31.10.11

Circles

Today's post is sponsored by Carbonized's Screaming Machines. Terribly underrated progressive album, way ahead of its time. Talking with a number of modern-day people, I think its time still hasn't come. What a pity, people are depriving themselves of a huge treat.

I retroactively named the Turnip band Yelling Construct in the album's honor. This is subject to change if I come up with anything better. For now I haven't.

Raspberry bush slayage is quite the energy-draining task, I slept for 11 hours straight that night, but at least I didn't wake up with the ground-shattering headache I had when I went to bed. Finally got started on that Russian fantasy book I "nicked" from my sis's room, it seems pretty decent. Interesting idea, thus far the execution is adequate.

Found a bug in my testing script, patched it up. Something about mismatched dimensions or something like that. Today I'll try to get a head start on the RT-PCR experiment planner I was asked to write... maw, y I so lazeh? I don't feel like it, really.

Showed The Dude some Funerus, asking him what guitar/amp it is. He fell for them like mad, and I used the chance to cram a whole arsenal of bands down his throat. Now he's blasting Rippikoulu and enjoying it. Also, he penned some riffs... one of them unblocked my slight pep stall and I'm working on a new tune for the band. Got this fabulously discordant lead over his riff, utilized as the verse, and he actually let me keep it. Hooray. Now I'm trying to come up with some nice 6/8 riffs that would be creative, I rarely work in that meter, and the song demands a huge-ass instrumental section. Jolly good, jolly good.

Fox and Lillien threw a badass Halloween party, in character as Sweeney Todd (complete with white highlights!) and Nellie Lovett. Of course, they served meat pies. Total badassery, I tell you! One of these days I'll get my act together and go to one of those "party" things people keep talking about, and enjoy it.

Need to meet up with the two of them sometime soon, as it's been forever since I saw Lillien (I'd lie if I said that I forgot how she looks or how her voice sounds, but it's really been a long time) and Fox has to show me at least one of her badass necklaces, the latest addition being a wicked silver raven skull.

29.10.11

Rumpy the Raspberry (Bush) Slayer

Most of the stuff I take on lasts two iterations at most. I once created a blog, wrote two posts, got flooded with "ohai ur blog am teh awsum check owt mai blog kthxbai" comments, never went back. Wrote two Badgerbangers. Stuff like that. This is my third blog post, so hooray!

I'm in the mountains. This means a slower internet connection and zero cell phone use, not that I mind. Well, I do mind the slow-motion internet a bit - I accidentally found a pretty darn nice band yesterday and set up a download of their lone release. I came up with this brilliant idea at midnight, and my computer forecasted that with the slow-motion pacing of the connection (a leisurely 8 KB/s transfer) would take about three hours to get the file. So, I found Shutdown Monster and set it to turn off the lapper when the download would be done. Yay, technology! A first for me, using this kind of program.

I finally got a chance to have revenge on the darned raspberry bushes. It's not that I don't like raspberries, I just hate picking raspberries when you get wasps that also want in on the fruit flying all over the place, and the darned bushes spawning their stuff over the period of a month and a half, so instead of one good picking (that one time when there were no wasps would have been good) I had to endure this thing on multiple occasions. So, today I got handed a sharp utensil and an explicit order to hack those things into oblivion as winter is coming.

Apparently, my childhood obsession with bulldozers never quite went away, as I got a hell of a kick from cutting those things down. A quick cleave and another part of the line of bushes lay detached on the ground. And again. And again. Before I knew it, I was at the end of the row, with every last bush hacked up as ordered, and my head spinning.

Now the once-bushes are sizzling merrily, the flames eating the branches up. The main attraction of the fire is a whole bunch of gigantic planks. I have no idea where they came from, but now they're slowly burning up. It's awesome how burning leaves look, at least from these bushes... the way they shrivel up, go through a number of color changes, and then they fly off with the smoke, leaving a tiny shard of a stem behind. Fascinating. No, I'm not a pyromaniac.

The Pep burned out a bit. I had some nice ideas, including a riff I deemed as very satisfactory and aurally pleasing, I took it to the band, and The Dude nayed it as he didn't like one note of the chord. Changing it would have destroyed the purpose of the whole musical idea, there was a heavy harmonic leaning in there, both in the rhythm and the lead, and yet he somehow failed to notice it and the idea was binned. Hmph.

If all goes well, The Pro will send me the Paraxism rip sometime early this coming week. I'm really hoping it will work out... I know the four tapes I scavenged by heart, and the more the merrier.

23.10.11

Pep!

I'm inspiration-dependent when it comes to writing music. Sure, I can sit down and spit out a track or two for the fun of it whenever, but it's usually pretty disposable drivel. Stuff that I actually deem listenable comes out when I'm in a certain mental state, which could be likened to Wild Man Fischer's "pep". Usually, my "pep" comes in the spring, but it shows up other times as well.

It opted to show up now. Maybe my body decided to re-harness the hormone boom I just got.

I've actually got to restrain myself from writing, as I'm in a band that actually seems to display competence... so it would be too self-centered to walk in with half an album this coming Thursday. All I've got is a warped riff that feels like mid-era Paraxism fell into a wormhole and had my DNA spliced into them by force, and a tender lead for the song that's actually completed. The "pep" is bubbling and wants moar, but I'm keeping it contained.

The need for the lead is what set the "pep" off in the first place. I usurped part of the calm interlude for some noodling, and I decided the song deserved something a little more focused than random penta fingerwalking. Perusing Scum's Purple Dreams And Magic Poems was what did the trick... the record is formally death metal, and it does stick true to the template, but there's a beauty and fragility in the notes, a passion in the melodies. "Flames Of The Silver Sea" is one of the most flawless songs ever conceived. Something about the raw charm of the phrasing, the emotion when the higher register is entered... it just did it for me. The barrier snapped, and I "pepped" up a lead. I had to tweak it, as The Dude did not appreciate my tiny f# minor swing (oh come on, the chord in the vamp was third-less, so I used it's second-based nature to diverge the harmonic context for a few seconds), but after tweaking the two notes he deemed off, the lead is staying. Good.

I'll probably snap and write a whole end-section based on the Paraxism'y riff that snuck out from under my fingers yesterday. My head's buzzing with loose idea shards, this feeling is awesome.

As I already mentioned "Flames Of The Silver Sea" - one of the best moments of my life came when I blasted the song whilst staring at a beautiful mountain panorama, the sun in my face, the wind in my hair. I felt butterflies in my stomach as the beauty of music and the beauty of nature interwined before my being. Mission accomplished, you hippy death metallers, pat yourselves on the back.

The Dude is saying that The World's Most Beautiful Woman is some haunted psychopath who talks about souls and angels and whatnot. Ayup, slight ideology conflict, crisis averted, can move on with my life now.

22.10.11

The World's Most Beautiful Woman

Contrary to what my university colleagues may think, I am not gay. The fact that I hang around with Bot stems from my lack of ability to get to know people, and we went to the same high school. Simple as that. I enjoy sightly females as much as any other straight guy.

Went to band practice with The Dude yesterday, and afterwards he didn't have time to check the song arrangement I worked on because he was busy chatting up some chick. He sent me a pic of her from his own free will, and all my senses kicked into overdrive. Apparently, before me was the face of The World's Most Beautiful Woman.

I should have seen it coming, this dumb hormone rush. On the way to band practice, I occupied myself by staring at some dumb tart from the architecture department who was too busy yapping at some dudes to notice me ogling her. So, given the fact I was on a slight high already, no surprise that when a proper situation arose, I fell headfirst into hormone stew.

So, after a night of jealous wondering why The Dude gets all the chicks, and all the chicks are awesome to boot, I was dragged out of the house as we went to grab some pizza. I saw The World's Most Beautiful Woman in the parking lot, but then I also saw The World's Most Beautiful Woman inside the mall, then The World's Most Beautiful Woman was sitting at the table opposite of ours in Pizza Hut, then she left and The World's Most Beautiful Woman took her place, then my sister demanded carrot juice and The World's Most Beautiful Woman sold it to us... no, it's not that I was hallucinating, or the chick from The Dude's picture was following me around. It's just that my brain kicked into overdriven throttle and around 80% of all females aged 18-25 were deemed The World's Most Beautiful Woman for the time being, until a new one arose.

This was a first for me, and a weird sensation I'm not sure I want to experience again. It's obviously a defense mechanism for my lack of chances with the chick that he showed me (it's not that I'm a shallow guy who goes for looks and nothing else, by the way - he did mention having a wicked, intelligent conversation with her), trying to get my mind off her so I don't wallow in it, coupled with a natural hormone high that made itself present as I gawped at the architecture tart in the bus.

So, I'm still buzzing with that Molotov cocktail running through my veins. I may try to harness it tomorrow to write a good lead for that track the band has. The very best melodies are infused with strong emotion. Since I'm in such a state, maybe I'll manage to get something out of it.