Blog entry #2 for the day.

I had more spoutings-off to....well, spout off.

A while ago, I bought a Sansa 4GB mp3 player, and spent quite some time ripping CDs and transferring the subsequent mp3 files to said player. Well, I have a lot of CDs (probably about 350 or so), and though not nearly all of them are on my mp3 player, a lot of my old faves are.

This is actually creating a large amount of discord in my head, mostly in my musical musings. I've moved on past the Our Lady Peace/Weezer-influenced "Project O," the Hoobastank-influenced "Project P," the Creed-y ballad "Unkind," and the Suicide Machines/Green Day-frenetic "Leave Me Alone" (yeah, good luck finding THAT, you'll have to ask a band member for a recorded version of it).....

...however, revisiting old faves has reminded me why I love music so much. A lot of these good ol' moldies have gotten me through some pretty distraught times (I find my solace mostly in musical interpretations of my feelings, including others' songs), most notably during the last couple weeks. A few new discoveries, namely Fall Out Boy and Emarosa, have been cathartic as well. Sometimes a good ol' bittersweet love song can strike the right chord in you, no matter what the situation. Anyway, I digress.

The discord lies in my desire to move past the angry emo-pseudo-metal tinge of our last release, the Alright EP, but to not entirely lose the basic tenets upon which we built those five songs. Wow, is that a mindfuck or what? The want to continue writing heartfelt, admittedly emotionally charged songs has been re-sparked because of my regression into my comfort bands, though to write another painfully wrought love ballad (even if it were to a nonexistent person) would make me have to answer stupid fucking questions about who I wrote it about. Why can't people just take lyrics for what they are? Quit reading into my shit. If I wrote it about you, I'd tell you. Otherwise, let it just be a song.

K, I gotta go to bed. Bye.

#24 is back!

For all the naysayers that were saying 2009 was Junior's last year......really? Did you really think so? I called it! I knew Seattle wasn't stupid enough to call that his swan song! Granted, he's not the Junior we had in the '90s. Anyone who thought we got 'that' Griffey back is weetaated. His bat speed is slower (though he still has the sweetest swing in the MLB). He's bigger, and not necessarily in a good way. But yes, he is still George Kenneth Griffey, Junior, and he's still Seattle's golden boy. There was no fucking way, after the positive effect he had on the team's stats, the team's morale, and Seattle's love for baseball, that the Mariners were not going to sign him for one more season. He's got it in him. Granted, it's the same contract we gave him last year ($2m + incentives) and we're telling him that if we get young talent that surpasses his skill set, he has to bench. He's cool with that, cause he's Junior, and he knows that not only is he going to retire/go into the HOF as a Mariner, but that he will show these little upstarts what the sport really means to Seattle. And he'll give noogies to Ichiro. That right there shows his value :). I personally love the fact that he came back, IDGAF what the naysayers have to say. I got some key seats about 20 rows above home dugout at a game during the '09 season, and got some good shots of him leaning over the dugout fence chatting with the n00bs. I wanted to go down there simply to be a fanboy and thank him for his contribution to the team, but got skittish and decided to just let him enjoy the game without any distractions from the peanut gallery. The guy deserves to keep his head in the game!

Well, stress at work is getting marginally better. Our refrigeration system has slowly been getting replaced, and last night the beer aisle got refitted, which is a huge (and difficult) section of the store. Thank God that's out of the way, now I think all they have to do is one more thing and we won't have to be pulling stuff off shelves and all that nonsense every day. However, my freezer still looks like hot garbage because I keep having to put off working it, so that's not helping things. Grr.

I told you it wasn't all that interesting :).

K bye.

!@#$%^&*()!!!!!

Yeah, the title, if you look closely, is every symbol from 1-0 with some extra exclamation points thrown in for good measure. Yeah, I've had a pretty high-stress last couple of weeks, and am only looking forward to more at work. Yay. Can I have another vacation, please? I just need to get away from all this bullshit and clear my head.

On another note, I need to get one of my electric guitars down to my apartment so I can start playing late at night. I have some songs to work on, and I can't play my acoustic when I get home from work. It'll also help when I finally get a USB interface that allows me to plug my guitar (or whatever instrument I deem necessary that can use a 1/4" plug) into my computer. Then comes some good recording software (probably Cubase) so I can record my music/vocal ideas and multitrack them. Paolo's been raving about being able to do so on his Macbook, and I really think being able to track along with my initial rhythm parts will help me write better and more well-prepared vocal melodies and lead licks (though I usually leave the latter up to Jeremy). Just a little longer....

K, I'm done. I can't really focus tonight, my mind's a mess. Another time.

Bye.

Auto-tune is ruining music.

So I'm sure that all of you that listen to radio stations that play "R&B/Hip-Hop/Rap" have noticed the overwhelming glut of music featuring the 'auto-tune' effect (for the musically retarded, that's the computer-sounding effect on the vocals). Simpler variations hit the scene in the '80s in such hits as "Computer Love" and were reintroduced by Cher in the mid-to-late '90s, but are probably most popularized by the 'crunk' rap "artists" like Lil Jon and the Ying-Yang Twins during the early-to-mid '00s.

I used to make jokes in the studio to Scot about hooking up the auto-tune to my vocals so I could take less vocal takes. Read: jokes. Yeah, he made a comment then that I've modified and assimilated into my musical views:

Auto-tune is for completely talentless idiots. Anyone who jumps on the bandwagon is shamelessly exploiting the current fascination with what could be described as the music industry's Game Genie: an easy way to cheat your way into singing in correct pitch/tune, much as the Game Genie allowed early cartridge-run system video gamers to cheat their way into winning games they couldn't have otherwise, or were too lazy to work through the old-fashioned way.

Don't get me wrong, I have an NES Game Genie, and for a brief time had a Game Boy one as well when I was a pre-teen. I have used lots of cheat codes in my video game travels (as I play and have played much more than I care to admit). Some would compare Auto-tune to effects pedals that people use for their instruments. I'd agree with them, if the artists using them (and if it were conservatively) were actually playing instruments too. Panic at the Disco used it sparingly in "Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks," and I'm not gonna dog on them because they're not artists solely relying on their vocals (and sometimes minimal instrumental talent) to make music, as almost the entirety of the artists in the aforementioned genres do.

It's getting much later than I want to be awake for, and I'd love to rant further on this topic, but I'm sure I've exhausted all my relevant piss and vinegar and don't wanna devolve into shit-talking. Thanks for listening, and let's boycott all Auto-tune music so this shit goes away.

K bye.

I'm stuck in 1999!

Yeah, so I'm creating compilation CDs (remember those? They're easier and much cheaper than iPod/mp3 player docks!) on the new Lappy. I am tracking through my 300-some-odd collection (ok, the 100 that I have ripped onto said Lappy) and am creating comps to listen to cause the 'next track' button on my car's CD player is much easier than finding "Music/Artist/Album/Song" on my mp3 player. While creating the "No Cheap Shots, Sucka" comp, I considered 'Crawling in the Dark' by Hoobastank. Yeah, it's old. Yeah, none of you have it any more. Yeah, that is the most seamless intro next to fp's 'Learning Curve' I've ever heard. Give it a listen. Or give me a blank and I'll burn the comp for you :).

K bye.

New lappy.

Yep, got a new laptop. Allie and I had gone earlier in the week to Best Buy just to kind of price compare and loved the one we ended up getting. It's fast enough to do the things we want to do (blog, surf the internet, store/play music, and I'd like to get some music recording software and use it to produce music and record demos/ideas. This thing is pretty damn sweet. All the computers I've owned have been secondhand - you know, your parents/uncle/whatever gets a new computer and offer you the old one, which of course you accept because it's better than the old old one you are milking the last few drops out of. So to be the proud owner of a brand new machine is pretty cool. Getting used to the HD screen.

I dropped by Paolo and Amanda's to join up with their Halloween festivities last night and had a fun time. We went to Engine House No. 9 on 6th in Tacoma and ogled the costumes (sadly, as I had come from work, I was not dressed up). Some people were pretty daring - there was a chick sporting some big feathery angel wings aaaaaand that was pretty much it, besides her lacy bra and panties. And for some reason her boyfriend was getting irked at all the attention she was receiving - hey, buddy, if your girlfriend is gonna sport her underthings in public, especially in a bar, she's gonna get some attention. Paolo was a nattily-dressed skeleton, Wes was a Top Gun pilot, Scott and Courtney Chaffee dressed as Bill Murray and the gopher from Caddyshack, and I'm not quite sure what their friend Sarah was aiming for. I guess she was just dressing nicely. She is from Australia so of course after a few beers I try my accent on. I'm sure people love it when you mimic their accent....meh, she took it in stride. I have a habit of doing that - some of my friends know that I love to impersonate and take pride in nailing accents and voices, so....yeah, it's fun. We went back to Paolo's and he, this guy Julian, and I busted out the instruments and jammed it out for a while, and had some great conversation. This guy Julian kinda reminds me of a cross between Jack Johnson and Bob Dylan - I don't care for the former, but was intrigued by Julian's musical style, and I'm sure I made that quite clear with the beer on my side :). We rocked out until about 4am and I decided to head on home. That was a very fun night.

I'm intrigued with the way our music is going. I'm ashamed to say that I really haven't been able to come up with any good guitar parts or riffs lately, but Paolo has been hard at work and we are working on two new songs and a remix of an old faceplant (as in old 'us' faceplant, not those jagoffs from Texas) song called Stumble. I've had no shortage of lyric ideas though, and am still working off and on on the Johnny 'saga' (I hate that word, really) as well as a few other ideas. Paolo and I were talking while at E9 last night about how we need to create more separation between the two guitars, rather than the 'wall of sound' approach that Jeremy and I have grown accustomed to. I like the idea of toning down his distortion a bit to create more differentiation for his lead riffs, and I don't think this will be too hard of a bridge to cross seeing as he's really been tweaking with his tone lately anyway.

I've been looking through CDs of pictures that people have taken at past shows, and have found some real gems that my mom took at our Lost in the Sound release at Valhalla in June of '07. However, Blogger seems to not want to let me upload any of them, so another time then.

Well, I'm getting tired, and I've got a long day of hanging out with the family, going shooting, and general relaxation-intensive minutiae that I won't bother boring you with.

K bye.

Ummmm...

K, so I seem to have made a gross underestimation.

Yeah, Fall Out Boy is good = gets my stamp of newfanboy. Patrick Stump's voice is amazing (yeah, knew that all along), the music is awesome (watch Stump's guitar work WHILE singing, JEEEESUS), but I still fail Pete Wentz for several reasons. If he wants to know why, he can contact me. Otherwise, sans Pete, this band got on my top 20 in the space of an hour.

Fucking love that guy's voice.