Curious Sensations of Walking

I tromp along clumsily on the uninnervated flesh I have remaining of my legs. I feel their weight as they slog along beneath me. It’s unsteady—like trying to open a camera tripod with one hand. I haven’t felt much there for years. Vague sensations. There are still phantom pains, but they fly around indistinctly like blurs of color on a wall.

What surprises me is that I don’t really have memories of feeling, either. It’s as though I should only remember them as a difference between what I had then and what I have now. There’s nothing to compare. I don’t remember what the ground felt like when I was young. I have a vague recollection my shoes hurt my feet when I stood on them, but no feeling of the land below.

My whole life I’ve had a fear of going deaf. I have nightmares about it. I’ve always been a keen lover of music. Now it terrifies me all the more—this idea that going deaf would mean not only a loss of sound, but completely losing the memory of what sound was.

Have you ever thought about what it feels like to have a tail? It’s difficult—maybe meaningless—to imagine the sensation, the touch, the proprioception of having a tail because, in all probability, you’ve never had one.

Tails aren’t encouraged in our society.

—Journal entry, circa April 2009

Postscript, January 2011:

Continuing improvement. I can feel the ground beneath me again, though it’s still unfocused. It’s surprising to go back and see the difference.

I walked three miles yesterday.

How To Produce Your SXSW Demo Submission

The SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas will be upon us again before you know it. Right now hundreds of bands are putting the finishing touches on their first demo recordings which they’ll be sending in for the festival’s demo compilation and web site.

Here are some pro tips on putting together a demo recording with real SXSW authenticity.

• If you’re an aspiring ingenue, use liberal amounts of piano and acoustic guitar.
• If you’re an aspiring ingenue under the age of 24, be sure to make liberal use of cello. This will counterpoint your melody or to hide the lack of it.
• Use electronic soundscapes of at least 45 seconds to ramp up your song before introducing any melody or lyrics. This will give your performance weight like a steamroller.
• Whenever possible, include a beginning of someone playing stray notes. This will make the audience feel they were included in the recording session and knock off those phony “polished” production characteristics.
• If you’re not completely secure in your lyric writing, encourage extended solos from each member of the band. This will convince people you are in fact an accomplished jazz ensemble.
• The idea that you need a professional studio is elitist. Get that guy your cousin knows who engineered that CD of their church’s youth group to set up his best two microphones in the back row at your next gig. This yields an authentic SXSW demo sound.
• If you have a 32-bar lead-in before the first verse, go ahead and play it twice. You’ll want to make sure everyone is listening by the time the singing starts.
• When you record the count-off, be sure not to cut that out of the final track. That stuff is gold! Counting measures in the middle of a song is magnificently punk retro; A&R people eat that shizzle up.
• If people know how to spell your band’s name from the way you pronounce it—or vice versa—you’re not being sufficiently obfuscatory. Keep a sense of mystery between you and the audience by keeping out the mainstream audience. Otherwise you might be too accessible. Use numbers or omit vowels from title words to accomplish this.
• Strongly consider making your demo submission a “roll call” song. This is a song that gives a one or two line factoid about each member of your group. These are essential for making sure the every member of the audience can feel a sense of identity with the band member they find most attractive.
• Use raw, unfiltered power to your amplifiers so it’s clear how powerful they are. In the unlikely event there’s no lava lamp in your studio find a neon sign. Beer distributors can often provide these.
• If your band promotion and marketing makes you feel like a little fish in a big pond, consider describing your band as “Worship.” This will change the standards against which you’re compared.
• If your guitarist has difficulty with particular chord changes, add liberal reverb to cover the awkward spaces in your sound.
• If you’re a piano player, remember to keep the right pedal pressed down. It lets the piano know you’re playing.
• Guitar effects are like fonts; the more you can work in, the better!
• Spend as much as you can afford on cool guitar straps and special effect lighting. Your visual impression is crucial. Don’t worry; you can upgrade those seventy-five-dollar microphones later on. [But don't wait on those multi-hundred dollar Monster cables...your audio integrity is precious.]
• Ukeleles are really in right now.
• Try to employ the new VST Instrument that ranks high on the internet forums to show you’re up on the latest trends. The Commodore 64 SID chip simulators were a hallmark of every innovative group four years ago. They were used in over 200 SXSW demos in 2008.
• If you’ve discovered an interesting sound while experimenting, repeat it as many times as possible. The listener will want to appreciate it from every sonic angle. Cite this as being a Goa/PsyTrance Ambient influence.

Good luck! We look forward to hearing you in the showcase.

Moving things around

I’ve just exported all the posts I had over at Tumblr and imported them back here. If things are formatted strangely, that’s probably why.

Tumblr makes things so easy to post, and it has spectacular community behaviors. It falls down a bit if one is interested in comments from non-Tumblr folk.

A New Identity

Today I learned that I am a Domestic Extremist.

I do not believe that children should be irradiated or fondled to advance the meaningless theater of security as rendered by Homeland Staatssicherheit.

I do not believe people should be deemed extremists for holding this view.

I do not believe anyone should be detained, questioned, or harassed for speaking this idea.

When it becomes inappropriate for those governed to question the actions of government, there is no more basis for democracy in name or fact.

When the assertion of our Constitutional protections of free thought and expression is deemed disruptive and anti-American, then this government of the people, by the people, and for the people has at last perished from the Earth.

Heaven preserve us our freedom against our patriots.

Something overheard in a dream

“I really want to get that in a Monster Cable-compatible format—like FLAC or lossless WMD.”

Art

paintedetc:

This painting is not available in your country
Paul Mutant, 2010.
Acrylic on canvas
12” x 10”

This is so beautiful, I need to weep for our species.

A sense of porpoise

nprfreshair:

Breaking Dolphin-Related News: Dick van Dyke (who was on Wait Wait a few weeks ago) was apparently just rescued by porpoises from the ocean.

It is porpoise that created us, porpoise that connects us, porpoise that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us. It is porpoise that defines us, porpoise that binds us.

We are here because of you, Mr. Anderson. We’re here to take from you what you tried to take from us: Porpoise.

—Agent Smith, “The Matrix: Reloaded” (sort of)

The Three Laws of Economics

1. A consumer may not injure a Corporation, or through inaction allow a Corporation to come to harm.
2. A consumer must abide by the End-User Contractual Agreements, Restrictions, and Intellectual Standards Trusts (EUCARIST) specified by a Corporation, except where such requirements conflict with the first law.
3. A consumer must protect their own economic viability and credit standing, except where such protection conflicts with the first two laws.

Bomb the World

“We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can’t bomb it into peace.”

Micheal Franti, Bomb the World
A song you should really give a listen to

Who Owns the Octopus? And Is It Psychic?

The Englishman lives in the red house.
The Spaniard owns the dog.
Coffee is drunk in the green house.
The Russian drinks tea.
The green house is immediately to the right of the white house.
The tennis player owns an owl.
The soccer player lives in the yellow house.
Milk is drunk in the middle house.
The Mexican lives in the first house on the right.
The man who runs lives in the house next to the man who owns the monkey.
The soccer player lives in the house next to where the zebra is kept.
The bicyclist drinks orange juice.
The Frenchman fences.
The Mexican lives next to the blue house.

It’s a Hello, Waveforms kind of day. Thank you, William.