6/30/07

4'33''

Well... I found out about John Cage's 4:33...

And made a video.

Of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

Check it out here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Crjmydfa6mE

And I just realized something:

I'm hitting enter a lot.

Burn. Pain. Ouch.

If you look close enough, you should be able to see the blister.

Two other fingertips on my left hand were burned too, but not nearly as bad.
Word of advice:
Never put your hand on a 400 degree oven.

6/28/07

Pi To 2 Places

3.14.

That's all you need to know.

But if you want to know pi to a million places might I recommend:

http://www.piday.org/million.php

I wonder if one day I'll be bored enough to read every single digit.

Woot! Subscriber #2!

But still not a "real person", I don't think...

His name's looseconnection, and he does sing and everything...

Maybe he's real. Idk.

6/27/07

Mein Videos! (That's Right... I Said Mein Even Though I'm Not German)

I got rid of most of my videos! Oh no! Overuse of exclamation marks to indicate sarcasm!!!

Yeah. Most of my videos were completely irrelevant... I keep typing irreverent. They're so damn close to each other... I'm having a pretty large brief episode of ADD right now.

So yeah. My videos are gone. Except for Internal Clock and the ever important profile picture. Because I sure as hell wouldn't want the phrase "(I know my voice isn't mindblowing)" to be my profile picture. That would suck.

Wow it's 11:00. Why am I still on the computer?

What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
~-~

6/26/07

Warm Air No Longer Rises/ The Effect Of Gamma Rays on The Man In The Moon

Great title.

Gotta give a little credit to Paul Zindel. I bought his book "The Pigman" and on the front page I saw that he also wrote a book called "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Magnolias". I thought: Woa. Trippy. I just altered the title a little bit and BAM. 2 minute instrumental to add on to my other new track Warm Air No Longer Rises.

A benefit of summer reading... thought there wouldn't be one...

~-~

6/25/07

"Don't Wait For Angela."

My dad just brought up a good point. Why should I have to wait for my piano teacher to see if everyone else is ready to record? I can be laying down the base to my own CD while I wait! And then when Angela brings Matt in again, BAM. He can toy with it and lay down guitar and bass and everything.

Yes.

Why didn't I think of that?

Woot! Subscriber #1!

That's right. I got a subscriber.

Even though they aren't what I call a "real person". But I don't even care.

I'm finally back to my normal writing. The last two posts are little snippets of lyrics from a song "Cash in On Memory 7." It's good, it slips from major to minor.

Definitely Modest Mouse influenced. But then again, it's not like my music is being influenced by much else right now. I might need to break that habit soon...

July needs to come faster.

~-~

6/24/07

Continuation of A Theme

Our school is underfunded
Our homes are all apartments
Our stores are all right next door
But they keep on building more.

Cash In On Memory 7

I've been asleep for 12 hours
For 12 I've been awake
At this point I can't even tell
Which one is real or fake

6/22/07

Tough Times... Again...

That's why I haven't posting at all this past week. Been waiting for more ideas to come into my head. But they haven't.

I've been way too busy frantically trying to master an Oscar Peterson jazz exercise for SYMS, that I haven't had anytime for writing or anything. Still don't know what I'm doing for an actual song for auditions. :-/

I've been working on a song called Down/Under, similar to This Is What We've Become, only it's a lot more instrumental. I'm trying to create movements in it, but with no luck yet.

Been too distracted with school getting out and thinking about working with my dad. And SYMS.

So much for recording this month. I guess July.

~-~

6/17/07

Brigade

I realized recently that I need to have more upbeat, faster-paced songs. I tried, but everything on my piano sounds downbeat. So then I came to Brigade. It's one of those old-sounding songs that sounds like it could be from the 50s. It's such a basic song, just standard F blues progression, and it works. It's not my style but it works.

It's pretty much about this guy that has the worst day of his life. He goes to a parade and accidentally falls into it. Ouch. Then he goes to a nearby cafe, spills his drink on the waitress and runs out embarrassed. Finally, he gets pulled over by a cop. He's speechless because of how bad his day has gone, but the cop doesn't know why he's not talking so he locks him up. Sounds like a great day to me...

In between the 2nd and 3rd verse, it's slowed down and I do a little blues solo.

Not much else going on around the house right now. Waiting for school to finally get over. Canobie Lake Park on Tuesday, pretty excited for that. (For all you non-New Hampshire people that may be reading this, it's an amusement park. I would never be thrilled about going to an actual park.)

SYMS next month. (Summer Youth Music School, week long music summer camp at UNH.) I'm pretty well screwed for that camp. They do not take to rock musicians very well as I found out last year. Last year, I played Bohemian Rhapsody. Every other performance was classical, except for some kid that did a really simple jazz song.

And honestly, I'm not that great at jazz, blues, or classical music and I'm pretty much dyslexic when it comes to sight reading. The way I see it, I have two options: I could learn something in a month, or I could just go in there as the "rebel" and rock out on the pianos. Something that gives me a little faith is that fact that last year, I saw a kid with a teacher playing Hey Jude by the Beatles, so there might be some type of thing for kids like me. I can only hope that there's a program in that camp.

~-~

6/16/07

Project Playlist!!!

I'll be adding to it from time to time:

http://www.projectplaylist.com/user/8471096

Good stuff.

~-~

6/14/07

Major Dillema in California:


Ouch...

Almost crashed into a wall in my hallway skanking to Lay My Soul Down.

Haha. It's not even a ska song.

6/13/07

She Looks Like She's Gonna Eat You As Soon As She Drops That Bone...


The line above the eye was an accident.

Not Much New Stuff

New song called Smile (It's Morning) after a teacher came up to me and said it. It was misty on my walk to school, so I was damp. I guess that the mist... (chuckles) DAMPENED my mood. I was walking up the stairs, and he said it. And I thought "Hey. That's an idea!" And then I smiled all the way to my first class.

Weird how things just happen like that, isn't it?

Otherwise, not much new stuff.

Bass
Snare bass bass snare
Snare bass bass snare bass bass

6/11/07

Space Cadet's Fate: (Actual Lyrics)

Before you know it:

An atomic explosion mushroom cloud the size of an atom but the size of Manhattan at the same time, blew up in his face, disentigrating, reassembling his molecules to red ash. The cloud curled, yellows, oranges, and reds, turning the grass brown and setting the sky on fire. The cloud fizzled out into the air, and when the dust settled, the spaceship was still climbing. The spaceship flew up and up, pieces left behind, the skeleton of the pod floating up still, with the ash inside. And the red ash turned to blue, and then to green, glowing almost. No one witnessed this scene, this color changing scheme scene. A tear grew out of this green ash, a gleaming blue ocean raindrop tear. Reaching its tipping point in the ionosphere, almost reaching the outskirts of our orbit, pod crashing back down to Earth. Further... and further... and further... until it reached our troposphere, dropping further, landing as it launched on the pad. The green ash then grew, filling the pod and exploding the pod in another mushroom cloud. The ash hung in the air, the crowd appalled at what they saw. "I saw Heaven." Then blowing off in the wind, filling the air with glowing green ash. The crowd remained silent.


The power of words can make a tragic scene beautiful.

~-~


6/10/07

flv3 M1nut3s t0 l1ft0ff

All of a sudden, the title 10 Days Until Space Cadet came to me. It makes no sense, but in the context of the song it does. The lyrics are sort of about that feeling that you know you're going into something and you might not be coming back.

Sort of inspired by a history lesson, where an untrained regiment of recently freed black slaves during the Civil War attacked a fort. Leading them was a white man, Robert Gould Shaw, and he was within inches of the opposite side's soldiers. Many think he went into it knowing he was going to die. Once the command to fire was called, he was killed, among with half of his men.

So the space cadet is running away from what he thinks is going to be a suicide mission, and I still don't know what his fate is going to be yet. Whether he actually goes on the flight or whether he goes through a complete identification change is still a mystery.

Stay tuned...

6/8/07

Well Everybody's Talkin' About Their Short List!

I learned Satin in A Coffin by MM today. It's a pretty fun song to play, even though I can't do Brock's falsetto (and never will.) It's a pretty powerful song, but I'm afraid that I'm doing too many covers. I need more good originals. In the words of one of my friends: I NEED MORE MASS!!! Haha. That's taken totally out of context.

14-32 more days until I record.
287,103 minutes until Christmas.

Good.

She had it coming.

6/7/07

Exciting News!

Recording sometime between the end of this month and July. I want to record a lot more this summer, get a lot of songs done. ("I want" being the keyword)

Don't know the title to one, but the other's called Well We Went, a very nice, chill piece. Seeing as how the base chord's F sharp, maybe I could find some type of segue into Pyramid Song. That would be cool.

The other one's pretty intense, almost Well We Went's evil twin brother, since I wrote them within a day of each other.

Paris Hilton's out of jail. I could usually care less about news, especially entertainment news, but this caught my eye.

They say she got out because of a medical condition, but what about all the other inmates at the jail?
Some people die in jail.
But do people recognize them?
What makes her so special?

A slap on the wrist.

6/3/07

Random Tracklist:

1. Psychology
2. This Is What We've Become
3. Polyrhythm (if I can salvage it...)
4. Lay My Soul Down
5. Saunter
6. Internal Clock
7. Package of Sounds
8. Pyramid Song
9. Boredom Rock (once again if I can salvage it...)
10. Eyeglass



That would be a good CD...

Throwing Straight Lines Into A Straight Line

Another weird one called Psychology (Throwing Straight Lines Into A Straight Line), only I actually like this one. The first part is just a basic rhythm and lyric thing like I normally do, and then all of a sudden... whoa. It's all trippy. The pace gets slowed down, and it turns into a dizzying carousel type thing. I like it. I'm recording it.

I was also thinking that, if I recorded it, and it sounds good backwards, I could do Psychology/Reverse Psychology (Throwing Straight Lines Into A Straight Line).
That has to be the longest title ever.

6/1/07

Polyrhythm and Jealousy

Well, Purple Surf (formerly the Usual Suspects) did pretty good at the Stone Church tonight. I'm jealous/upset that I'm not involved with it anymore. But hey, what are you gonna do... Nothing.
Polyrhythm is a new song I wrote (I'm on a roll once again). Out of all the songs I've ever written, it's definitely the weirdest by a large margin. I sing in words broken down into syllables and play chords on each beat. The reason I called it Polyrhythm is because the parts without vocals are in 4/4 but the vocal parts are pretty much indistinguishable.
It's weird, but in my mind, it works. I think. Drums/percussion are a must on that song...
I'm finally gonna ask when we're recording again Monday. I can't wait much longer...