exipolar.net

Mark came over today, we worked on a song that I had started months ago.  we finally finished it clocking in at 5:07 in length. here’s a 30 second clip.  hopefully I’ll have some lyrics drafted tomorrow to record, and the only thing left to record some real drums to it other than the amazingly repeatative drum machine.

Left to Question – epiphany(we need a real drummer mix and some vocals would be nice mix) clip

I’m starting to feel like my influences are starting to meld together into a coherent me for the first time.  I used to have very different aspects of myself that were derivative of other things.  Time seems to have melded them into a cohesive image of what I want to make.  I’m still way to affected by my environment to be 100% productive though. :/ I think when I get this loaf in the oven, I might do a jog around the block since it’s at a nice temperature out.

Got them custom made through the Vans site, I wish ESP guitars had something like that.

Sugar Disaster

Originally uploaded by exipolar.

The Good thing is that the jar for dispensing the sugar just filled

enhanced for pinkness and how dark the original take was.  Thing is, my hair is really highlighted pink, don’t let the oversaturation fool you.

oh and I got a plurk because twitter is beginning to suck, sorry guys :/

I’ve decided to no longer wait to go bed with courtney everynight as she closes at her job at midnight five nights a week, and instead have decided to go to bed at a reasonable hour provided that the place is in decent shape when she does get home.

So far, my plan is working wonderfully!  Yet again I have a ton of energy. I have a bunch of song ideas that I’ll work on when I get some private time to myself.  I started on a song last spring that I’ve been redoing in the last two days and it kicks ass.

Waking up early and having more energy has had one unintended side effect.  I’m much more restless with others around me.  I’ve always been sort of independantly minded though.  Most of the time, I I find that others just get in the way of what I want to do, espescially in this town when it comes to music.  Lame people are everywhere and I still am.  I guess with that attitude it’s best for me to do things on my own for now.

The Mixing Console continues to yeild new surpises in functionality.  I’m starting to get the hand of the three band Equalizer for de muddying instruments.  Though I do hate having to pull it out, plugging it in, plugging everything else into it, and turning it on everytime I want to do something.  Before I just had to start up jack and use Ardour’s Mixing Capabilities.  I do overall prefer the tangibility of the mixer itself though, which Is why I don’t unhook it.

Follow me up on twitter

I spent a good portion of my economic stimulus check on a new midi controller! It’s not like it has knobs and buttons all over the place like others but it’s enough for my purposes.  Mainly I have been composing a lot for piano-ish/keyboard type music, I realized that doing this sort of thing strictly through sequencing isn’t going to do unless I actually had a keyboard on hand to know how one plays it.  I’ve actually learned a lot more than I wanted to.  This isn’t a bad thing of course.  What I was hoping for was to give my compositions more life by adding some improvisational flair to the rhythm pattern,  Instead though I got a handle of the proper “posture” that one plays piano that made even the original renditions sound more like piano music.  To be specific, the way I had originally wrote felt very awkward as I attempted to play it.  I decided to spread my hands our a bit which of course spread out the harmonic range of the phrases.  I noticed that the result sounded more natural as well, it sounded more like a piano piece.

The Classic Rock Trio dubbed “The Psychotics” for which I am the bassist of is going to be playing at a local bar the 30th, I see it as my internship on the whole rock ‘n roll band.  Experience to be used for when I actually use my own projects.  I’m fairly excited, it’ll be my first show.  we’re trying to get fliers posted around town and all.  If the gig is successful I’ll look into making a myspace and all for us.

I started what Leo from Zenhabits called a tralog.  Basically it’s a blog to keep track of personal progress on things; it’s very dry and simply full of stats but it’s good to reflect on.  You can read (& comment on) it here.  I’m going to update it twice a day at least, once in the morning to show what I have planned, and once before I go to bed to show what I have done outside of plans.  I hope that eventually I’ll be 100x more productive and I’ll be able to get things done easily.

In first grade I was diagnosed ADD and emotionally challenged.  I should scan the paperwork for a post header.  I really didn’t know about it until my early adult hood.  The fact is though, it takes some real living in order to understand what it means to be “emotionally challenged”.

I kinda disdain the term actually; it seems insulting to my faculty as a human being; it implies that I was made “wrong” from the beginning.  I’m not sure if it’s a developmental problem or just a learning disability, but the fact is I do have trouble relating to others.  I’m often insulting, crass, tactless, and just generally uncouth; the only way I even know this is from analyzing the reactions of others around me.  I aspire to be a musician, but it’s been a hard road having to make the heart I have to use to be my muse for my art; at least I don’t have to settle for the one I was born with.

But without being so pretentious, I do experience emotions, I just don’t experience them in the way we seem to be acustomed to them being presented.  I like to think of the way I experience passion, and hate, and all of that as the way we individually see colors, and it just so happens my frequency assignments are very different from others.  My only worry so to speak is that I question if a person who experiences emotions so different from others can succeed in what I have a passion for. Well, Beck certainly made it.

Saturday night I got a melody stuck in my head that I probably heard in a video game somewhere, but is now encorporated into the most epic song I’ve ever endeavored to write.  If the last few days didn’t suck as much as they did I would have gotten more done with it (jack server kept crashing) but it’s been behaving today and I think I have enough focus tonight to work on it again.

Espescially after watching AWESOME poetry tonight.  We weren’t prepared for paying for anything so I sacrificed laundry money for a copy of poems by a Roger Bonair-Agard who dazzled me with his words tonight.

Well the last few days haven’t been all bad.  Other than said Poetry, I got my copy of Queen live at Wembley which rocked. I’ve even developed a Queen obsession not too unlike my Jem obsession only real difference, is that courtney already has a ton of Queen CD’s for me to raid and rip to my computer (suck it RIAA).  I really want to do a cover of Stone Cold Crazy.

Other than all of that, I finally ghetto customized my guitar.  I spray painted my pick gaurd.  I want a real custom pick gaurd though, but I don’t have the money for that yet I don’t think.

Damn this post is juvenille.  Here’s a pic of the guitar

I just “emailed” last.fm tonight about a problem with their manager’s interface.  Hopefully that goes well.  So far though, what last.fm is offering independant artistis is amazing if not unheard of.  I love it so far.  I signed Left to Question up for it now that band activities have resumed to a degree.  I’m not going to be offering any free downloads until this issue is set with the uploads that I have right now.

I’m so happy I’ve found that this is what I want to do with my life.  Music is what I really want to do.  It’s become my obsession and my biggest love.  Now I just need to get a better career to support myself so that I can do music professionally.   It is an expensive habit.

Another review of yesterday’s jam:
I can’t believe we made a song in three hours.  Still it’s in a rough long cut form right now, but it’ll get completed sooner than later.  All I have to do with it now is re-record Dave’s vocal’s while wearing headphones so as not to have as much bleed in the vocal track like this one has.  I can actually turn off the other instrument tracks, you would still be able to hear them loudly in the vocal track.  Right now, I’m exporting a version without the horrible solo, not just for our listening pleasure, but for practice copies for mark to solo too.

not music related:
Tomorrow, I will try to have a running exercise before I go to work.  I have the gotten doing a morning routine into habit enough now that I think I can do it and make running a habit now.  For now though, sleep!

Mark was over, and we literally wrote a song in a day!  All of us!  Dave wrote something this morning, and he jammed out the chord progression while Mark and I tried attempting some avenged sevenfold.  Then we jammed it out all together.  We recorded a rough cut soon after and here it is

Left to Question - Murphy’s Lawyer[rough cut]

Left to Question – murphy’s lawyer [rough cut]

Now if we hold each other to it, we will be awesome!