yay for mixing!

AWesome first day back in the box with Jeremy. Interesting thing occured...
some point in the evening after I had taken a mid-day nap, I pulled up one of the rough mixes that I had been working on for this project.

When it came up I could/hear/feel/articulate all the things about it that were robbing it of its maximum potential. So I just went to town,

Drums we're erradic and peaking the stereo bus so I had to compress and limit them to just stay put in one very prominent place. There was a lot of build up in the low end so I EQ'd some of the reverb returns to not be as boomy.

quick jiggles here and there and what I got out of it was not only a solid mix, but it was the first time mixing didn't feel like a big scary chore.

I actually WANTED to mix this thing.


I really honestly feel like I'm beggining to disolve the complications of the tools in the studio and also the misinformation around them

Some might say I overcompressed the drums (or at least thats what I thought someone might say to me as I squeezed and limited this beastly track). I for sure know I didn't, I did what I needed to to get the results I heard in my head.

This is great, audio engineering is now feeling more fluid to me. Like photoshop.
If you can comprehend the frequency spectrum your trying to fill and the mood your trying to evoke, its all just a matter of using these tools to tame,manage, scale, effect, stretch, edit, nudge, magnify, color, imagine, and create a moving composition.



its all about voltage

A quick bomb to the box

Mellow day, aparently didn't have to work at Dharma's when I thought I was opening. Instant free day! I decided to spend it buying healthy food and recording music.

Got in there to do some vocal splicing with Forrest whos a reggae vocalist, DJ, and beatboxer. Awesome guy.

Me and Ryan just worked on the basics of a new song he was writing. You can see the production happening a little bit in this video edit. He laid down 2 verses and a chorus but we have a lot of work still to do on it.

I'm going to ask my friend Riz about playing xylophone on it or ask Chris Lynch if he has any thoughts on a keyboard line that might fit the chorus.

I was able to try alot of the production techniques I wanted to use on the beat for this one. Room tone, reamps, tube pre amp/compressor for the kick, API on the snare. I have quite a ways to go still but this is a great/fun start

Upcoming studio projects

-Jeremy Wheeler Dec 28th-31st ... finishing up the tracking of his album, Acoustic based rock. It's a heavy concept album covering the topics of soul, spirit, and beyond

-Cripple Catch of the now-disbanding harshmellows crew, has expressed interest in laying down his vocals in Gadgetbox. We still need to have our official "meeting" but from what I have heard around, Catch's new album is an epic tale. Me thinks he is going to want to take the upmost care in getting SICK vocal tones since his lyrics and his persona are what are going to push him up the ladder. we love you, catch

-Burn. Kevin and marcia need to spend some time with me fleshing out our live electronic sets, we could use a splash of studio magic but ultimately we need to be sequencing stuff in ableton. Smurf might agree with me on this, but its hard to sell Kevin on it. I think I just need to DO it and then show it to them that the possibilites are fucking AWESOME

-Creek Side Crew,
we got some really fun 45 second ideas and some verses but the time is NOW for the whole globe to 'Do A Backflip'. Nasty, over-compressed, drum and vocal tones throwing back to the classic Beastie Boys vibe but with an '08 twist. We got glitches and graffitti, bikes and VJ sets. Smell that? It's synthesis baby, it's all around us

boom bap

-More MPC madness
-Agler's mountain unicycle bomb/2 handed basslines
-MC Lars in the studio with R2

LIVE: FROM THE CUTS!

Kelli Hanson's birthday tonight. Skate rink was closed so we all went back to Andy's. Fun hangin out with the gbox gang. I finally got a chance to meet Andy's newer assistant, Gabe, heart to heart. It was rad, we started our conversation about specs of the MPC1000 which quickly segued away from bullshit and got straight into some level 4 conversation about people, and productions, and empowerment, and how to bridge the gaps between all things that are beautiful.
hmmmm...
Interesting, because all day long me and Lyrical I we're having long heartful talks about the same stuff.

Anyways, Gabe convinced me later on in the night to bust a free style. We played some instrumentals off his ipod and gave it a shot.
What came out was a not-so-graceful but very sincere account of [A] things that happened today [B] serious issues that weigh on our heart [C] who we are and where we are going on this path through life. The act of doing this was great conditioning for me, it took the conjuring of some deeper bravery to even just let words fly uninhibited like that. Catharsis


but yea /..\ One of the most contenting days I can recall in my whole life. I didn't even really feel the need to smoke weed all that bad, all food that I ate, all the conversations that I had, the afterglow of last night, all these things got me SO in the zone that I really didn't need to smoke at all. I did anyways, but for once my primary concern was on listening to people, not on getting high.



My only qualm about today: less talk, more rock.
Don't get me wrong, I CHERISH the words that were exchanged between Lyrical and I and Gabe and I and all of us who read this right now, BUT GODDAMN, I probably spent like 10 hours today talking about how incredible the possiblities of tommorow are and how connected everything IS Gonna be come 2008.
F- that Noise ... Gabe played me a track tonight, Lyrical spit me a poem and a song tonight. I twinkled and absorbed alot tonight but it's really time to put my chips up on the table

tonight was the closest to PROPER of any night yet.
I want to express this again and again because narwallagrams swarmed on the santa cruz down town and got real at a very multi-dimensional art event.
Belly Dancing, Burlesque troop, Down tempo Heavy electro dub reggae tech step DJs, big live projection art by Chris. It was clean
however, much follow up needs to be done in order for this night to be fully "closed". We got the first crucial part of it done which is we need to mix it up a bit and wrap about it. Mills and lyrical I just laid down a 3:30am paul sweet freestyle and kept the art and the juicy vibes flowin. I myself shot 2 gigs worth of video from and I would really like to slap it together in a stylized edit, that how I could do some mixing and express my feelings through the presentation of others' content. Thats the name of the game. Do the soulful nectar of life stuff, then mix about it!

Anyways, between what I got on my digital camera and what we recorded on the H4 today, I would say I have about a DVD's worth of content to archive just from December 14th that I would want to:
A.) Save for posterity

B.) Revisit, remix, refine

C.) Share with the rest of the world and recieve their feedback with an open heart and mind.

The name of the game is thwarting obstacles.

Hardddrive has been a problem, yesterday I went and got a 250 gig Western Digital EIDE drive to put inside a USB enclosure I bought the LAST time I was having HD troubles. Straight up isn't working ... I'm thinking that after work I can return it and drop maybe another bill and get like a nice new working external with firewire ... It would be even nicer to pick up something with additional USB and FW ports on it as well ...

In other news, sampling is on my mind. There is a nice new MPC 1000 sampler in the mail with my name on it and I want to fill it with nothing but goodness. Some of the things I want tons of samples of right off the part are:

'Garagey drums' (I would like to take the H4 and some trashy drums to a big garage or warehouse that has really metallic reverb in it and throw shit around and tape it) PS. I have 2 whole cassette tapes from the first time I was trying to capture these sounds up in Portland, but now knowing what I know ... we can do it better

'8 Bit Death' Anything and everything bitcrushed. Commodore 64 Chip samples, Nintendo Samples. Ian McC (ahmys boy) has a grip of old genesis games in which you can navigate to a 'SOUND TEST' menu right in the game and play all the sounds and music sepertatly ... so infinitely sampleable. There is also a VST plugin called PEACH thats an 8 bit style synth that sounds GREAT... however it will only run on a PC. I'm trying to hunt down some one with a PC that runs music stuff so I can ask them to sample some stuff off of PEACH for me. Gabe whos Andy's new assistant at Gadgetbox has a PC..

'NASTIEST GUITARS' distorted distortion. Reamped reamps. BIG fat multilayer detuned chugs. Hi-pitched searing, synthetic squeels. Glitch processing ... like if Cephalic Carnage was hanging out at the Glitch Mob's house tracking JUST guitars. This is most likely going to be stuff I need to book a few days worth of studio time for. Probably track stuff at gadgetbox ... chop is up in Ableton ... spit it back out into an amp or a pedal or just direct and see what happens.
-See: Nine Inch Nails' album Broken and Cephalic Carnage's album Lucid Interval ... I would love to be a part of the team and makes compositions HEAVIER, NASTIER, and BRUTALER than these AND.... something new .... something glitch ... something not glitch ... something thats pretty and delicate ... something with contrast. Whatever it is, it should be a meaningful reflection of its participants.

'MOST DIFFERENT DRUMS' yea ... I don't really care about the straight up hip-hop sound at all. I realize I must abide by its feel and structure somewhat in order to support friends like Mikey, Ry, Jesse, Killa Kate, y mas. BUUUT... thats not my shit. I'm not street, or ghetto, or thuggin. I'm rollin on a huffy bike. My life sounds and feels different from anyone elses and the way to express it is not with stock drum beats and samples. Its a collage of old and new with colored ink dripped onto the lens then photographed, photoshopped, flashed, arkaosed, glitched, reamped, remixed, resdistributed, relaunched, retouring, rerocking the notion into everyone that 'Yea. We our us, and yes it's important to get off our ass and do something meaningful about it."

But yea, the drums. I suppose more and more drum recording experiments are going to have to go down. I am fond of when a person plays drums in the big room and then another person bangs on that open headed blue bass drum. It makes such a clean tone, it can really add A LOT to the beat when its really on point. So yea .. expiriment,
Mikey one night recorded me tweaking on the pro-one and then we took the cassette deck out into the big room, played it back loudly through a bass amp and then just SHREDDED DRUMS over it. I recall it sounding very sick and it being very 'connected' to playing back to my original keyboard tweaking.


I have to get on point and get to Dharma's now.
We need to rip and import all the youtube bookmarks we got.

http://youtube.com/aboxintheyard I have Hyde Gallery show playlist.

also the new battery for the GL-1 made by Rayovac is shitty and dead ... new battery can be got from Batteries Plus in scotts valley.

peace

trying to bust a gnar Nar narwallagrams business card and acompaning flash document for a the NarWGS myspace but ALAS! My harddrive is full ... and even with Mikeys harddrive plugged in, no programs can function properly. I HAVE TO get a working external harddrive within the next 18 or so hours. It shall happen

just jammed for a while with Kevin. Aparently shrooms makes drumming harder. Make a note of that R2 (it makes pretty much anything besides going . "YAAoooOOOh LAAAOoo.. Squiiiish" hard) it wasnt all bad tho. In fact it wasn't bad at all, I was just really focused on LEARNING my parts and trying to not make our time together a 'jam'.

We had a long talk afterwards in his room/studio about what we are thinking this band is going to do and where it could go. I told him that I want to take the backing tracks, put them into live and filter stuff. Make a fluid set basically. Add kicks, add synthy noises and candy, maybe book a few studio dates where we add extra stuff like wierd vocal samples?, Tuba?, glitches?. Whatever the song calls for I guess.

I told him that I want to go for with the project is: PRECISION, TIGHTNESS, and shit that you can just feel DEEP DOWN. I use bassnectar and infected mushroom as mental models for the kind of thang I'm talking about.

He told me that he can see in my playing that I don't go to enough dance parties. I dont EXUDE it the way the big boys do. He told me that all the people who are making big waves in the dance scene are all up in SF.

Now I'm curious about how mega-lord house producers would get down in a studio setting and how they chop their samples, and how they compose their synth tracks, and how they call in pop-star female vocals and make those really epic house anthems. But I'm not nessesarily going for that.
It would be nice to LEARN from that but I don't need to go there really.

I am however interested in coming up with a "Daft Punk" caliber paul-sweet woodsie freakbike glitchno death rock swamp rock 'lecto fuck experience and disguising it in the trojan horse of an unassuming roaming, house party band (on bikes!). BAM! ROBOTS IN THE LIVING ROOM
our limits are only the ones we empose on ourselves.

right now my limits are:
Tools, tools ... see 'money' below but yea ... more or less I would like to have access to more Crazy beat making spaces. A place that has an MPC to bang on, a wall of synths (virus C, moog voyager, mellotron, prophet-52, ect.) and enough mics and preamps to mic up and record some PhatDirty drum breaks and lay killer vocal tracks. This is an ideal I aspire toward. Wanting to kill it as a producer who can work with artists who use both an onslaught of acoustic instruments and electronic enhancement (like Beck and Bjork and Air)


Money, its coming in slowly from Dharmas and then quickly going to rent and food. The money i've been making from the studio and other artistic avenues have been going toward being able to afford an MPC1000 sampler and fit it with an internal 120gig HD option. I've spent like a good 2 days straight on this thing and I feel that it will bridge alot of gaps for me. For one ... I can make a beat anywhere ... no computer ... no synths no speakers .. Just MPC and headphones ... AND I CAN SAVE THEM! wow, imagine that. AND REPLAY THEM, and remix them, and sell them on websites, and reamp parts through fatty tube-amps at gadget box. OH AND GLITCHES ... this thing has a few different means to make and sample glitches.
It has USB and MIDI ... I specifically intend to trigger events on the MPC from my SPD-S pads while playing the drumset. This could trigger a loop ("Television ... RULES THE NATION") or a 1-shot like a thick layered 909 kick (my 909 is currently at the warehouse and there are a bunch of nice tube preamps at gadgetbox that want some analog drum funk pumped into their jensen-transistor pussies), it could trigger a midi note to tell an external synthesizer (one that I don't have yet) to make some like Checmical Brothers-style ear candy and synth layers.. it can also tell arKaos to play a clip, it can tell live to play a clip.
The reason why it means so much to me is that it FEELS like an instrument when you bang on it. At least from a discerning drummer's perspective. I really like the way the pads respond and the interface is very quick and non-limiting. Theres no wonder why EVERY HIP HOP SONG UNDER THE SUN was made on one.
Next on my list of shit to buy is Ableton Live. Because very soon after I get this MPC deally I will want to be busting it into live and tweaking stuff on there too.

This is all good and well , but in terms of really pressing matters, my HARDDRIVE IS FULL. If I get some of my samples and videos and stuff off of my local drive I can actually install the rest of the Adobe Suite and make some more progress in the Photoshop department.
Oh yeah ... Also my computer sucks and wont run shit as well as I ultimately need it run! I would love to buy a new mac in February when they supposedly come out but I know I'm going to be throwing all my free money at a trip up to Portland.

Time, trying to stay up as a good worker at dharmas (this requires mental sharpness very early in the morning .. usually im a little cloudy), also in the back of my mind is trying to learn spanish whenever I have free time (which is never).
trying to stay up as an ambitious freelance recording engineer. Gadgetbox is phat but I just keep telling people like Wubakia and Lars that its 'all booked up for the rest of the year'. If I'm going to get serious about this, I need to have more spaces in which I can quickly KILL IT. None of this bullshit stoner home studio set-ups. those are cool for being stoned ... and just being pacified ... not KILLING IT.
Also I'm spending my time trying to stay up as a drummer and a musician at large. Practicing on my practice pad whenever I fucking can, trying out new beats. Playing with Kevin next door is a big help for my chops. He throw me all kinds of wierd regaeton beats and what-have-you. I love it, my brain doesn't think in digital world rhythms yet, hopefully soon it will.

bummer, Kelly's laptop doesnt have a VGA output that is easily compatable with our projector. It's some wierd small 12" macbook type port that I think needs an adapter to connect to a monitor.
We need to either get that adapter from kelly and troubleshoot her laptop with ArKaos or figure out a different computer that will handle the visuals this Thursday night (at 10pm at the Hyde gallery for dress rehearsal) and Friday Night for the performance.

I just got off the phone with her and she said they were going to be expecting between 500-800 people for the event. HOLY SHIT!@#$ this event is going to be no joke.

In other news, I just jammed with Kevin a bit. Worked on some beats with him a bit, filmed a little bit of it on the GL-1. I want to start compiling a VLOG of beats and noises that I constantly work on and evolve with.

this friday

coming up this friday, Ahmy is having a burlesque show at the Hyde gallery. Ryan Agler right now is telling me that he ran into (disco-ball) Chris downtown and that he's going to be involved on this event with a grip of other people. I'm not sure what else is happening besides the burlesque, but it seems like a bunch of shit might be goin on.

Anyways, she said they want to pay us a cut out of the raffle that they are going to hold, so we might be comin out with some cash.

The problem as I understand it, is that Andreas won't be here on Friday. So me and Mills are going to have to bust this one solo (and on bikes too, most likely! yay). I believe that Kelly Peach is down to let us install and use Arkaos on her laptop for the show, but I, personally, have not asked her.

They want to know if we can rehearse with them on Thursday...
My sisters phone number is 917-2013 if you want to talk to her directly but here is an email she shot me about what she hopes we can pull off for the visuals:

Opening song: life is just a bowl of cherries.
no dancing during this number, so you can be as elaborate as you want. cherries, balloons, red stuff.

next...

Classic stripper music... you know wahhh waaaahhhhh.... trumpets and stuff...
the dance is the balloon popping act.
if you can make the visuals to this one have the holes on the side, like a film strip rolling, and maybe langerei floating around...

transition is to some more big band jazzy stuff, and we sweep up the balloon parts, and confetti from the first number. \

next...

the pink room. we are going to have a strobe light for this number. if possible, i want you to turn it on for us.
projection, nothing moving, but we want the image of a red curtain, like in twin peaks.. the song is called pink room off of the fire walk with me sound track.

then another transition. the music is the tool organ music from the enima album. we will be just changing.

next...

rendez vous. this is the creepy bdsm dolls. the music is french. its from the tripletts of bellville soundtrack called rendez vous. if you could,
we want the visuals to be more film strip stuff, really gritty. you know? like a really old movie, with lines, and scratches in the film.

then another transition to some funkey disco with the sounds of a woman most likely being pleasured orally. something discoey maybe?
bright colours, sexy women with afros would be cool. james bondy shilouettes, or fanta girls would also work. you know.

then the umbrella dance. this is our grand final. its ultra dreamy. its to the goldfrapp song 'uk girls (physical)' and we dance with umbrellas.
visuals, maybe bubbles, slow blury things, birds, timelaps flowers, timelaps sky. timelaps clouds. especially the timelaps stuff if you can.

then our closing music will be thank heavens for little girls. this is an easy one, just a bunch of cute girls and girly stuff.

when i get home i can tell you how long the tracks are.

im so happy yall can help! it warms my heart.

hugs and kisses
-ahmy


so yea .... I can start working on this on Monday. I hope you can help me with it Mills, I think we can pull it off. It'll be a fun bonding project!

raging thoughts on the tetsuo tiff

YeA! This is R2's blog. Post spot for me. Not for you. Massive exchange is for you, and me, and us.
But here... this is my new RPG character to level up. No group effort, person effort.
But yes, it is here and public and is my cocktail napkin.

So right now is the most reclusive I've ever been in life. I kind of feel like emily. I'm a lot more interested in kind of working things out in my head and on paper than with other people. Problem is, I've had trouble focusing on things my whole life, so when I'm so quiet about my passions these days people have no way to help me out and give me advice and encouragement. So fuck it... it's not working, The people who I know are reading this (initially) are people i know care enough about seeing the things inside me blossom into things we all can revel in and enjoy.

That being said:
Lets go way back.. R2 is hanging out with his sister, Ahmy, and her boyfriend, Ian. Ian is a super cool dude, very into collecting and enjoying mass amounts of media.
-Video games, great movies, records, DVDS VHSs Laser Disc. he has good taste and lots of it. It's always a treat to go over to his house and have him show you some shit you've never seen before.
This particular night we were hanging out and smoking bong loads and he's like. "Oh fuck! Ryan, your gonna love this one" And he busts out Tetsuo: The Ironman on laser disc. Its a 60 minute long, grimey black and white japanese horror film. SO incredibly and sincerely low-budget, filmed in this ghetto-ass shack town. All the props and sets are built with junk. Just pure tentnusy rusty ass broken pipes and wierd garbage drips. The music was just as industrial and low budget.
Oh man, the stop motion animation in this movie is fucking priceless! People getting swallowed by stop motion junk and garbage and then morphing into other people and asjkldLADS((AS fuck! you just gotta watch this movie with me sometime.
Very firey and inspired at the time of watching this, I concieved of the notion that this movie is so visually 'Grindcore' that a perfectly sync'd and grimey'd soundtrack could be the gnarliest excuse to write an album ever.
I told myself .. man, R2, don't give up on this idea. It's awesome, it could be heavy, and super physical and fucked up and new and old and encompassing much media.

so... what happened? well. Number 1, I'm not as musically talented as prince or trent reznor, or prince reznor. I've never written a song and I don't very well grasp any melodic instrument yet. Just beats and noises, preferably electronic noises. Oh and Ideas ... man, do I have big stoney ideas!
So I'm thinking that I'll serve as maybe a creative director for this project, cuz I'm so brilliant and perfect and I know what the fuck i'm doing.
So I moved to portland without drums, without any real plan other than to go to school and grow as a visual artist. I did what I could given the circumstances..
I rented the movie at Movie Madness and ripped it onto the computer. I watched it over and over and over and played other bands' songs with it to envision the kind of vibe I would want to create for each scene.
As this project progresses on down the timeline alot starts to change for me and I'm frantically grasping to keep this dream of Grimey and gore alive. I for one start going to a school that from day 1 I am very skeptical about. They have G5s and Wacoms and scanners and cute little ID badges that you scan to get into the design labs.
What I was discovering was that the students we're all very new to graphic arts and had no real burning passion to push things forward. Holy shit, this was seriously like the most crippling thing for me.. I was ready to swallow portland whole and I got let down really quick.
Where was the band rehersal room? Where am I gonna shred drums and make noise collages with field samples and distortion pedals?
I had spent SOME time fiddling around in my friend Sean's home studio, but at this point in my life I was still very amateur in my skills but VERY boundless in my ambitions.
I had the dean put me in Senior recording arts classes. I still wasn't very impressed on what was happening within the walls of the school. All that was new and exciting for me was the drugs. I really liked mescaline.
This was getting me really depressed fast. I aproached a band from Seatle called Blowupnihilist about this project, they were a digital grindcore band. Guitar, bass, and an MPC sampler playing jack-hammer machine gun blasts and dark brooding synth scapes. Totally dope, I frequently wonder what it would be like to be a drummer in a band like that. Not much money or fans in that kind of music but it is just PURE TIDAL WAVES OF PHYSICAL ENERGY. Like 52x concenrated free-base heavy metal crack that just slays you from the get go. UH!
Anyways ...what did we do ... Well fuck .. we were all HANGIN OUT, and SMOKIN WEED, and ENJOYING THE FUCK OUT OF OURSELVES the whole time up in Portland. And I needed out, maybe this is the vibe I bring sometimes cuz I find myself currently caught up in it RIGHT NOW but if thats the case and I'm a creative succubus and disempower those around me then I AM SORRY and goddamnit I'm ready to move on.
So.... I moved on, I came back down to Santa Cruz and stayed with Evan in his dorm room at Porter for a couple quarters. I was working at the Good Times pushing page layout programs around and making pretty mediocore ads. It was novel, but I was making a living off of a skill that is dear to my heart.
The point i'm trying to make here is that its taken me years to get things lined up with this fucking Tetsuo Project, because I care about it and I want to make sure that I do things right. HOWEVER! This doesn't change the fact that I'm an A.D.D. stoner whose scatterbrained-organization and grandiose ideas could much better be accomplished in the span of a month rather than shittily rushed together after years of procrastination if indeed I could set my bodily desires aside long enough to put my mind to the metal and GET THE SHIT DONE.

So where am I at now with this?

Well ... For one I've got a notebook filled with pages of where to track trashy drums and where to make glitches and strings and wierd bass samples to be in sync with Tetsuo the ironman. An outline.

Another thing I've been considering as of late is .... THROW IT ALL OUT THE WINDOW ... why not just instead write music INSPIRED by these images. You could do mash-up projections of metal and grime and japan and people screaming and shit getting murdered and bulls and muscles and scarey eyes. Images of pure rust-core.
Then you record and perform with the right individuals.
Guitars, synths, electronics, modified cellos, effects on everything.

When I get stoned I just have ideas about how we can stretch the boundaries and make this shit just take us to new heights. I believe that we can design sensations that NO BODY HAS EVER EXPERIENCED, far beyond concerts, far beyond movies, far beyond video games. It's spiritually interactive!