.) I thought I’d quickly throw up some direct links to some of the material that’s up there already. They are three packs from 2007 and 2008 of original content and the remixes that would be okay to give away for free. 

Right now, I have the 2007 pack of 7 songs with an extra 2 that didn’t make it off of the cutting room floor, two remixes in a single pack, and the 2008 winter pack called Empty Spaces. 

Hopefully, cross my fingers, I’ll be able to have a miscellaneous MP3 pack from 2008 up within a few days and by the end of the next month or so, I’ll have a 2009 pack up, as well. Keep checking back.

The Pirate Bay  seems to be down right now. Could the torrent megasite finally have been brought to it’s knees?

updates as they happen!

Trent Reznor sees the NIN: Access app get pulled from the iphone digital store due to “questionable content” from being able to stream The Downward Spiral. and he follows suit on the NIN.com forums: 

“…I’ll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and “clean” versions be made for them to carry. Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart’s standards of decency – because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records. NIN refused, and you’ll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart. My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any “indecent” material for sale – but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film “Scarface” completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes. How does that make sense? You can buy The Downward Fucking Spiral on iTunes, but you can’t allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says FUCK or CUNT? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about fucking hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone! 

Come on Apple, think your policies through and for fuck’s sake get your app approval scenario together. “

I have to agree with the man. the whole point of NIN Access is to link fans together digitally during this upcoming tour and if Apple thinks they can strongarm him into making his application family friendly by forcing it out of their store at the eve of his new tour? they have another thing coming, if you ask me. I can speculate that if they don’t put NIN Access back up on the App Store you’re only going to see one thing on the nin.com homepage: detailed instructions on how to jailbreak your phone and put a blackmarket version of the app on your phone. 

and I get the feeling that may actually be the alternative from his followup post: 

“Everyone – let me be clear. I love Apple products and as goofy and out-of-touch as their app approval process / policy is, I will still use them because they work 1000X better than the competition. This is not a debate, it’s a fact. The iPhone is THE most elegant, modern smartphone at this point in time and it’s perfect for what we want to do with the NIN app – except for the ludicrous approval process, and that’s what I want to draw attention to. 

Android is cool, but nobody has an Android phone. Blackberry is OK but the hardware is inconsistent and WinMo straight-up sucks balls. If Apple doesn’t get it together, we will most certainly make it available to the jailbreak community. I didn’t invest in this app to see it languish on the sidelines from an idiotic policy while this tour is in full swing. “

Now this can get VERY interesting. I’ll be keeping a close eye to what Apple’s retort will be to a man that’s so intertwined with digital music and where it may end up finding itself in the future. 

You can read more about the happenings with NIN:access over at the Nine Inch Nails forums or by following Trent Reznor on Twitter.