Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Hardcore Makes A Man, Stillcore Makes A Band.

Vacation time looms.

It's been over four years since I found myself saying those words. And it couldn't come at a better time. I am beginning, no, I have begun to have those feelings that I had when I wanted out of my other job. The shame lies in the fact that I am kinda torn.

Mostly because there are a lot of hot chicks where I work. Hot lawyer chicks.

But I feel that it's not enough to keep me there, I mean, do I want to continue pushing papers and let it grow into a career. Do I want to keep busting my ass doing work that the manager should do? I feel that my time and effort would be better placed somewhere else.

I find myself to be efficient when I work, I keep to myself and do jobs that need to be done, while others, including the manager horsefuck around all day. The more work I get done, the more that gets piled on me. So what do I do? I slack off.

That doesn't work. I still do not like working where I work. So I have begun the search for new employment. Jeez, I didn't think that it would take such a short time to say that. But it is true.

I am definitely going back to school, as being an English major won't get you much except for customer service jobs.

But, I won't worry about it now, since I have a vacation to look forward to.


After that though, a lot of shit is going to change.

The image of me sneaking a side of ribs on a roller coaster and taking a bite as the cameras snap a photo amuses me so much that I actually may consider doing it.

Also, I have begin rigorously playing music again. There was a gap in time where I did not practice because I had either no time or no will to do it. But since I recently invested in a new amp, my baby with tubes, I have that urge again. I devote at least a couple of hours of playing time when I come home from work, in the dead of night. It feels good. I want to get some time of looping device so I can record myself playing one track and then...play with myself (hurr hurr hurr).

But then again, playing music and sex have a lot in common. For one, if you are playing an instrument, you are doing a lot of fingering, blowing, and banging.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

"You Want Me to Get Someone to Stomp A Mudhole In His Ass?"

Was what my mom said after I told her what went down between me and my asshole manager at work. Interesting story, but this isn't about what happened.

Not sure why I brought it up anyways.


The real focus is that I recently invested in a new 500gb external hard drive. I was thinking about getting one for a very long time, but was leery about getting one because of the chance that I could lose some stuff that I put on there. But as the drive space on my computer became too low for my comforts, and I was tired of making data discs to save my files, it was time to buy one, and I got one relatively cheap (50 bucks in coupons helped out nicely).

Buying the new hard drive made me go into my computer and look through the old folders and files I haven't looked in for ages. Lots of older music I downloaded off Napster, a lot of Godsmack, my god! There was a lot of papers I had written over the years, going way back to the pro wrestling research paper I wrote back in sophomore year in high school. Reading through a bunch of those papers made me cringe. It got pretty bad at times, and to the point where I wondered how I got the grades I did on them. And there were the movies I collected from over the years...yeah those type of movies. I couldn't stand seeing myself get rid of those.

Then, 15 GB later, I found this one folder that I haven't bothered looking in for about a year or so. It contained all the music I recorded through my computer. I was in a band once, and recorded a CD, where I thought I did pretty sub-par work on, maybe because when time came to record my parts I had little time to do so because of work. Or maybe I sucked. But after that, I decided to start recording myself more, to get used to the process.

So I dusted off a guitar I had lying around my house, fixed up the wiring in it, and hooked it up to my computer's microphone (with a couple pedals along the way), and played some little things I toyed around with whenever I practiced.

None of these are great, but still have some significance to me.

Here is the first file, made around June 2004. Listening to it now, I feel that if the distortion was a little less muddy, I would love it more. But I noticed that I must have a lot of energy pumping through there, with the thumping of each chord. Overall, I think that it's not that bad.

http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/ncfs/1st-try



The next series of files is a progression of the same idea of riffs and such. This file is one of the first files that I did dual tracks with, playing with myself (hurr hurr). I found it hard to do so, as you may hear in some of the little mistakes here and there, as matching up with the first recorded track in timing was really an issue for me, I had to delete a bit of stuff to make things match up. This one was recorded in January 2005.

http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/pety/songptA

The next file was recorded three months later, I changed the main riff a bit, and added two accompanying riffs as well. The chords are gone and were replaced with a "bass line" (it's actually just a guitar with a cheap octave pedal). I was using a distortion pedal used mostly for metal, and it sounds alright here, but I struggled finding good uses for that pedal, and decided to dump it (about two years later, I learn lessons slowly). This came out sounding more metal, I guess.

http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/vpsm/cracked-feet



This last file, which I recorded about five months later, I used all of the same riffs except one, used another distortion pedal, added a little delay in the audio recording program I used, and it came out a little different. There are some mistakes in here because of that issue of me keeping up with each track, and because I was switching from one note to another in a certain place in the main riff.

http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/wfdo/Cracked-Delay


This last one was recorded in late 2006, and I used the reverse effect in my recording program by mistake/as a goof. Originally, the little arpeggio sounded like something from a Megadeath album, nothing too original there. But in reverse, it sounded a bit different, and better than what I had before. I left the second audio track un-reversed, because the little random notes seemed to make the entire thing seem more off, but in a good way.

http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/nuoz/good-stuff-in-back


I guess, in the end, me going back into stuff from my past allowed me to see how much I have changed, exactly the same way when you go back and look at pictures of yourself 10 or 15 years ago. It brings back massive floods of memories.