Saturday night I had a dream about working on a project and working in successively more isolated locations in New Hampshire. I woke up ashamed that I can't find a balance in my life. When working on a project, any matters outside of the project get the bare minimum of attention to get by. I've been an ass.

Sunday morning I had two composition students. I set up the space upstairs for recording a quickly ate lunch before Ken arrived. We worked backwards starting with the most recent composition. We recorded 3-4 takes of flute and recorder to about five pieces. It turns out that he played a festival last week with Porcupine Tree. The world shrinks yet again.

Sunday night Julie and I went to Depeche Mode at the Tweeter Center. We arrived somewhat early in order to obtain our tickets from Danny and ended up sitting through the opening act. Their gear was a little too obviously impressive. It was as if each member of the band was given an opportunity to exploit their most lurid gear fantasy.

Depeche Mode was enjoyable. They put on a good show and psyched themselves up for the concert. I had no idea there were so many Depeche Mode fans in this area. It turns out that all my least favorite songs of the past few albums are also great fun to perform, if you're David Gahn in front of an impressive array of fans. I would have really enjoyed hearing an old song, but I can understand why they would eschew that sort of thing. One MOTU employee was complaining about turning 23 soon which would have made him 3 when Speak & Spell came out.

07.03.01
Productive evening last night. Might have something to do with the fact that I got home at a reasonable hour. After the hot weekend, the 72-degree Canadian air felt like paradise. Julie and I ate sushi on the back porch.

I recorded some hand clapping that popped into my head on Sunday. Then I started committing the MIDI tracks I prepped on Saturday into audio. I set up some very strange signal chains involving the PCM80, DP/4+, POD, Filter Factory, and Virus vocoder. I wanted to process the Kurzweil percussion such that it was not so obvious that it was Kurzweil percussion. The idea of a filter fattening up a sound I always found to be a strange statement as filters by definition remove frequencies. However, the application of resonance can have a nice effect on the low end in certain circumstances. I did not spend a lot of time checking how all the pieces fit together because I did not want to interrupt the flow of interesting ideas I was having.

I also edited some flute and applied processing.

I worked on an interesting drone sound by processing the Kurzweil through the PCM80 and adding touches of the Prophet 5 through PCM80.

07.05.01
Had the day off from work. Julie is on vacation so her alarm is not going off, no piano students in the morning, no morning yappy puppy serenade, no garbage trucks, and no allergies. I slept in to a delicious 9:00am. Although we discussed the possibility of going to A.I., this did not happen. I spent the day working on the previous days efforts. I started by editing everything together. Then I recorded conga, djembe, shakers and tambourine. I also constructed an intro drone section with soundhacked flutes and various over the top combinations of other elements culled from the project. I added a 3/4 metric modulation with all the new percussion elements and by the time we were leaving for fireworks, I had added kodo drum samples for a bombastic ending. There are some mixing problems, primarily the lack of dynamic range. This reduces my bombastic drums to oatmeal boxes. I also want to add some minimal ethereal vocal flourishes in-between flute phrases. The Prophet track I added on Tuesday sound appropriate and sits well in the track

Jamal wrote me expressing his regret for not being able to reach me. Apparently the storm on Sunday caused him to stay an extra day, but he was not able to reach me because he did not have my phone number. I would not have been home anyway.

07.06.01
Spent last night exporting individual projects out of the master projects. Created mixes of all candidate projects per Gunn’s request. It was interesting to take stock of where I'm at. I also managed to delete a collection of audio files by mistake. Good thing I have the project backed up.

07.09.01
Friday night I resynchronized the files I deleted off the powerbook. Gunn came over for dinner and to pick up the CD I made for him to practice to. He's been serenading Davis Square passengers with his duduk playing for some time, using the reverb of the place to reinforce his playing.

I finished rereading the Diamond Age. It was even better the second time around. I really enjoyed it. Now I have to figure out what my next lunch time book will be.

Saturday I recorded Dave DeMarco and we ended up eating dinner and recording some more. We had a lot in common and spent a good deal of time talking as well. Quite a nice guy.

Sunday I taught Tiffany in the morning, spent some time working with the Dave material I recorded the previous day then Julie and I went to see A.I. I have to say the ending section tainted my judgment of the picture and I left in a blue funk. The acting was good, the special effects were good, but the ending really ruined it for me. We came home, had dinner, called the parents, cleaned the house and went to bed. There goes the weekend.

07.10.01
Hammered away at the 7/8 K03 last night. I had a nice drum figure over two measures that did not start on 1 that I really wanted to use, but the mood did not fit. I'm hoping I can still use the material, but shape it in an appropriate direction. I added a new intro with a delayed sine patch on the Virus and two tracks of kick drums I processed with the Filter Factory and PCM80. One track was HPF and the other was LPF. I also added a slow additional line from the JV that I processed with a long reverb on the PCM80. All the tracks were further filtered in DP with the parametric EQ, thinning out the lows and the highs.

07.11.01
Worked on the arrangement of 7/8 K03. Added some minor automation. Dug out a violin we had stashed away to see if I could play a section that required some real strings. I may try recording this tonight.

07.12.01
I discovered something interesting last night. If you painstakingly learn each violin part phrase by phrase, record multiple layers of each pass and carefully assemble the performances, a remarkable simulation of an elementary school orchestra can be achieved.

07.13.01
Added a small bass part to 10/8. Added extremely textured, processed voice to a composition. Added vocal (cha ta ka cha) percussion to 10/8.

07.16.01
Friday night and Saturday I spent with Julie. Sunday recorded duduk with Gunn. We went through about three compositions, but spent most of the time figuring out how to mic the damn thing. It was not like the clarinet where I stuck the mic in front of the instrument and it sounded great. I tried a Neumann U87, Neumann KM184, and Beyer Dynamic M500 with mixed results. I don't have a recording space, per se, so the farther I moved the mic back, the more ugly room sound I captured. If I had a nice sounding room, that would be one thing, but my only option is a close miced sound with reverb added after the fact. I futzed with the positioning of microphones. I tried filtering the monitor path so Gunn felt more comfortable. We tried playing sitting down and standing up. Finally I warmed up the U67 and that was that. The difference between the U67 and the U87 is like the difference between a Prophet 5 and a Virus. It brought out the warm tones of the duduk while deemphasizing the breathyness.

Despite my careful backups, I managed to lose some data last night. I got rid of the master projects that I have backed up in two places only to find out that one of the exported projects is still placing audio in that location. The audio is nicely obliterated as repeated attempts to rescue it confirmed. Luckily the damage is minimal and I can spend an evening re-creating the missing tracks from MIDI tracks and my memory of how it was processed. The material that got destroyed was from the 07.10-07.11.01 work sessions.

07.17.01
Re-created about 65-70% of what I lost this weekend. I also installed Absynth and played with it a bit. Too early to say much about it other than "my, what a processor hog." Note to Apple: we need more powerful Macs. Please.

I believe I settled on both a project name and album title. I wanted something short and unique - unique enough to produce no results on a search engine. I have been playing with archetype, in the Jungian sense, until I came up with archetribe. Almost at the same time the phrase 'earth tones' struck me. Bingo. Album name.

Reading Slow River by Nicola Griffith. I can only read so much before I become melancholy. I have so much I want to share, but my actions have cost me the best friend I ever had.

07.18.01
Spent too much time arguing with monitoring a loopback processed signal back into DP. Spent some more time with Absynth.

07.19.01
Created and printed three gamelan tracks to 7/8. Added some slow autopan and tremolo to add a little motion to the three tracks.

07.20.01
Was not too inspired last night. Got home later than usual. Worked out some nylon guitar parts I want to add to 11/8, however, disturbingly, my high E string had snapped in storage.

07.23.01
Worked on 11/8, now named Litany this weekend - arranged it to its more or less final state and printed the MIDI tracks. Sounds a lot better now. Used the Filter Factory on the JV in two places which really helped smooth out the sound. There is a magic spot where I can dial in a little resonance and bring the cutoff frequency down it really warms things up.

Replaced the e string on the nylon guitar. This was a new experience for me as I've only recently owned a nylon string guitar. It is an inexpensive Yamaha C40 built in Indonesia, but I really like it. After I replacing the string, I recorded some melodic tracks into Litany. Saturday night Julie and I watched O Brother Were Art Thou? on DVD.

Recorded Gunn again on Sunday. Used the U67 again this time with the U87 in farther out set to omni. The room did not sound as bad as it usually does and this may come in handy. I also wanted to record the syncopated melody on Clarinet, but I neglected to request that Gunn bring it. I plan to save editing duduk, clarinet, flute and additional jamal percussion for the trip. In the mean time, I'm fleshing out some of the compositions that have been lacking development.

I spend a a lot of time reading liner notes, only to find myself wanting more information. I'd like to know more about the process of making music and what was going through their minds as they were creating. If you have read this far and find these notes interesting, send me email.

I finished Slow River this weekend and read odd snippets of other books lying around including the Beatles Anthology and a collection of Robert Anton Wilson's ramblings. The nice thing about some of his books is you can open to any chapter, start reading and be entertained. I think I may begin a collection of short stories by Alfred Bester today.

Like most musicians, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how and why music works on an emotional level. Berklee gave me the technical tools, but totally ignored that aspect. I started reclaiming the emotional component though my own exploration and reading books like Understanding Comics and Harmonic Experience.

Language has the ability to assign symbols to emotions, and Literature can evoke emotions due to a transference of identify, but music has a more direct link to emotions in a more abstract way. It reaches to a more primitive part of the brain. These areas or concepts could be described as archetypes. It is possible to access these archetypes to evoke an emotional response and point out the things we share as human beings. The art of being a musician is to manipulate this specific section of the human brain.

The above paragraph may seem obvious, but it is worth stating. Anyone can string interesting sounds together. With today's software it is easier than ever - but this is not music. This is wallowing in novel sensation, which is fun, but the result will not stand the test of time. Those that attack music technology as being soulless are missing the point. Beethoven's music is great because he is a master translator of the human experience.

Iain M Banks describes forms of communication between AI minds in 'Excession'. One extreme form is to accept the mind state of another which results in a deep form of understanding. "Here is my mind state, will you accept it?"

Julie and I have experimented with private piano compositions. Music can transform a feeling into abstract notation. Julie can decode that notation back into music yet no words were spoken between us. It is an odd experience to hear something that existed only inside my head coming out of her hands.

07.24.01
Shortly after I got home, I managed to crash my computer and keep it down until about 9:00pm. Corrupted system file again with some massive mangled boot block corruption that took four successive passes of Norton Utilities to fix completely without rebooting. This gave me some time to read the Beatles Anthology. If I tried to boot after running Norton Utilities once the hard drive would go 'click....click...click...click...' My backups were in sort of a mess - it had been a week since my last comprehensive archetribe backup - I had spun off new audio files since to a CD-R and the DP files themselves to Julie's iMac. I would have been able to piece everything together, but it would have been a pain.

After that I tempted fate by recording some nylon guitar on a piece that had been languishing. In the process I managed to literally drop kick my guitar tuner. The air conditioner/ambient noise generator was blasting to cool down the room before I shut it down to record, so the tuner was having a difficult time picking up the pitch of the guitar. I positioned it optimally, but precariously, and it fell off the hutch. Quickly, I attempted to break its fall with my foot, which, of course, resulted in an impressive punt that I could not duplicate if my athletically challenged life depended on it. Thus was born the desire for a beefy strobe tuner I could keep in my rack. It would be easier to use and would break my foot neatly if I inadvertently attempt to drop kick it.

After the guitar recording, I pulled out the free duduk file I created on sunday and wrote some pure sine wave drones with Make A Test Tone then recorded vocal drones using that as a guide.

Julie is in such a good mood during the Summer when she is on vacation. I wish she never had to work. Heck, everybody wishes they did not have to work. I've experienced this as an adult - it is heavenly. Complete removal of bio-survival need is transcendent.

07.25.01
Installed Communicator 4.78 and some other software at home. I've been lazy and never installed the release version of DP3 with the updated copy protection and just skipped to the next release.

I took the free duduk recording Gunn and I made Sunday and organized it into a composition. This involved editing out all the non candidate phrases and arranging the phrases into a cohesive development. Sometimes this involved splicing two phrases or individual notes together, time stretching or even reversing sections of audio.

The drone is comprised of the voice and sine waves I recorded Monday night plus a duduk phrase phase-vocoded to 16x its original length with Soundhack and combined with a reversed version of itself. The mix of all drone elements (voice, sines, stretched duduk) was sent to the PCM80 twice - once using auto infinite to create another textured drone sound and the swirl whole note program for a little motion and space.

I spent some time looking for the perfect reverb on the PCM80 and PCM90 for the lead duduk track, but I think I settled on using the DP3 plate reverb instead. I may also look into using Altiverb.

This piece does not feature any drums or percussion at all and I'm thinking of making it the final statement on the CD.

07.26.01
Yesterday was simply not my day. I attempted to make coffee for Julie before I left, but neglected to put water in. I was the seed of a major PR bumble at work, or so I'm told. Then I get home, turn on my gear and get to work - only to have the power fail for the entire block.

In that time I discovered that I am utterly worthless during a black out. I have absolutely nothing of value to contribute whatsoever. I can't even read because there is no light.

I have two uninterruptible power supplies in my studio - one for my computer and one for my racks. The UPS for the racks is an over engineered two section monster designed to power a small community for several hours. When the power went out, I sat in total darkness. This should not have happened. Abandoning curiosity, I followed the time honored tradition of composers who encounter a snag and hit the booze.

A 16oz gin and tonic later, the power returned - for about 10 minutes. In that time I was able to ascertain that my racks were carefully wired to a wall socket inches away from the UPS. Serious brain damage. That really is the only way to explain this. I hooked up the small TV to the big UPS and Julie and I watched the news and went to bed.

07.27.01
Another night where I did not work on music. The multiple outages of the previous day had not been good to my gateway. I neglected to check it before I left for work. Shortly after I arrived, Julie called raving about net access and was exhibiting signs of internet withdrawal. She had turned on the gateway, but it would not recognize the hard drive. I asked her to restart and I heard the chimes of death over the phone. At that point I told her that it would have to wait until I got home that evening. She called me names and accused my parents of never being married.

So I spent a good portion of the night coaxing the gateway back to life. After that I needed to liberate the digimax from my rack for Jim. This was much more difficult than it sounds because I had to locate a special tool to take it out of the rack and trace the power supply cables which were wired in tight with nylon cable ties. Poof. There goes Thursday night.

I don't want to get my hopes up, but I stand a 50/50 chance of arranging a deal to have a Memorymoog+ delivered to my door. I'll know this weekend.

Speaking of this weekend - I have a big job to do on Saturday. Storm windows for our house will be delivered today and that means I have to install them tomorrow. In a perfect world, the windows will be a snap and I'll get to play with a Memorymoog on Sunday.

07.30.01
Weekend recap. The windows arrived on Friday, albeit to MOTU. I redirected the delivery to the house. Shortly thereafter, I learned that my deal for the Memorymoog+ was dead and I was crestfallen. I feel that the market has changed somewhat. I see lower prices, studio sell-offs and rarer gear popping up with more frequency. I believe this to be the result of a downturn in the economy coupled with true analog releases by many manufacturers including Alesis and Big Briar. Less and less people are willing or able to pay so much for a boutique synthesizer.

Friday night Julie and I spent with Ray & Elizabeth and some members of her family. Saturday I spent installing the windows which went without a hitch, however, I had to uninstall an air conditioner which meant moving the piano and dealing with the alarm system - etc, etc... Julie painted the ceiling on the 3rd floor and then we cleaned the house. Exhausted, I decided the only thing I was good for was attempting to load patches to the Prophet 5 via the cassette interface. I spent a good amount of time with this, tweaking levels and such with no success. Since this operation obliterates the contents of RAM, I settled with a programming burst where I created 32 useful patches from scratch. In the end I came up with a simple but interesting chord progression.

After teaching on Sunday and going out with Julie to get a FDA-approved nausea reducing wrist band, I settled in for a little work on a composition that had been going no where. I recorded some triplet feel percussion (doumbek, finger cymbals, tambourine, two shakers) and recorded the chord progression from the previous day. I also prepared my laptop by launching all Native Instruments software (to check for key disk) and installing Absynth and Recycle 2.0. I also copied the archetribe project and sound design library. I don't know how much I'll work on the project while on the trip, but at least I have the option of doing so.

I'm only taking one book with me. I feel that I have enough on my laptop to keep me occupied for months. Usually, I'm bringing media in different forms to be entertained, but this time the media is all in the computer and it will be worked upon instead of passively experienced.

It is an exceptional time to go on vacation, work-wise. My to-do list is short with nothing pressing. Julie is tightly coiled, worried about the cats. I don't think the knows how to relax, but I do know it can be learned. International travel is always stressful, it is just a question of minimizing the unpleasantness.

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