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Blog – January 2012 Posted: 2012-January-30 NP: Cybernator SPCs It’s been a wild last few days – I skipped Saturday’s blog because I was deep in the throes of a Master of Orion II conquest (which I won handily) and kinda lost track of time. Unlike my Civ IV obsession earlier this month, I really don’t need to revisit MOO2 for quite some time. The only reason I played it is because of doing some research on Arcturus and its location in the sky relative to a large amount of the Messier objects. The Wikipedia article had a link to a page called “Arcturus in fiction” and the star right above Arcturus was Antares. Since the full name for Master of Orion II is “Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares”, there you go. How I remember this stuff, I don’t know. Also, Amaranthine Skies is out after a lovely young Armenian girl on Tumblr took the top ranking for it on Google, and I realized that it didn’t really fit with what I was trying to do with the music and the artwork. I wanted to blend the three projects I was working on (Amaranthine Skies, Planetary Formations, Upsilon Andromedae) to come up with something that meshed everything together, and I have. Will I reveal it? Not until the first song is done (it’s in progress). Something I will reveal is that this site is getting a minor revamp in the very near future – a color change (green to blue), an actual banner that’s more than just my name, a little spacing fix, some new material, and a little more attention paid to the W3C standards. Once I get this site in shape (which shouldn’t take long), I’m going to turn my attention to the Concatenation site and try to get it looking more like this site (which should take a while). I’m hoping to get the revamp of this site up by Wednesday, but that may indeed be a tall order. Then again, I’ve already got the template done, so changing everything over may not take all that long. Something lit a fire under me today while I was at work, and I’ve become bound and determined to get my two sites cleaned up in the near future. We shall see on Wednesday! Posted: 2012-January-25 NP: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest SPCs I just realized this morning that I’ve basically taken a two-year detour. By getting up at 3:30 AM for the past two years, I’ve tried to do something and live a way that isn’t really natural for me. I started blogging, I got re-interested in finance, and my music – the thing which was most important to me for so long – started to go by the wayside somewhat. I was going strong through most of the Philistine on the Sidewalk project, but then my cat Mouse had to be put to sleep on March 27th, 2010 and the wind started slipping out of my sails. My creative output became more forced – both in my music and in my blog. I know that I do a lot better with a blog when I can share my thoughts instead of trying to write a helpful article. I have no problems with doing my best to write a helpful article, but it’s something that needs to happen spontaneously instead of being forced. I’m not sure if it’s my Meyers-Briggs personality type (INTJ) or just the way that I’m wired, but I tend to come up with ideas that seem awesome at the time I come up with them, then I’m able to assimilate them properly and they don’t come out as well. Take with music for instance – I was going to do three projects, but now I figure that I’ll be fine with just Amaranthine Skies. The Planetary Formations project blended well into the new style of Amaranthine Skies that I’m working on (basically a fusion of the first four albums), and the Upsilon Andromedae project was just a manifestation of wanting to create short songs and put them out fast. I’ll be able to do that in a way with Amaranthine Skies, but without having to warm up my death growls. I’ve still got them, but I’m certainly not the same person that needed to use them a few years back when I was still doing vocals in my songs. In fact, my only attempts at vocals lately have been at Rock Band sessions at my friend Eric’s & his wife Breanna’s apartment. I bring the scream and shout, but I also bring the sing and that works for me better now. I’m a lot mellower than I used to be and I should be able to incorporate some clean singing vocals into the new works. They aren’t going to be the most complex affair considering what I’m listening to for vocal inspiration (My Bloody Valentine & Stella Luna), but they should work with the music fairly well. The big thing is going to be figuring out what to write about. I used to write about internal issues, but I’ve either resolved most of those or write about them here in this blog. I’m not going to sacrifice blogging for better lyrical content, so perhaps I’ll try to paint a scenic picture with my lyrics when I do them. Another thing that kind of gets to me is that I took a two-year detour from the Amaranthine Skies project, which I had planned on doing for the rest of my life. I tried to come forth as myself wholly and completely – tie my music into my blogging, into my website, and into all of my other interests. The idea was a tremendous flop, as my first solo album in 10 years (Dreamscapes) sold a whopping four copies, and the follow-up (Explorations in Sound) sold no copies whatsoever. It’s disappointing to me, because I still stand by the music on those albums and think it’s some of my best work. Then again, I think that I needed those two years to detour, because I discovered some types of music that have influenced my sound (drum & bass, funeral doom, Ron Jarzombek) and rediscovered some albums that have been influential for my musical progress. While I say that Dreamscapes and Explorations in Sound are some of my best work, I do still think I can improve and come up with some more interesting compositions in the future. So, I’ve got all the quirks of my musical project figured out (for now, until I decide to evolve it further), I’m about to get back to working on Concatenation with some seriousness, and as a bonus from my detour, I’ve started a financial foundation for myself which should only grow over time and allow me more income as I grow older. The 3:30 AM experiment was a good one which helped me learn some things about life and myself, but I think I let it go too long (as I am wont to do). Back to 5:30 AM rising time and partial night-owling for me, yup yup. 2012 is looking better and better, though I won’t get my hopes up too high yet – I’m still readjusting to my new sleep schedule. I’ll be back on Saturday, hopefully with some more insights or something interesting to talk about. Peace out! Posted: 2012-January-23 NP: Shadowrun SPCs Gonna keep it shorter this time because I’ve got some music project-related work to do, but the main thing I was talking about when I signed off last time is that I’m going to start a video blog. Not a video blog of me (how boring would that be), but a blog full of YouTube videos of songs that I dig. Now, any yahoo can start up one of those, so I suppose some credentials are in order. I’ve been a music fanatic for over 18 years, written/arranged and produced 10 of my own albums so far, put together about that many compilations, and I listen to music in quite a broad cross-section of genres that aren’t mainstream (for the most part). It’s not going to be a blog of freshest cuts – more one of undiscovered (or only slightly discovered) gems. Of course, it goes without saying that I’ll be posting my new works on it too (whenever I get them done), but I’m going to try to distribute the genres covered as best I can. Considering my projects are a bit genre-riffic, that shouldn’t be too hard to fathom. I also need to streamline the site a bit before I launch this, which gives me a little more than a week. I don’t want to change things too much, but I need to tighten up some of the spacing issues and make things more accessible. I’ve got an idea or two in mind and they shouldn’t be too hard to execute. That’s all I’ve got. I’ll be back Wednesday, hopefully with some new developments. Posted: 2012-January-21 NP: Super Castlevania IV SPCs After a couple of days of being snowed in, sitting around playing Civilization 4 with reckless abandon and listening almost non-stop to SPC soundtracks, I have my head back where it needs to be – ready to go all ahead full with music. A factor in this may be that I’ve given up my two-year struggle with getting up extremely early (3:30 AM) and have settled back into a semi-early 5:30 AM routine, which works out well because I’ve regained my night-time creativity. I’ve had some good creative streaks with the alternate sleep schedule (the Philistine on the Sidewalk project comes to mind), but a lot of tunes I’ve done over the past year and a half or so are ones I created because I felt I had to. I’m back to actually wanting to make music, which is a great feeling. Of course, I’ve had to do a lot of prep work for each of my new (and revived) music projects, but that will more or less be done once I get all the chips ripped and synced up in a MODPlug preset for my brutal chipslam project. I’ll still have to hone instrument tones and do some fiddling in Reason, but that works better for me while I’m in the process of creating. In another change, I’m just about to get back to working out in the morning after trying to heal up my hip. It’s down to the level of a slightly pulled muscle, and on a pain scale of 1-10, I’d give it a 2, which is something I can definitely work through. With getting up at 5:30 AM, I’m going to have a shorter time frame to work with in the morning, so I’ll just have to step up my game. It’s unfortunate that I won’t have time for morning walks any more (at least not during the week), but I mostly used them to clear my head. I’ve been in a good place for the past couple of weeks and my head has gone from lots of strategy and formulation to bouncing around from topic to topic, so the walks have become somewhat unnecessary. I’m also going to have to jump right from my body weight routine to lifting weights, which shouldn’t be too bad. I just need to figure out some good exercises that hit a lot of different muscle groups. It’s too bad that deadlifts are out of the picture, because I’ve messed my back up on them one too many times and I’m not looking to get huge anyway. Basically, I’m back to where I was when I started the original blog in December of 2009 with two+ years of experience to show for it. I have earnest hopes that the rest of 2012 will go relatively well, as I plan to not overextend myself or set the bar for myself too high and end up falling on my face. I’ve got more stuff going on, but I’ll save it for Monday. Gotta keep ’em coming back! Posted: 2012-January-16 NP: Final Fantasy Legend 2 GBS There’s really not too much that has happened in the last couple of days – I’ve been to the Jolly Roger Taproom twice, spent some time with my friend Eric, and played some games. So much for my grand musical aspirations this weekend! I did some samples extracted for my new cyberslam chiptune project, which should end up as a rather caustic affair once everything is said and done. I have a feeling it’ll be my most productive, as it requires the least amount of effort to get a song done. Granted, it will still require a fair amount of work (tracking chips, recording guitars, bass, & deathgrunts, mixing and mastering), but it will require less than Amaranthine Skies and decidedly less than the Planetary Formations project. I’m just eager to get going on something, because I’m having a hard time getting a foothold. It’s also a couple weeks before I want to get the new Shizz project started up, so I better send out feelers sooner than later about the ideas planned and the amount of participation that will be available. That’s all I’ve got. Hopefully I’ll be more verbose on Wednesday. Posted: 2012-January-14 NP: Super Metroid SPCs I’m starting to get a bit blotted, so I’ll keep it short and sweet. I decided to go with doing a third project and it’s looking to be a chiptune/cybergrind-type project. Blast beats, bass drops, unintelligible growls (no lyrics needed) and short songs. It’ll blend chips and live instrumentation – similar to what I want to achieve with the new Shizz-related project for Concatenation Records. I’ve been ripping SPCs to IT for a good chunk of the afternoon so I can extract the samples and use them in the songs. I wasn’t able to do this on my main computer, as it’s a 64-bit system and OpenSPC only works on 32-bit systems, so I unearthed my old laptop and have been ripping SPCs on it. I only hope I can finish up before the hard disk craps out on it. I’m on the last game of the group, so I should be able to get everything ripped without incident. Once everything’s converted to IT, I can do everything else on this computer because MODPlug has no 64-bit limitations. The games I’ve been grabbing them from are all futuristic in nature, and the project name is related to something in outer space. I’ll be a little less tight-lipped once I get things up and running – then you probably won’t be able to make me shut up about it. As for my other projects, I’ll hopefully get started on the first of the songs from the Planetary Formations project this weekend, or next weekend at the latest. I’ve got everything set up for the first song, so now I just need to get working. Amaranthine Skies is looking pretty good too, as it’s the VG music project and I’m looking forward to participating in the Kunio month for the Dwelling of Duels competition. I have a few songs in mind, so I figure that I’ll try to do at least a couple, submit the best one, and put the other(s) up on YouTube for listening. I also have a lot of plans to clean up this site and the Concatenation Records site, so I think my mornings before work are going to switch from music creation to the website updates. This site will be pretty easy to clean up, but the Concatenation site will take quite a bit of work. As long as I can divert myself long enough from working on tunes and the Xbox 360 to punch some code, I should be good to go. That’s about it for now, except that we had snow here today in Seattle and it didn’t really do much of anything. Yay! Be back on Monday! Posted: 2012-January-11 NP: Nekketsu! Street Basket NSF Man, my brain has been absolutely stuck on music lately! I’m not sure what happened, because I wasn’t really feeling music for quite a while there. I guess the total flopapalooza of the last two albums I did kind of got to me. I needed to explore new ways of creating music, and after consuming and digesting those ways, I’m ready to regurgitate what I’ve come up with. The Planetary Formations project is about ready to launch and I’m bringing Amaranthine Skies back after a two year hiatus. I’ve had it in my head that I want to go back to multiple projects and have come up with a schematic (an essential for this INTJ) that will give me an incentive to bounce back and forth between projects without too much issue – only lack of time will hold me back for the time being. As for Amaranthine Skies, I wanted to find the best way to blend the work I’ve done with the previous four albums as well as the Philistine on the Sidewalk project. The rest of the work I’ve done in the past two years under my own name and under project names (Repudiation, Thunderspell) will be incorporated as well and I’m thinking what I come up with should be in the My Bloody Valentine/Stella Luna vein. Dense, yet light at the same time (however that works). Planetary Formations, on the other hand, will be dense and dark. The idea behind the project hinges on the mental image of exploring a developing planet and being enveloped by its atypical atmosphere while hiking on its surface. It was likely influenced by the Kepler discoveries last month as well as lots of Mass Effect, but the idea has firmly entrenched itself in my head, evolving by the day. It’s an idea I want to run with and think I can do justice, so I’m going for it. I do have an idea for a third project to blow off steam (and have had since 2009), but the time for that isn’t right. I’ve been basically blowing off steam for the past six months or so – now is the time to get to work. Off I go. Posted: 2012-January-09 NP: Crystalis NSF Well, this weekend was certainly a success! Lots of fun was had, many four player games were played, and the Steelers lost in overtime! YES! I guess I should elaborate more than that. I met up with my friends Eric, Mark, and Andy after posting the last blog and we got together and played some arcade games (Shadow over Mystara), some card games (Munchkin, Apples to Apples), some Gamecube & Wii games (NBA Jam, Mario Kart Wii, and Wario Ware), and we had quite the marathon of Rock Band 3. I blew out my throat a bit screaming out “Thieves” by Ministry, but it was all in the pursuit of artistic integrity, so no harm, no foul. We also ate at Grinders, had some delectable grinder-style sandwiches, and I had a very tasty oatmeal stout from a local brewery called Your American Brewing Company. They brew out of Edmonds, Washington (around 10 miles away) and they also have an IPA and a Blonde that I’d like to try. Well, at least the IPA. Eric’s wife Breanna was kind enough to bring us some chocolate Frosties from Wendy’s, which definitely were appreciated and devoured, as were a bag of Juanita’s tortilla chips (so good) and almost a full jar of salsa. Never let it be said that gaming doesn’t make you hungry! There was also a bit of thrift shop hopping, and while my finds were minimal (and cheap), I think I can get some use out of a Nintendo Parachute keychain (once I replace the battery) and a pair of Macho Man-styled sunglasses (OOOH YEAH!). While thrift shop hopping, Eric and I made the plan to go to Jolly Roger next Monday, as I have the day off and he’s taking the week off (lucky guy). I can’t wait to introduce him to the delectable food and tasty brews of my favorite local brewery! The weekend was good and today wasn’t too bad either – I was able to figure out the rest of the details for my Planetary Formations project. I’m not going to bother doing a song to represent the star, since the album name (“PF 2012”) will be named after the star. The songs will start with “PF 2012 b” and go on from there (“PF 2012 c”, etc). It doesn’t start with “a”, because the a (or A) designation goes to the star that the extrasolar planets orbit. The songs themselves will be somewhat weighted to chance, but I don’t want to go into it more than that – it’s convoluted, confusing, and it’s a wonder that I even understand what I’m doing. With that, it’s time to get this posted and start forming PF 2012 b. Be back on Wednesday! Posted: 2012-January-07 NP: Shadow of the Ninja NSF I’m going to a small celebration for those of us in the Pacific Northwest that couldn’t make it to MAGFest this year soon, so I’ll keep this short. Things are still difficult with the loss of Bootsie – I get up in the morning and I still have the urge to go out in the living room and pet her, but I know she’s not there. I made myself go out there this morning to confirm the fact, though I don’t know if it really helped. I’m handling this loss better than I handled losing Mouse, but I think it helps that my brain has been going ballistic figuring out the details for my Planetary Formations project. I guess it’s not really a project, as I’m still going to be using my own name for the works – more of a concept that I’m going to follow. I’m also trying to figure out how I’m going to distribute the works. I think a more concentrated effort on using my YouTube channel will be involved, as I think I’ll just stream the tracks there until the end of the year, wherein I will compile them all into two albums of sorts (one original, one VG) and distribute them the best I can. I may go with a very small run of CDs (25 at most) and if there is more demand, order more as need be. Along with using Concatenation, I’m going to work with Bandcamp, CDBaby (and all their partners) and just do my best to get the word out. Marketing is not my strong suit and my music is pretty niche, so I need to do some serious research and figure out where I could get a foothold. I’m also considering some remix EPs (at least 4 songs) that would likely be online only, but that’s putting the cart way before the horse. I’m still setting up my sound right now and there aren’t any planned releases until the end of the year anyway. I’m sure the details will get worked out more as time passes. That’s all I’ve got for today. I’ll be back Monday after some good times and hopefully I’ll have a new story or two to tell. Ciao! Posted: 2012-January-04 NP: Silence I had to put my cat Bootsie to sleep on Monday after a long struggle with hyperthyroidism and the fact that she just wasn’t eating enough to maintain her weight. Before she was put to sleep, the vet found a potential tumor in her lower intestine, which could have been absorbing the nutrients that she needed to survive. It was really hard to have to do, but it was a kindness to her, as she didn’t have the strength to use her back legs and could barely eat. I’d been giving her medicine for her thyroid and wiping her nose for the past few weeks in hope that she would get better, but it just didn’t seem to help enough. I remember just holding her all those times and she was so warm and comfortable. Bootsie wasn’t a real lively cat like Mouse was or Barclay is, but she’d always have time to sit on my lap (provided there was a blanket there) or let me sit next to her on the couch and purr while I petted her. I’d go out and see her first thing in the morning and make sure to give her a few minutes of attention before getting my day started, and it always brought a smile to my face to hear such a loud purr from such a little cat. She wasn’t always little though – she was 14.5 pounds when my Dad rescued her from being put to sleep over six and a half years ago in April of 2005, but the weight loss didn’t really start hitting until a couple years ago. She was 11.5 pounds on her fifth anniversary, nine pounds on her sixth, and she started losing about a pound a month from there on out. It was hard to see her wither away, but the weight loss didn’t seem to affect her quality of life in a negative way until the very end. In fact, once she dropped some weight, the arthritis in her back legs eased up and I actually saw her move at a pretty good clip a few times. I wouldn’t call it darting across the house as Barclay is wont to do, but she was getting a good speed. I’m not sure what I’ll miss the most about Bootsie – the way she loved to lay in the sunshine that came through the skylights; the way she used to hop up on the couch; her extremely expressive eyes; the cute little grey spots on her pink nose; or just that she was a really sweet cat (to people) that would sit on laps as long as she could. I guess what I’ll remember the most is that she didn’t seem to mind being held by me and any time I’d pick her up and put her up by my left shoulder, her left leg would reach out and cling to my right shoulder, effectively giving me a hug around the neck. It was the sweetest thing, and so was she. There’s really not a whole lot else to say about her, so I’ll leave with a couple of photos. This one is of her and Barclay the day before she had to be put to sleep (New Year’s Day) with her lying in a brand new bed on one of her two binkies. Maybe I’m looking into it too much, but I can see the look of concern in Barclay’s expression. Even though he bugged the crap out of her, he also liked to just lie down and watch her sometimes.  However, you can tell in that picture that she’s not doing too well, so I’d like to end on a photo that is really a good representation of the Bootsie that I know and love. This is from right before Memorial Day weekend of 2011 and she’s sitting on a pillow on the couch, looking up at me with those expressive eyes of hers.  Goodbye little girl. I’m glad you were able to have an extra six and a half years of life and I wish you could have had more, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I miss you, I love you, and thank you for all the joyous time we spent together. I hope to see you again someday. |
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