MIDI In the Window

My song is done. I did it. I finished a project. I won.

It’s called “Stars In the Window”, and you can’t hear it until Wires 6 comes out. It’s in the electronica phylum, naturally, just like all the rest of my music. But this song is an evolution from the rest. The methods are different. The tools are different. I have a drum machine. I’m using softsynths. I’m using MIDI. With enough outboard gear, I could record the entire song, all instruments and parts, in one take, if I wanted to. That’s the beauty of MIDI. Once you record audio data, the content (patch, notes, and arrangement) is mostly fixed; once you record MIDI, you can edit and rearrange with no loss of sound quality. It’s just note data, and it’s up to the synths to figure it out on playback. It’s beautiful.

So, like I’ve said before, I sat up at a coffeeshop, started the sequencer with a clicktrack, and used MIDI-Ox to turn my computer keyboard into a MIDI controller which I played like a piano. I just played ad lib, and let the song flow where it went. When I felt like I was done, I stopped recording, saved the MIDI data, and played back what I had just done. Spent the next week or two in the editing phase, playing it back a thousand times until I figured out the best note spacing, song arrangement, note volumes. When I was satisfied, I wrote a bass track to counterpoint the melody. Polished that.

And then during that process, figured out a basic drum rhythm with kick and snare. The idea that stuck with me the most was a shuffling rhythm with a sound halfway between a jazz brush and a soft-rock snap. It’s not your usual 4/4 kick snare electronic combo, and I’m happy with that. This gave me ample opportunity to learn my drum machine, learn the basic rules on programming a rhythm phrase, how to make different phrases and string them together into a song which I could play back in realtime along with the rest of the song’s audio. MIDI timecode is a beautiful thing.

Then, the cymbals. I wanted the cymbals to be more lively, more, I dunno, freeform than could be afforded with the limitations of the 16-beat rhythm phrases I had built. So I went to the aide of my MIDI-controller, used that to hammer out the basic cymbals track, with the drum machine as the sound module. Got that data down and spent the better part of a weekend fine-tuning it, editing cymbal events, working on velocities. Nearly made myself deaf from the high-frequency snaps while editing because I had my headphones on and the sound was too loud while doing so…for hours on end. Ears fatigued, I had to take a few days’ break; they’re still not 100% back to their 70% capacity, but I’m fairing well. The cymbals got done. They moved iteratively. The whole process was iterative. They were accidental in how they appear to be not formulaic and how they sound like the work of an improvisationalist drummer. That surprised me.

The writing phase was over. Time to render everything into seperate sound files and deal with the mix and effects. The basic mix was good; my first time listening to everything put together, my first chance to hear all the work of my hands put together and as one solid piece, it gave me an eargasm. I wept.

Spent about a week working on the mix, trying to get it louder. It sounded great on its own, but it needed to stand up volume-wise to other music of the genre. This is when I learned about audio compression and what has been dubbed The Loudness War. It is good to be loud enough, but not too loud. I noticed that the louder I got it, the more distorted and “tinny” it got, the more it lost its gorgeous dynamic range. The distance between soft parts and loud parts is very, very important, and it’s a thing overlooked by today’s music, which is a travesty.

Compression is a cold, uncaring bitch. I’ve learned that. She gives you great and swelling promises of volume and clarity, and then destroys your dreams by breathing on you. Pumping. Distorting. Clipping. I learned that hard-knee limiting is a dangerous thing, and only to be used as a last resort. It crunches the tips of your waveform until they’re flat, and each flat spot spews clipped overtones all over your clear sound. I tried various compressor recipes and found that putting mild compression on your melody tracks, punchy compression on your bass tracks, and using a series of 3:1 -6dB compression followed by hard-knee ∞:1 -3dB compression on the master was the best mix. The best decay time is short; this prevents breathing. Overall, this gives the effect of singling out each track for their unique properties into something that meshes into a master mix which is then itself put through a soft-knee compressor. I’m so happy with the mix.

Having good sources was most important. This time around, I’m using real synths, not canned loops like the rest of my music (even if I made those loops). This is the real thing. If you start with something that’s full and rich, you end up with something that’s full and rich. Matter of fact, until the end of the writing, before I added the sounds of crickets and frogs on the ends of the track, nothing was a canned loop. Yeah, like woah. A vast departure from my traditional tools and methods. About time, too.

All in all, the sound of the track is as if Bill Laswell had a love-child with Enya Ryan who then gave it up to Toby Marks of Banco de Gaia for adoption, who raised it in the tradition of techno (all major chords). The love-child then looked in the past and tried to track down its ancestors and instead found something more rewarding: itself.

Once I played back the initial melody I had pecked out on the keyboard, with the patch I had recorded with, the image I drew in my mind was that of staring out the window of a dark van or car, like I had done so many times in my youth, looking out at the stars flying over us as we flew down the southeast Arkansas highways. Quite often, those stars were my solace; they were my sign that there is something out there, that I was not alone, that we are not alone. Those same stars I gazed at in my college years. Those same stars I see on my drives out of town. Those same stars are over us now. Bigger than I, more numerous than we, more permanent than everything. There. They are there. In the window.

Unbroken Glass

This time marks a pivotal period. I’ve done something good: I have resurrected Glass Door. My friends over at Anal0g.org are putting out another Wires compilation soon, and the deadline is this friday. So, instead of digging up, rehashing, and remastering old shit that I wrote seven years ago, I’ve decided to actually write new material.

I got Acid, Reaktor, and MIDI-OX working on my laptop and a week ago I sat at Genuine Joe’s Coffee and pecked out a slow melody. It was then that I decided to commit to it and to actually get some hardware so I wasn’t so reliant on the “limitless limitations” of software (the one-mouse one-keyboard interface is a major limit), so I bought a drum machine (an Alesis SR18) and a USB audio interface (Lexicon Lambda). I pulled out my long folding table and set it up in my bedroom; all my equipment’s splayed out and wired up. MIDI controller keyboard, drum machine, audio and MIDI interfaces, speakers, laptop, lamp, and an all-important notepad. Now I have a usable setup. Once it’s all physical, then it makes sense, and I’m motivated.

I am once again a bedroom musician.

So I wake up to the sight of that. Its presence in my room is soothing and pushes me forward into motion. It’s something tangible, evidence of the work of my own hands. The song’s coming together. Tentatively titled “Stars in the Window.” I’ve been doing some reworking and rearranging of the melody; can’t proceed with the other parts until the song structure is right. The whole thing’s been a learning process (re-learning shall we say). Learning how to deal with sound drivers and softsynths and MIDI. Learning about musical structure, phrases, chords, keys, crescendos, glissandos, and so on. It’s almost like work, and at times it can get quite unfun (especially when trying to manipulate MIDI controller messages in Acid). But I’m going to keep at it. I’ve got to finish. I’ve got to win.

In about another month, you can hear for yourself when Wires 6 is freely released to the masses. I also have material on Wires 4 and Wires 5. If you don’t have any of releases in the Wires series, do yourself a favor and grab them from Anal0g.org like you’re stealing. (Wires 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Subtractive, Reductive

Math is the foundation of abstract thought. Actually, they go hand-in-hand.

I faltered years ago and skipped over some important mathematical fundaments and got lost, sowed the seeds of confusion and grew the crop of poisonous mental ineptitude that killed the young abstract thinker in me. I have trouble thinking past my immediate surroundings. It knocked me out of architectural school, a computer science degree, electrical engineering. I have always been technically-minded, but my weakness in math has been my stumbling block.

I was listening to this woman talk to a kid here in the allergist’s office. He was saying that he wanted to go to architecture school. The woman (not his mother) asked what grade he was in, what math class he was taking. Ninth grade, algebra. She went “Ew, algebra. I don’t think I need to know what X and Y are doing.”

That hurt my brain to hear that. I wanted to speak up in defense of math, but held mute. Damn my shy nature. My behavior is annoying, but hers is terrifying. Don’t revel in your ignorance.

Maybe I should heed that lesson.

On Conversations and Connections

(Written Saturday, August 30, 2008, 9:30pm)

Ah, yes. Texarkana. IHOP.

So I’m sitting here wondering why I’m sitting here. I think I missed what I was supposed to do. Like I stayed at the house too long. Like I was supposed to call old friends and visit. But why visit? No news to report! That’s a lie; there is. There’s always news. But trying to reopen the dialog is a lot of work and a ton of bother. To what benefit? Affiliation. Affinity. But why? Why do I have friends? Why do I have to be with them? On the corollary, why do I not want to be with them? Why do I want to be alone? Why do I come to anonymous places like IHOP and sit in a faceless crowd? I’ll keep asking until I die.

I come to places like this instead of friends’ houses because…

  • My own terms: I can come and go as I please with no protracted bowing out
  • It’s quick, clean: the only relationship is “What would you like?” “Coffee, please.” It’s short, clean, efficient. The waiter / barrista / hostess doesn’t need to know my backstory. I don’t have to catch up to theirs.
  • I spend nothing but a few bucks, and I get what I pay for
  • The sound of voices is a placebo for social interaction

Actually, I’m scared of the baggage and bother involved in opening myself up to long-time friends / practical strangers. “So, what’s new in your life?” “Well, not much. I’m decaying. You?” “…decaying?”

I’m listening to people talk. Table of four. They’re all talking…at the same time. Is that the secret of happy society? Constantly talking in full duplex? I’ve had the understanding — it’s my programming — that polite society is simplex: one person talks, the rest listen and wait their turn. That sounds great. Sounds wonderful. But it’s not real. Anyone who carries on in that fashion will constantly get trampled on. His words will either fall on deaf ears or he will wait forever for his turn to speak, meanwhile the topic shifts and his unspoken words expire, never to be born. The dead words rot and leave the taste of lowered status on the tongue.

I pity the poor soul who acts in that way. He certainly leads the unfulfilled life. More accurately, I say he follows the unfulfilled life. Waiting your turn is no way to lead. Sure, it’s polite, but it’s soft, mooshy, flacid. The poor bastard can’t summon the moxie to get it up for those in his conversation to witness. Poor bastard.

Fuck that guy. Yeah.

We’re gonna grill out tomorrow. Pork chops on the grill. Apparently my sister will be cooking. I’m not sure who’s showing up; mom threatened to contact all my cousins. I have no idea if she did. As far as I know, my immediate family are the only people who know I’m in town. It’d be nice to see cousins. Can shoot the shit. Guess that’s what family’s good for. Maybe I’ll call my old down friends afterwards, see who has decayed more than me. I also need to fill up some family gas tanks and do some other charitable works while I’m around.

I feel like I’m failing on some duty to support my family or be there when they need it. I dunno. We don’t have a connection. Haven’t in a long while.

So, here I am. I still feel like I missed a step. Like I’m at the end and I’m scrambling to throw on as much support, love, and friendship I can at the end of my visit. Like I’m trying to make up for years of neglect with a rush of charity. I feel like an absentee father who swings through town bearing truckstop gifts for his children. Well-meaning, but thoughtless and cheap; his actions are more a self-defensive maneuver to save face, but his actions are counterproductive. His children thank him with disbelief and his ex-wife looks on with disdain. The whole affair is cheap and the gifts are worthless tokens.

You cannot give a thing that is worth more than your time. Money is free. Time is the one thing doled out unevenly to everyone and in limited supply. That flow will run out, and our lives will become forfeit. Don’t let them be bankrupt before their time.

And so here I am at IHOP. Not talking with anybody, not poking at the logs and stoking the fires of my relationships. I’m sitting with cold coals. This is no way to be.

Why do I do this?

It Was Daylight When You Woke Up In Your Ditch

Tonight, after some coffee, I took a drive around town. Decided to avoid the big streets and thoroughfares I always take. Investigated some of the little neighborhoods I never see, the stuff in-between the high streets. The nooks and crannies.

I had the windows rolled down; radio off. Vent fan was turned off. All I heard was the engine, the tires, and the surrounding street. Ambient, peaceful. The midnight city was my music.

On West Lynn and 6th, I overheard three pedestrians talking about the song “Disgustipated” by Tool. One of them was quoting lines. It woke up a distant memory in me of a guy I used to know when I was 23. He was optimistic. Weathered, but ever-watching, ever-listening. He hungered for experience and thirsted for expression. He would watch documentaries like “Baraka” because they blew his mind. He drank to friendship because it blew his heart. He wrote poetry because it blew his load. All was life, death, pain, joy, suffering, art.

I haven’t been that guy in a long, long time. I used to think that I was one of the residents of bohemia, an enlightened, energized and empowered free-thinker who, with the stroke of his pen and a swish of philosophy, could create his own world.

That song, that album, I discovered it in my last year in school, and it informed me of a bigger world. One where the ugly beasts were beautiful; monsters and mind-expansion held hands and penned words like, “there was goo all over your hands; you wiped them on your grass, now your color was green.” That made sense to me. Bang.

And during that time I ran with people who understood, who knew, who had ideas, thoughts. Still in the twilight between youth and adulthood. We smoked, and talked, and drank until the lights went down and the sun came up.

That. That’s the distant memory. I’m reminded of that guy I was and I get a chill in my heart when I compare that guy to who I am now. I’m experienced, but with less hope. Weathered, but beaten. I don’t write poetry anymore. Music, the rhythm and melody has overshadowed any lyrical importance. “Baraka” doesn’t hit me as hard. My artistic drive has diminished, and tonight, I caught a glimpse of a reason why.

Back then, I could write my future. And I attempted. And passed, and failed, and failed, and passed, and failed. And I didn’t care one iota what was thought of me. It wasn’t important. We had our own society away from, yet within, the society of the world at-large. We were connected with a dim idea of something bigger Out There, that somewhere somebody was thinking the same Really Deep Thoughts that we were. So the eyes and ears of the people on the periphery of that world had no sway. I saw my friends, and my nonfriends be damned.

But that changed after I moved here. I started caring. And the voices of those around me carried with me as I walked. Suddenly, my thoughts and desires and drives had an audience. They told me every side of the story. They ooh’ed when I felt like striking out and aah’ed when I placated them by doing nothing. And as my world got smaller, they got bigger.

And that, that is my failure. I started listening to the idea that people, with whom I no longer associated, had something to say about the things I did. I let the faceless They With a Thousand Faces bear weight on my decisions to express myself. And it had a serious chilling effect.

I’m not sure if I can resurrect the dead. I don’t know if, during the course of the day, I can have him speak my voice again. I know his ghost haunts me in the night, but the scorching light of day overpowers him and I have to be a grownup again. His Eros, his Pathos, hides in the cool and the shade of the tomb. Wake up, dead man.