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(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
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Curing The Winter Blahs
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 8:17 AM
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So here we are the middle of February and I'm stuck recovering from a lower back injury. For the last four weeks I've been pretty much coop'd up unable to do much of anything requiring any sort of physical effort. I've been poked and proded and twisted and bent and xray'd and CT scanned. I've pretty much had enough. But there is an end in sight thank the gods. The upside to all this is that some pretty powerful pain medication has come into my possession. I simply could not resist the chance to combine the effects of the medication with the instruments of destruction in my studio. The end result is my latest set of uploads. The "Space Jam EP". At least that's what I'm calling for now. And just like all my other tracks these are improv pieces or chance music if you prefer to call it that. The instruments used for these tracks comprise of such things as the Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP running NL22, Reason 3.0, Seq303, D-Lab Multi-Plexer, Bugbrand PWeevil07, Yamaha AN200, Korg X5D, Roland Alpha Juno 1 and a circuit bent Casio SK-1 (Aleatron edition). Everything is patched into a Soundcraft Spirit FX8 mixer making full use of both external and internal FX and sending it all to a Soundblaster Live24 external soundcard. The audio is captured in Audacity running on a Dell desktop. I just start things going and then simply mix and match levels and sounds coming from each instrument. Twiddling and tweaking as we go along. Fades beginning and end and the editing of the length of each track was done later of course. I've named them as such for a couple of reasons but the main one is I felt this order made more sense, aurally, this way. At least to me. They weren't recorded in this order but overall they seem to have a better fit this way. The other reason is more lame in that I simply don't have names for each track yet and so the addition of Pt#'s to the titles. So what can you expect from all this? Well, if you're a Terry Riley or Pierre Henry or David Tudor fan at all you'll prob'ly enjoy these as they seem to fall firmly into that sort of headspace. You know... that sort of late 60's early 70's experimental electronic chance type stuff. For the beat lovers in the crowd Pt4 actually features a drum sequence. I love doing this kind of stuff. It's great therapy and soothes the savage beast in me. Anywho... hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Click me to hear them now. That will of course load up all 26 tracks on my page but we're only concerned with the first five here. You can ignore the rest.
Anywho...
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
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(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
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RE: Curing The Winter Blahs
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 8:22 AM
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Oh... and btw... if you do decide to accept this mission it will consume approx 26mins of your time.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: Curing The Winter Blahs
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 12:16 PM
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Listening....
BTW....hope you feel better soon!
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Brainbelly
Joined: 05/03/02
Location: Mellow Mendocino California
Posts: 124
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RE: Curing The Winter Blahs
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 6:08 PM
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hooray for pain medication!
Yup, I know this territory well (except I can't attribute the pain to any singular event/accident/predominance of the evil empire)
In fact both my temporal involvement in music and the opportunity and inhibition of execution is attributable to constant pain and the struggle to archive a consistent conscious effort at relief (they call my treatment "palliative"), all be it I would prefer a cure if it did not involve cutting off my head.
Those suffering under my sort of malaise may be both creative and miserable. So far the authorities forbid me the opiate/narcotic sort of relief due to their horrid fear I will come to depend upon it and I'm not rich enough to be deserving I guess.
Its nice to jump inside the big all glowing throbbing swirling space place and both chill and adventure outside of ones physical restraints.
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination, but crossing the road with your eyes closed is easy" -John Lennon - “What relates to reality, is not certain; and what is certain, is not real.” --Albert Einstein
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(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
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RE: Curing The Winter Blahs
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 7:43 AM
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Hey thanks folks!
My back is pretty good now. My physiotherapist practices and promotes the "McKenzie Method". Which in my case has been a perfect solution to the crisis I caused in my lumbar region.
I've been injured before but never in that area. And I have never had an injury and/or sickness ever keep me away from work (in this case since Jan 15th) for more than a few days during the last 25 years, But my employer has been very cool about it. I hardly ever miss any shifts. It generally takes the highway being closed due to snow for me not be there. And I have short term disibilty insurance (standard stuff round these parts) so no stress there. What has been stressful though is how surreal this has all been. Appointments, medications, treatments, phone calls, emails, paper-work, signoffs, photocopys, faxes.....
It's been a very strange, stressful winter!!
No worries though. I'm no stranger to danger. And now that I have these terrific exercises to do I doin' reeeeeal good!
Despite being a prisoner in my home there are tons of things here to entertain myself with. And many of them, music especially, I do in short spurts anyways those activities weren't affected. At least not adversely.
Reading, which was the most I could muster myself to do, filled most of my time in the beginning. I ended up reading something that totally motivated me musically. A terrific book from 1953 by Astrophysics Professor Donald H. Menzel called "Flying Saucers". The section about Ezekiel, the holy bible dude, and his visions, along with all the other sections in this book, in combination with the medication I was on, had quite a profound effect on me. Mr Menzel gives us his opnion of UFO's in his book and I give you my opinion of his theories with my latest tracks.
Maybe I should call this release "The Saucer Sessions".
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
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Kylo
Joined: 02/16/05
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 787
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RE: Curing The Winter Blahs
Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 1:35 AM
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The fourth track is my fav. It makes me feel like I've got my ion engines on cruise and I'm slowly breaking out of orbit with the sun's rays piercing through the small glass windows...
Cool groove man.
"Energizer bunny arrested- charged with battery."
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(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
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RE: Curing The Winter Blahs
Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 3:55 AM
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Thanks, Kylo!
Pt4 is my fav too. It's simple but has a nice groove to it. It worked out really well. My timing was pretty good. I hit all the right buttons at all the right spots. 
Pt3 is the one that sends shivers up me spine every time I listen to it.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
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(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
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RE: Curing The Winter Blahs
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 8:04 AM
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Hi folks....
Just to followup on the back thing, I am back to work. Have been for about a week now. The fix was getting physio as soon as possible. And the physio consisted of the "McKenzie Method". If you're not familiar with that, it was developed by New Zealander Robin McKenzie in the early nineteen fifties. It's an amazingly simple but fantasticly effective method of treating lower back pain/injuries such as the kind I experienced. It's so simple anyone can (and should) use it. Daily if need be. You can read/learn the method in Robin's book "Treat Your Own Back" (ISBN 0-9597746-6-1). It's a completely safe, doctor recommended (my own doctor refers to the book as the bible of pain management) method of treating yourself and taking the burden off the health care system (which in this country is farkin' awesome!!).
Anywho...
That's my story and hopefully an end to that chapter of my life.
Moving on....
Hope eveyone enjoyed the tunes, or at the very least found them mildly amusing.
Thanks to all who listened and took the time to send me positive vibes and get well wishes.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
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A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
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RE: Curing The Winter Blahs
Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 8:21 AM
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I like it....have to hear the tracks a few times more to decide what part I like the best...
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