candlesayshi

So, I've been noticing lately that composing for me is taking a lot of... um... courage... It's like I'll create something, and then I'll need to take time to absorb what I am creating, because I feel like I am breaking.

Maybe it's just the things I'm trying to express, or the concepts I'm trying to explore.

In any case, I'm finding it hard to do. Not through skill, but through will.

I'm starting to feel that my music is taking the form of a stage for all my failings to perform.

Tonight is going to be a dedicated "work on music" night. Hopefully.

Dave is coming over later, and we're going to hang out with our laptops open in the studio and see what we can do.

I always hate how long it seems to take me to finish a track.

However, hopefully I'll have something to throw up by at least tomorrow. I'm envisioning pounding my head on the R-8 while being overcome by a deep sense of inferiority. Which is probably true.

We'll see.

I'm out of coffee, and all that's left is the famous half-empty bag of decaf that you can't remember when it got there, and these weird little coffee pods that me and Gezus lifted from the Milner Hotel over near Comerica Park. 

So, naturally, I said, "Well, I'll try the caffinated one."

Ugh. It tastes like that same kind of awful, watered-down coffee you get while waiting in line at the bank.

Note to self: Get coffee that doesn't suck.

Also, for my outreach into new levels of geekiness, I've been playing Final Fantasy XI a bit. I don't know what I think of it yet. So far, I think it's cooler than World of Warcraft, but nowhere near as cool as the Phantasy Star Online/Universe.

 Ok, heads up... making a geek post. So, if that's not your thing, pass right by.

First of all, I feel that Super Mario Sunshine is terribly underrated. I feel the the general conception of it is that it was just filler to have a Mario game on the Gamecube, or that it's a "gimmick" game, because of the addition of the little FLUDD water pump, but fuck man. This is not a casual walk in the park game. Some parts of it are absolutely fucking brutal. Like, the levels where Shadow Mario takes FLUDD from Mario and you have to get through this very cool platforming part above a bottomless pit while the classic Mario theme plays. Holy shit. Those parts are frustratingly, controller-breakingly, addictive levels, and there's usually an easily attainable 1-up in an early part of these levels, as if to give you hope that you got a free 1-up and not that you'll be getting that same 1-up upwards of thirty times as you continously die and have to go back through all over again.

Also, those parts are really a lot of fun and completely awesome, because when you do actually beat them, you feel such a great satisfaction with yourself. For a quick thing, here's the typical rundown of one of those levels: Run over to some floating alternatly flipping platforms and jump across them, do a back flip, and wall jump over a chasm and grab on to the wall where you have to wall jump diagonally to reach the next platform, run across there and jump on top of a turning cube, while running on the surface to make sure you stay on top, jump off the cube and grab on to a rope, get up on the rope and jump off of it at the right time to land on top of a turning cog, and start moving to stay on top of it, then jump across three more of those cogs, and time it right so that you leap off onto a rotating bridge just as it passes in front of you... etc etc...

It takes a lot of skill, practice, and patience to get through those parts, and I think that if Nintendo did an entire DS/DSiWare/WiiWare game that was only levels like those that just got progressively harder it would be a huge f'n hit, and people will see it as a "return to form" of the running/jumping/know-your-tricks-or-die Mario gameplay.

Dear Nintendo, please do this game....

Anyway, the other thing I feel like saying.... I have to reluctantly say that I am not a big fan of Stan Lee's writing style. I've been going back through the Spider-Man 2099 comics (which were written by Peter David, at least before everything went nuts at Marvel), and Spider-Man is really well done in that respect, it really draws you in and does a great job of building the characters, like the Spider-Man of 2099 (Miguel O'Hara)... he is very importantly not just a rehash of Peter Parker's character, sure he does the wisecracks and whatnot like PP does, but the writing in 2099 really does a great job of building this character so that you kind of understand why he is the way he is, like his sensitive, jealous, and slightly gullible younger brother Gabriel, his abusive father, and mother that lives in a mental asylum, and his oppressive job working as a researcher for the Alchemax Corporation . You understand why Miguel is the way he is because (aside from the superpowers, of course) he's a very believable, well-rounded character, in love with technology and science, and slightly misanthropic and untrusting of others.

Anyway, getting back to what I was saying. I got through Spider-Man 2099 all the way up to the first crossover story arc "The Fall of the Hammer," and I decided to stop there, so that I could read the other 2099 comics to get up to speed. Part two of "The Fall of the Hammer" is in Ravage 2099 #15. So, I decided to read that one next. Now, Ravage was a completely new character in the 2099 Universe, created and written by Stan Lee. Imagine the excitement. Stan Lee created some of the greatest superheroes of the entire comic universe, and I had never read Ravage the first time when I was younger. So, I didn't know what to expect. Needless to say, I was terribly disappointed. Every character in that comic is completely wooden, and so stereotypical of characters they represent. It's sad really. It's as if since Stan Lee started long ago, the rest of the comics world evolved beyond him while he stood still. Ravage is first of all an predictable, wooden stereotypical hero, like I said. To put this in perspective, let me pull out Ravage 2099 #3 and type up the first page of the comic: "Street fight! Violence, rage, and sudden death! Not uncommon in 2099! But this street fight is different! Its repurcussions will echo for years to come!" That's all you got!? Ugh. I'm sorry Stan, I respect what you've done in the past, but I just cannot believe how terrible this is. I decided to skip Ravage, and I moved on to Doom 2099, which I have to admit, is fucking incredible. It takes a little bit of knowledge of the character to understand his passion, but it's pulled off excellent. In this one, Doctor Doom (or is it? Scandalous!) materializes in Latveria to find his castle in ruins and Latveria under the rule of an oppressive cyborg name Tiger Wylde, and after a first unsuccessful battle, starts to pull together a team to take back his country. It's really great so far, and I really wish I would have read this one the first time when I was younger, too.

So, when is your guys most productive time of day? Or when do you seem to do your best/most compositions?

I'm starting to noticed that my time is early morning around 5 AM to 9 AM. I think it's because I like night time, and it inspires me and near the end of that time is when I feel in the best position to express something.

...Maybe.

Also, slightly-related... I've been working on this track for a little bit, in small pieces here and there, and this morning I realized that I was working on the wrong track. So, I renamed it and started the song I meant to do.

Somehow, I'm kind of working on both at once. Which is really really strange for me. I never work on more than one track at a time.... I don't know why. So, it's weird going back and forth.

Finally finished reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Absolutely fantastic story with a very interesting kind of progression. The story doesn't "progress" as much as it "unfolds", but it is no less captivating for that. Definitely one of the best stories I've read in a long time.

So, I was reading this article on IGN about Satoru Iwata saying that he didn't see the point of adding HD to the Wii, and after reading the article I thought, "Yeah, I can see that, I was pretty irked when I first bought my first Nintendo DS and the DS Lite came out shortly afterwards."

...and as I am sometimes wont to do, I decided to read the comments, compeletely forgetting that I was on the internet.... to witness page after page of people bitching about how Nintendo is stupid and doesn't care about gamers, etc etc....

This made me feel really out of the loop. I couldn't grasp why this was such an issue to all these people, but then again... as much as I do have to admit that I love video games (and have played video games all my life), the Wii is the only current-gen console that I've touched. I just don't have the money for a new gaming console. To put this into perspective, I'm super excited about getting a Gamecube, because I used to have one, and I realized that I miss having it, and right now I've been trying to get through Super Metroid after hooking up the old Super Nintendo. So, if a new awesome game is coming out, if it's not on the PC, bets are I probably haven't played it. The Wii that I play every now and then belongs to my brother Bryan. He likes it... and just like me, he's played video games all throughout his life. He's very particular about his games though. He loves sports games, party games and platformers, and he hates anything first-person and Japanese RPGs. However, there's this general perception I've noticed that people who enjoy the Wii aren't "real" gamers. I don't understand this divide.

Anyway... back to internet comments... I kept reading them until I came across this one:

"Let's have a quick historical review:

1. Every little snotnose hardcore techno-dweeb on these boards insisted Nintendo had to have HD on the Wii to compete, and Nintendo was making a huge mistake, and if Nintendo didn't have HD, they might really be screwing themselves business-wise. IGN Jedi Master Matt Cassamassina was leading this charge, constantly whining and urinating on the legs of Nintendo executives every time they told him HD wasn't going to be critical this generation.

2. Wii came out and pwned the world.

Amen.

Oh, remember when MS insisted that HD was the defining element of this generation? They themed an entire E3 press conference around that idea a couple years ago.

And now it's all about motion control.

Gee." - JetForceX on the IGN boards

I lol'd. Then, I remembered when all this was going on, and lol'd again.

Hmmm.... In closing, I just really wish people would go back to loving games for the games, it's almost as if no one has ever owned a console older than the original Xbox.

 So, lately I've been obsessing about this guy's music.

I've had his two free releases :Port and METAX on constant rotation the past couple of days and I just can't help but continually being blown away. 

Head over to his site over at http://www.accesstoarasaka.com/ and swing at least those two up if you get the chance and haven't heard it.

A lot of his sound is part of how I wish I could sound. It's cold, sharp, digital, and powerful. 

...and apparently he's really into cyberpunk. Insta-manlove points from my book there. :D

Hmmm.... I've been kind of away from the internets these past couple days.

Feels kind of awkward, actually.

In other news...

The other day I looked at the Super Nintendo just sitting there next to the TV, and all of the sudden had the strongest urge to play something. So, I've been playing Zelda: Link to the Past a bit lately. I luff that game.

I miss having a Nintendo DS... I'm thinking of saving up for a DSi. Since, I don't really talk to anyone in the area anymore, this one actually has a chance of not getting stolen.

Also, as I'm trying to put together an album, I think I'm going to private share my tracks for feedback for a while. Purely in the internet of not busting a nut too soon... er.... cashing in my chips before I get the hand... er.... you know what I mean. Hmmm... I doubt too many people here care that much, as the only people who read my LJ are other musicians with there own things going on, and different girls from my past and present... I just felt like it needed to be said.

 So, I saw Synecdoche, New York the other day.

Wow. I definitely recommend that movie. I thought it was stunningly brilliant.

Also... before I head out for the weekend, I just did a quick mixdown of this track I've been working on, and if you wanted to let me know what you think of it so far... that'd be awesome. 

It's kind of an experimental/concept piece. The idea was to compose it with only Reaktor 5, a Roland D-50, and a Roland R-8.... hence the name. I was going for a kind of Formless-era Gridlock-style downtempo/glitch/industrial sound. So, yeah... if you have a suggestion or any other idea to throw at me, I'm more than willing. Thanks in advance. :)

Well, in the morning, I'm heading out to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival for the weekend. I hope it's a lot of fun. I'm not going to have the chance to hit up any afterparties or anything. So, the festival itself will have to suffice for all the fun-having.

Be back in a couple of days, I suppose. :)

IDMf:Industrial presents Divergence

di·ver·gence n. 1. Departure from a norm, deviation. 2. Mathematics: Failure to approach a limit.

It begins like waking from a dream into a nightmare, and carries the listener through a fractured path designed and constructed through the creativity of artists with the desire to surpass themselves. Created by members of the electronic music production community - IDMforums, in honor of the Industrial, EBM & Power Electronics section, not just as another industrial compilation, but as a tribute to a style of music that has inspired us to explore and reimagine sound through our own vision. Contained within the tracks in this compilation are echoes from not only the past and present of industrial music, but perhaps the future as well.

Divergence features 14 tracks from a diverse selection of artists from the IDMforums community, including new and exclusive tracks from Keef Baker, Endif, Tapage, Unterm Rad, and more. The release package contain excellent full album artwork by Sean Forsythe, and short bios of all included artists in a single PDF document for your convenience.

Support the art you adore.

Stream it right here or download this release at http://label.idmforums.com/

Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Produced by Candle Nine and Cursed Chimera
Mastered by Aaron Hall - http://www.lucidwaves.com/
Artwork and Design by Sean Forsythe - http://www.sforsythe.net/

Best thing I've heard about it so far:
"Okay, the production is phenomenal. Candle Nine and Cursed Chimera, fantastic job. The mixing and mastering are sur-gi-cal, kudos to Aaron Hall. The sound design and engineering that went into each of these tracks deserves a new word entry for the Websters collection. Sean Forsythe, the art design and implementation was superb.

Thanks to Nathan Schwartz & Wayne Baker, for being visionaries.

To the artists:
I was left breathless beginning to end, captivated, drawn in. I was completely separated from the physical world, left roaming this new alien terrain guided by sonic injection. Music of recent times has thoroughly been disappointing, until now. I needed this.

You are great."

 Today's listening:

Meh.

I'm stuck with this song I'm working on.

So, I've just been leaving it open so that I feel guilty for not working on it.

It's coming along well though. I have the basic skeleton of the track worked out, so I've just got to give it flesh.

Kind of a concept track, I suppose. The goal is to build it completely with Reaktor 5, the Roland D-50 and the Roland R-8. In that, I have so far succeded, but in making a good track? We'll see.

I love Last.fm.

It has saved my poor ass from missing out on new music many many times.

It's my belief that, among other things, the internet is currently in the process of actually creating a universal language that will allow people from across the world to understand each other in different situations. A kind of refined Leetspeak, if you will.

So... preorders are now available for the Ad·ver·sary remix album... Check that out over here for preview clips and ordering info: http://tympanikaudio.com/releases/ta025/

The tracklisting is:

01: Ancients (Cyanotic Remix)
02: Waiting For Gira (Patience Is A Virtue Perceived Remix By ESA)
03: Creatura (And The Sea)
04: Just (Spookier Remix By Iszoloscope)
05: Bone Music (Disparition Remix)
06: No Exit (Sartre Wasn’t Kidding Remix By Candle Nine)
07: Friends Of Father (Oil Sands Remix By Monoculture)
08: Dresden
09: Waiting For Gira (Still Waiting Remix By Stendeck)
10: Darker
11: Just (Boo! Remix By Synkro)
12: Waiting For Gira (Phylr Remix)
13: Number Nine (Square Prime Remix By Autoclav1.1)
14: Just (Passed Away Remix By Salt)
15: Cyanotic - Deface (Ad·ver·sary + Dirtybunny = Industrial Strength Mix)

...and everyone's going to buy it right? ...and say, "That Candle Nine is a strange fellow, but at least the remix is okay." Yeah? :-P

Holy shit, Ab Ovo is amazing.

Hmmm..... I'm pretty proud of myself for how my newest track turned out. It's giving me that "time to go back and 'upgrade' your other tracks" vibe, because I feel that I learned a lot from doing that one.

I upgraded my copy of Windows 7 to the RC. It is definitely awesome. Hmmm.... Even though I knew how to flat out upgrade from the Beta, I decided to follow Microsoft's wishes that I do a fresh install of it.

Reinstalling the software was a bitch, but I did just the chance to clear out some clutter on the way. I did however forget to save my beloved modded SONAR color scheme loosely based on Logic 5 when I wiped the drive. So, I made a new one from scratch based on Rapture's color scheme. It doesn't look too bad, lots of dull blues and oranges. Easy on the eyes.

So, now that it's all out of the way, I 'm hoping to work on some choons today.

Also.... opinions. Should I make a sticker set for my notebook with the SONAR key commands?