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.