Sure There’s a Catch…

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. 

This is an interesting issue for me to approach, because the reality is somewhat circular. I’ve presented myself to several professionals looking for a longer term diagnosis (which is truly what I was seeking as I embarked on this path; please see the attached document, with my first write-up), and they’ve been unable to determine any symptoms. I’m left with no option but to agree that I am not demonstrating symptoms. However, there’s a catch – I am not demonstrating symptoms because ODSP has left me stable and happy, by allowing me to immerse myself in my art. If I’m not demonstrating symptoms, I should not qualify for ODSP; but if I lose the ODSP, I will again begin to demonstrate symptoms, and need to go back on ODSP.

See, the truth is that I truly am unstable – a glance at my unwritten biography would demonstrate that clearly. I have been without an address several times, and am prone to absurd behaviour when placed under stress. I’ve been fired repeatedly, and unable to find a job for many years. I really should be grounded. Yet, my concern for my safety appears rational to the professional observer. Hence, requests for diagnosis are misunderstood as evidence of stability.

Rather than try and obfuscate, I believe I should be honest: I am not just currently stable and happy. I am actually currently more stable and happier than I’ve ever been in my life. My prerogative to argue for stasis is consequently not merely a desire to prevent the inevitable collapse I will face should I be denied ODSP, but to actively argue for it as the best case scenario for me. It’s almost an appeal for benevolence.

I think that, when discussing an individual’s qualification for disability, there are three perspectives to analyze. The first is whether the applicant is able to work. The second is whether the applicant is able to find work. The third is whether the applicant desires work. I believe that these issues are not disconnected, but are very interrelated and that the causal forces acting between them can be very complex.

One way to see that this is true is to look at the results of my cra application in 2008. I wrote several tests for this application and did very well on the ones that were “competency” related. My GCT2 mark was actually exceedingly high; I earned a mark of 80/90 on this test, in a competition where the minimum pass was 51/90. When I went in to the interview, they told me it was the highest mark they’ve ever seen on that test. This would appear to indicate not just competence but possible excellence. Yet, my grade on the situational judgement test (a workplace behaviour test) was so poor that I was removed from the competition. I failed that test twice more over the next few years. Together, that indicates that I would have likely been capable of performing the task asked of me, and perhaps even of excelling at it, but that I would not have been able to adjust to the workplace environment – and consequently could not be hired. In fact, I actually agree with the combined results, as it fits my experience of frequent firings and infrequent attendance at school, even while my performance was strong and my grades were high. While other employers may be less rigorous in their hiring, they seem to be able to intuitively understand this about me and avoid me as a result of it. It does then follow that my anxiety is a block; when I’ve been forced to try and get around it because I have no other choice but to get around it in order to pay rent and bills it nonetheless continues to flag me as a problem and either make me an unviable candidate or a swiftly terminated employee. I consequently can’t work because I can’t find work because of the condition.

The gender dysphoria is not insignificant in piecing this together, as it is one of the dominant causes of the anxiety. This works on two levels – both on the level of unrealistic expectations and on the level of a self-consciousness that manifests itself as a lack of confidence, which is devastating in context. Even when I was living as a male, it was something that was easily “figured out”, which created some pretty bad attitudes and behind-the-back murmurings. I don’t feel there’s an answer to this. My gender/body combination remains at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

I claim I am happy and stable on ODSP, but did I ever seek labour? I have teenager memories of being excited about saving money up to get certain things. My first major purchase was a cd burner in 1998, back when such things were still novel. I worked two or three jobs at a time over the summers of 2002 and 2003, and while it was hectic I was happy to contribute to my education. I worked for Microsoft over 2006 and legitimately enjoyed it; I was able to take that money to get my own apartment and buy some recording gear. Employment provided me with financial independence and control over my means of production. So, the answer is an unambiguous yes: I have actively sought and enjoyed labour in the past.

However, in time, prejudicial attitudes began to sink in – and it’s a contribution to the anxiety. My interests have converged to things that are outside any kind of concept of wage labour. For many years, I’ve looked at employment very cynically, with the understanding that I’m wasting my time somewhere doing something I don’t care about with people that don’t respect me. Over 2007 and 2008 (the last time I was employed), I called in sick repeatedly – often because I just couldn’t get up to go in due to anxiety and depression. I would also leave work early due to depression, which tended to manifest itself in powerful headaches and short tempers. I have not experienced any of these problems over the last two years; I have been stable and happy. Alas, that catch-22…

Yet, do I not want to work, to contribute? Well, let’s reverse the question around. I think there are two reasons why people might want to work. The first is for the benefit of society - altruism. The second is for personal gain - individualism. But what is personal gain? A stock broker may argue that it is about capital accumulation, whereas an athlete may argue it’s about being the best. As an artist, I find these things actually overlap more than they contradict – the art is made both for me and for everybody else. Expression for the sake of expression is the most valuable form of personal gain, and asking challenging questions is the thing I’m most suited to do in society. If the goal is to maximize personal gain through contributing to society, I don’t think that work is the way to do that; I think that art is the way to do that.

Yet, how did I get there? How did I decide that expression is personal gain? Why not competition, or accumulation, or material wealth? Well, in all of these cases the root cause is the same: its sexual dominance. The use value of a car is hardly worth its price; nowadays I walk most places, but I’ve never had a need for such a thing, between bicycles and city busses.  If anything, it puts the car owner into an impossible loop: they need to go to work to pay for a car that they only use to go to work. It’s running on a treadmill; except, it isn’t, because a car is a status symbol, and that status symbol is a tool to compete with peers for the sexual interests of others. Competition, accumulation and materialism are often blamed for the violence we experience in our society, but they are merely masking the sexual motives underlying their fetishization. As an individual who has undergone voluntary chemical castration, these motives are not valid to me. Rather, my motives for personal gain are largely intellectual – and no labour, at any salary, can appeal to me on this level. Nor can I hide this reality from interviewers – it is a part of the visible anxiety that sets in. So, I cannot work because I can’t find work because I don’t want to work because of the condition.

I believe that humans are malleable creatures and that I could no doubt be conditioned out of this, but to what end? Is it worth the state’s time and energy to put a hopelessly apathetic personality type through therapy so that it can flip burgers for minimum wage? Excuse me for being jaded by the prospect…

So, what happens if I get this renewed? Well, I have a lot of art to work on, and would continue to apply myself to it over thirty hour work days of happy, strenuous and productive labour. Its value is perhaps unclear, but I think I can make a bigger difference to society through my opinions than I ever can through wage labour, and I’m certain I’ll be happier and more stable that way. What happens if this is denied? It is exceedingly unlikely that I will be able to find employment, and if I do I will no doubt be very unhappy. I will likely become very depressed and completely unstable; a suicide attempt is not unlikely, which will generate further documents which will get me back on odsp - until I’m stable again, no doubt.

Rather than forcing me to continue to rebuild these sandcastles on the beach after every tide, I propose that you allow me to rebuild further from shore by granting me the longest disability term that you can. For me, this is really the only workable solution to my problems, and removing the solution will accomplish nothing but bring them all back again.

running through some files on my other page, i've determined the precise point where the strange characters appeared. it was the post right after i indicated i was going to london, ontario. the totality of evidence suggests that i'm probably under suspicion for being a terrorist, because i happen to have a concept of morality, and am consequently critical of american foreign policy. indicating that i was leaving the city probably set something off..

listen, cia, we need to talk...

first, i'm from canada. so, take off, eh?

second, i was going to london for a doctor's appointment. you can check my facebook messages over nov, 2014 to verify that. it's all very transparent. and everybody understands that you're incompetent. but, now that i'm pointing it out, go ahead and look and see.

so, if you can get rid of those annoying characters, now, that'd be nice. i don't even care if you continue surveillance - it's the internet. it's facebook. surveillance is the purpose of the internet. privacy on the internet is impossible. i get it. i'm not utopian on he point. so, if i'm ever going to plan a terrorist attack, i'm going to do it without using the internet. it'd just be nice if you did it silently.

alright?

re-publishing ambient works vol 0 (inri035)

i've split this off from inri048 into it's own release, inri017. this required shifting the previous inri017 down to inri016, and so forth, to inri001 - which is now inri000.

==

when i sat down to make the ambient works, i wanted a "mix tape" style cd-r of ambient fragments that ran from 1996-2003 as a volume 0. but, when i sat down to actually make it, i ended up with a 90 minute actual mix tape of material from 1996-1999. it actually split itself fairly cleanly into an inri period release, but a number of factors made it a pain in the ass to actually place it there.

i've decided to flip-flop on this, mostly due to the desire to keep the period 1 disc self-contained. i couldn't release something like that without this on it.

what i'm going to have to do is rename the first 17 releases by taking them down a number - so, inri001 becomes inri000, all the way up to inri017, which will allow me to insert the ambient works into that space.

that's going to require a lot of typing this evening which will slow me down another day, but i think it's the right choice.

so, here is the new inri017.

initially written and recorded between 1996-1999 and remixed between 2013-2015. initially released as part zero of a three volume set on may 21, 2015. split into it's own release on june 14, 2015. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitar, effects, bass, pick scrapes, tapes, metronome, synth, electric piano, drum & other programming, sound design, cool edit synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, loops, sampling, sequencing, sound raider, digital wave editing, production, composition

released december 31, 1999

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0

pj’s was not the best venue for white lung, as the sound was reliant on an in-house tech that didn’t get it

i've been to lots of bars with disengaged sound techs, and they end up flagging themselves. it's less as a place to avoid, and more as a disappointment that the band you like is playing x rather than y. you deal with it.

pj's is a different animal, as it seems to have an *over*-engaged sound tech. i have less experience with this phenomenon, but it seems like it's a greater concern. a disengaged sound tech lets the band make it's own mistakes, which at least gives them control of their own presentation. but, an over-engaged sound tech can turn the band you've gone to see into something else entirely.

white lung is a band that thrives heavily on the guitarist's upper range. he's not a lead player, he's just a very talented punk guitarist. this plays off heavily with the dramatic and generally harsh vocal delivery, which is more in the mid range, and the busy but metronome-style drumming. generally, you get a fairly clean split - bass on the bottom, guitars up top and vocals in the middle.

so, to hear the sound tech drown the guitars in bass and bury the vocals altogether is to have him make sound decisions that really aren't in his realm to make. he seemed to interpret them as some kind of doom/metalcore act, rather than as the very melodic hardcore punk band that they are. what makes them special is that detail in the upper range. so, it kind of sucked to hear it almost entirely drowned out by flooring the bass - as one would mix a modern metal band.

the singer was visibly and vocally perturbed that people weren't getting into it. but, we couldn't really hear it. all we could hear was that muffled bass. i mean, imagine people showing up at a dance cub and getting a triangle beat instead of a big bass, or people showing up at a folk festival and getting metal riffs. you'd expect it to foster a disconnect.

i knew the songs well enough to fill them in mentally, but the content just wasn't cutting through the mix. and, i've seen enough youtube clips to know that this isn't a general problem on their end.

as for the band itself, i think they've hit the point in their career where they need to make some bold moves. they had a good groove going on with sorry, but it's started to turn into a formula. you can only write the same basic song so many times before it starts to seem unnecessary - i'd argue that sorry is a developing classic, but what that means is that there's not any really good reason to listen to another record (or three) in the same style. that's going to piss some people off, but the other option is people slowly tuning out.

i'm left to conclude that i need to be careful with this venue. but, i don't want to dissuade people from checking out the band. at the very least, the aforementioned record is very notable and something very much worth looking into.

ironically, obliterations were better live than i had expected from sound samples - largely because the mix was better, with the vocals turned down and the guitars given some more chunk. see, the tech made the right choice with these guys.

i mean, the mixing decisions didn't relieve it of it's boneheadedness. but, they softened it to the point that it made me think more of a modern take on soundgarden or pearl jam than yet another converge-influenced bro-rock band - which is what i was expecting.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/06/13.html

deathtokoalas
+larry  yngwie can't play the guitar like al. he sounds like a classical violinist. it's the textbook comparison of technical and robotic playing v. soulful and passionate playing. it's what puts al in his own category - he's that unicorn of a guitarist that has both aspects absolutely nailed.

larry
+deathtokoalas They are not the same person...of course they can't play like each other. I was pointing out they are both technical guitar players. I'm surprised you would call any artist being soulless or without passion...you being an artist as well. Sounds ignorant to me.

deathtokoalas
+larry i'm not sure i'd classify yngwe malmsteen as an artist. he's more of a performer. i believe that a large percentage of his recorded output is music that is written by others. further, it's not exactly an unheard of criticism of his work.

johnProph
+deathtokoalas all rational discussion ends when someone says Yngwie doesnt play with soul or emotion, lol. Dude has tons of feel.

deathtokoalas
+johnProph well, y'know, people have been saying this for thirty years. it's not going to go away.

deathtokoalas
to get back to the point of the post, there's only two people worthy of being in the same sentence as al di meola. you guys got one - john mclaughlin. although mclaughlin is really a very good blues player; he's not in the same category in terms of compositional abilities. the other is allan holdsworth.

larry
+ deathtokoalas Thank you for your opinions bro.Worthy of being in the same sentence? You sound like such a snob.  Do all artists think their opinions are above everyone elses?

deathtokoalas
+larry see, what i'm often fighting back against is this idea that evidence-based arguments are merely opinions. i reject your premise.

when you listen to di meola, you might just hear a lot of really fast guitar playing. really, that's about the only way you can bring somebody like malmsteen into it.

it's often been stated that you can't really appreciate jazz unless you understand it. i'll push back against that; you feel the best jazz, and if you need to resort to an intellectual argument about 13th chords then its just evidence that the music is lacking.

but, with something like di meola, you get a greater appreciation out of it by having some idea of what he's actually doing. it's extremely musically literate. this is a guy that was recognized as a virtuoso at a young age, and did a lot of academic training. and it really comes out in highly creative ways.

there's really only one other guitarist in the history of guitars that has had a comparable skill set. that's not an opinion. that's a fact.

historians will look back at this period and universally agree that di meola was the master guitarist - as they agree that chopin was the master pianist, or paganini was the master violinist. he's really that far ahead of his contemporaries. he's historically relevant in the same way.

holdsworth is the minor figure. the alternative, if you will. the ravel to his debussy.

mclaughlin is the intuitive hack, who didn't know what he was doing but faked it very well.

and just about everybody else (except zappa, who is hard to categorize) is likely to be mostly forgotten.

larry
+deathtokoalas The only one pulling out "evidence based facts" along with your opinion is you. I said they were similar in ways that if you enjoy one you could possibly appreciate another. That's it. I'm not rating them on a scale...not saying they are the same person...it's not a competition dude. I try to accept and appreciate all art...even your "music". It's people like you that have to suck the beauty and fun out of everything that people may find happiness in.

deathtokoalas
+larry it's just a disrespectful comparison. and, the truth is that a lot of the respected guitarists that followed in the 80s and 90s (as well as more than a few from the 70s) will uphold that. di meola is the undisputed master. no informed person has the panache to draw comparisons. one does not simply compare another to di meola - especially not themselves. i can't even list him as an influence; to some way compare myself to him just seems wrong.

larry
+ deathtokoalas Ha ha! Disrespectful? To who...you? Well that's your opinion not a fact. I'm sure neither artist gives two shits about anything you or I say. Once again, you should write a book. I'm sure people would be dying to read it...best seller maybe? You are a critic...not an artist.

deathtokoalas
+larry i do plan to focus more on some academic writing once i get through finishing my uncompleted works. i've been able to get through 1996-2003 over the last year. it hopefully shouldn't take more than a year, unless i get thrown off disability.

again: if you were to ask around amongst 80s and 90s guitarists (and pretty much across the spectrum, from vai to petrucci to keneally to corgan), they'll all tell you di meola is untouchable, go into an "i'm not worthy" wayne & garth impersonation and distance themselves from direct comparisons.

yngwe is famous for his ego. he might be the one person that has the gall to do it. but, it's a function of his arrogance. and, nobody is going to agree with him.

larry
+deathtokoalas I don't know either artist personally. They are people just like us...not some gods that names should not be spoken. I could see how other peoples gossip might lead you to not like someones music. People could easily say that you as an artist, had a shit attitude and a massive ego. Would they be right?

deathtokoalas
+larry no. i'm flamboyant, but i'm not arrogant. it's not my ego that you find upsetting, it's my tendency to voice uncomfortable truths.

larry
+deathtokoalas You don't upset me. I like a discussion... especially with bigots. Your truths are your opinions, just like me. You sound arrogant with some of the things you say, which I'm sure it's not accurate to you as a person. You are obviously intelligent, but you seem closed minded when it comes to art. I find it hard to understand why an artist would be so critical of another artist, when they know how personal it can be. I wasn't telling anyone what to do or how to think with my original post. I was being positive, not creating a negative.

deathtokoalas
+larry do you see the problem with accepting the premise that truth and opinion are the same thing?

just because i'm critical of something doesn't mean i'm closed-minded. in truth, you'll find few people with tastes as wide as mine. sometimes things are really just garbage, and it often actually takes an open-mind and independent thought to reject conforming pressures and declare them as such.

for example, i'm unequivocal on the point - the velvet underground were pretentious nonsense. i upset people when i say that, because the dominant perspective is that they were visionaries. i'll give cale a little more credit than the rest of them, but i think this is nonsense - they were as terrible as the initial reviews claimed they were. and, in today's world, you actually need to be thinking openly to get to that point, because mass media presents a monolithic viewpoint on the topic. yet, people tell me i'm closed-minded for thinking independently. ironically, it's rather ironic.

it was really just a bad comparison. and you're really just egging me on.

larry
+deathtokoalas Why do you care if people think a band are visionaries? Honestly...such a waste of time bitching about things you don't like. I don't care what you like or don't musically and no one else does either. People like to think they are special for listening to obscure or different music. LAME. Your taste or knowledge in music does not make you better than anyone else.

deathtokoalas
+larry again, you seem to think it's an ego issue. in fact, it is impossible to not waste your time, because life has no meaning or purpose. it's a just a choice to waste it that way, rather than to waste it doing something else.

vince
+larry Oh, please... Yngwie is pretty good at what he does but, really, he is a bit of a one trick pony. This album has things like nuance, dynamics and groove, stuff that Yngwie... doesn't really bother with.

larry
+deathtokoalas What is your point? You shouldn't listen to both artists?

johnny foosball
+deathtokoalas I[ll agree on McLaughlin but Holdsworth to me is similar to Yngwie been milking the same old stuff for 30+ years , I was impressed with Holdsworth on a album he did with Luc Ponty years ago , but then heard some recent stuff same ol same ol, just like Yngwie with his never ending neo classical gets boring rather quickly

deathtokoalas
+johnny foosball well, it's true that holdsworth has a defined style. but, what he does on the guitar from a tactical perspective is just without serious parallel. malmsteen doesn't bug me because it all sounds the same, it's more that he's just regurgitating classical music without any emotional investment into it. holdsworth really isn't emulating anything or anyone, and that fact alone is going to necessitate a space for him in the history books in the long run.

Pharaoh Sneferu
+deathtokoalas technical does not = robotic.. a common misconception

Pharaoh Sneferu
+johnny foosball dont tell mozart or beethoven .. classical stuff is boring?? heard it all now. Typical reaction... Just because your ears cant hear the variation and phrasing doesnt mean its not there.. its a failing of your ears.. not yngwie's playing. you need to concentrate harder.. like listening to a concerto, its not always easy listening.

Pharaoh Sneferu
+vince one trick pony....?? like Bach you mean???

Pharaoh Sneferu
+johnProph zactly.. but to the untrained ear or tone deaf its just a lot of fast notes.. people only talk about the fast stuff he does. ignorance

Pharaoh Sneferu
+larry RF fantastic album.. power, grace , feel and composition..

The "oh, its just fast" crowd need to listen harder, just because it too hard for them to grasp, doesn't mean its not any good. Mozart died penniless because of people like that.

deathtokoalas
+Pharaoh Sneferu see, i think the fact that you said "mozart or beethoven" as though they're interchangeable, in context, lets a lot on about where you're coming from because mozart is a great example of incredibly boring technicality, whereas beethoven is very emotionally powerful. it's kind of the classic study in opposites. it's maybe a pretty good analogy, in comparing di meola and malmsteen.

deathtokoalas
+Pharoah Sneferu it may be true that technical does not always equal robotic. but, insofar as it applies to mozart or malmsteen, it certainly broadly does.

Pharaoh Sneferu
+deathtokoalas Well I would disagree with you on Mozart. There is a beauty in the elegance of his solution to the technical challenges of sonata form for instance. on the face of it , yes he " Just modulates" but its the choices he makes whilst doing so that define his genius. To a lesser degree the same is true of Yngwie, he chooses SOME fast runs to move the focus from individual notes to groups that define his harmonic structure ( bit like chords but using individual notes instead.) over a single pedal tone. If you become fixated on the speed, technical challenge of the execution of this approach etc.. you are missing the point. However I am speaking of his early work, The later albums after 1990ish are a just a speed fest I will admit. :-)

deathtokoalas
+Pharaoh Sneferu i'm sorry. what point am i missing?

larry
+deathtokoalas You always seem to be missing the point dude. Lol

deathtokoalas
+larry yeah, it's really remarkable how inept i am, isn't it? i don't tend to get a lot of clarification as to what i'm missing, though.

larry
+deathtokoalas His opinion sounded clear to me. We know you don't agree. Not everything has to be complicated.

deathtokoalas
+larry i don't see what's complicated about requesting elaboration on the point i'm supposedly missing.

and, i might dare suggest that if it is so difficult to articulate this supposed point then it may be the case that it does not actually exist at all.

Pharaoh Sneferu
+deathtokoalas Point One. "There is a beauty in the elegance of his solution to the technical challenges of sonata form"
Point 2. " he chooses SOME fast runs to move the focus from individual notes to groups that define his harmonic structure"

To clarify this point,  by fixating on the technical aspects of the execution you have missed the overall harmonic development. btw because you cant hear it does not mean it isn't there.

deathtokoalas
+Pharaoh Sneferu just because i can't hear it doesn't mean it isn't there. that's interesting,

i wasn't really arguing against the existence of "harmonic structure", i was pointing out that he sounds lifeless and robotic as he's running through. it's the human element.

the high point of passionate piano playing in the romantic era was not beethoven, but rachmaninov. rachmaninov is just pure grit. total emotional release. it's musically very lush, but the key in a good rachmaninov performance is getting a good russian pianist to play it, because only the russians seem to understand the angst. western performances of rachmaninov tend to strip all the intensity out of it, and reduce it to this dead, bourgeois nonsense. if you were to listen to a rachmaninov piece performed by an 8-bit sequencer, you'd be missing out on the dominant aspect of the music. it's all the same notes. all the same "harmonic structure". but, very different in outcome.

malmsteen's work would be dramatically improved if it were to be played by somebody else - like al, for example.

i don't really think you've made any contextually relevant points. rather, i think you have, yourself, misunderstood the discussion.

i'm straining my memory, here. hard. and it's coming out incoherently.

all the evidence seems to suggest i picked a slew of pedals up in early '00. but that doesn't make any sense, because i got bribed into going to university by being told i could quit my job. so, how did i buy these effects, if i had no income?

but, if i bought them earlier - the fall of '99 - then why wasn't i using them? or was i using some of them? it's the creamy dreamer that i'm not sure of.

i remember borrowing my friend's fab tone and using it as a boost, and i think that's why i got the creamy dreamer. but it's just very unclear.

worse, i remember going down to songbird and buying them, and in some cases i even remember it being cold out. this does suggest the winter of '99/'00.

but it's just not making sense.

strange truth: i may actually have receipts in the boxes. yeah, it's weird, but it's true. i'll check that out...

i was thinking abut hitting insect ark tonight, but i'm kind of waiting to see if the rain is going to clear up, and even then i'm not convinced it's going to be an exciting show. i tend to prefer punkier types of live shows, due to the higher energy. there's plenty of exceptions, i'm just....still thinking about it.

white lung tomorrow is a for sure.

but this disc is taking longer than i expected, and i'd like to get it moving, too. it's at least all structured, i just need to get the data in.

www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jx8p.php

Jim
I recently acquired a Roland JX-8P. Everything works great except I get stuck notes when I hit several keys, primarily the black ones. The notes just sustain and when I attempt to hit them again they don't don't sound obviously because they are sustaining. When I attach a keyboard controller, I can play without any issue at all. The JX-8P is perfect!! Thus no problems when using a controller keyboard. Key bed has been cleaned. Aftertouch works great! I just get get rid of the sustained notes. I've this is a big problem with the JX-8P and there doesn't appear to be a fix. Any ideas?

deathtokoalas
i picked mine up in early 98 and began to notice a similar problem by mid 2000. i was young and confident at the time, so i figured i could clean it myself. i ended up bending the metal contact. i still have the synth, but i've been using a dx100 to control it ever since.

it's actually rust on the contact - a known issue. in the late 90s, it was something that was easily fixed, if you weren't a cocky teenager. nowadays? well, the rust has probably been there quite a while.

a shop will realize it's a known issue and tell you if you can fix it, or if you need a controller.

yamaha ry-30

i had one of these in the late 90s and it is indeed quite powerful - it's a synthesizer as much as a drum machine, meaning it can double as a sequencer or noise generator. i used to program harpsichord solos into it. it can quantize up to 128 beats per bar and can work in just about any time signature you can think of, which separates it from a lot of other drum machines right off the bat. i used to program entire songs without loops by slowing the tempo down. i was unpleasantly shocked to find out other machines couldn't do this...

that said, the flexibility is memory intensive, and there's not a lot on board, so you want to get a card with it (or make sure you can dump programs via sysex).

somebody that used this machine to great effect around 97 or so was autechre. if you want a really thorough demo, that's a good place to start.

www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/ry30.php

a quick late night jolt in and out of detroit to see speedy ortiz

i'm not so vain...

speedy ortiz was a good show, even if i got a little lost in my head for parts of it. there were some parts that made me laugh, like how the bros in the audience seemed to like the idea of a song about being the boss, completely missing the feminist undertones; overtones, actually. there were some parts that made me cringe, and there were some parts that were just enjoyable to cave into.

i walked in a little uncomfortable with some of the messaging, and walked out convinced that i've been maybe living in a safe spaces bubble as of late. i think i can get how the frustration of playing for an audience that doesn't really understand what you're saying can get irritating, and might lead to some misguided reactions. as they say, every force has a counterforce. i think my analysis is accurate and needed to be stated, but i'm a little more sympathetic than i let on, after actually observing the reality.

that said, sadie also demonstrated a little bit of tyranny, stopping to yell at her visibly perplexed drummer for "trying to tell me a secret that i don't understand". seems to me like a purge is coming...

various shades of truth, from different perspectives; often, there's value in several of them.

this is a band that's been highly touted by the press for quite a while and is the rare act to get this kind of hype that actually deserves it. they're working in a kind of frankenspace between math rock and pop rock that i think has only scratched the surface of what it could be, and could end up being pretty important, in the long run. it needs expansion in both directions to get to a space that few people have really delved into since sonic youth got dropped from geffen. but it really has massive potential.

in the short run, they're a tight band and i do recommend getting out to see them if you get the chance. it's just maybe not the best idea to assume that the riffs bring certain very out of date attitudes with them; maybe, instead, you should listen to what the songwriter is actually saying.

 i wasn't very impressed with either of the opening acts (palehound, alex g).

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/06/04.html

that took longer than i meant it to, but i have the template for inri001 down, meaning the next few should be relatively quick. i need to get groceries and pills some time today; otherwise, this should be a good week-long no smoking project.

i'm still debating the speedy ortiz show tonight. musically, the new record is really quite solid. i'm just sifting over my mind whether or not i'm badly misinterpreting some of the lyrics. i'm borderline old, now, and i need to remember that young people (and university aged people are now "young", in my perspective) are sometimes less precise than they intend to be, and/or overlook things. as a borderline old person, it's my responsibility to be patient rather than contemptuous.

there's a born gold / braids show on sunday, as well. the headliner is purity ring, but they are too poppy for me tastes. i've seen braids a few times, and missed born gold twice in 2011 - once when i was late for a braids show (which was very much not intentional) and once when i skipped grimes at a small bar in ottawa, thinking it was just a bit too poppy and her career probably wasn't going anywhere. if i go to speedy ortiz, i will probably not attend that show.

there's two more shows on the 12th and 13th that i willalmost certainly attend.

right now, i'm actually almost thinking i just need an excuse to make myself look nice and get out of the house for the night, before i settle in for the week. i haven't been anywhere since late april, and i *did* get a relatively large amount done in may. it's maybe time to get out of the house a little.

meaning, i should probably try and get a few hours of sleep in now and decide when i wake up.

thoughts on the new speedy ortiz record

i'm leaning towards catching them in detroit tomorrow, anyways, but it's relatively clear at this point that speedy ortiz is going to be a highly engineered kind of mask and basically a vessel for the singer's ambition - until further notice. it floats at you through what is less a level of abstraction and more a layer of obfuscation. there's lots of music like that. it's ubiquitous in folk, and i can never understand why people find it so hard to figure that out. but the type of indie rock this leans towards (it has plenty of poppier aspects...) is generally about "keeping it real", so the calculated nature of it kind of flags itself.

there's more than a few moments on the record worth checking out, and i expect i'll enjoy the show (if i go). but, the way it''s presented here, that disconnect between actually being an interesting mathy-indie-whatever band and pretending to be a silly pop band is more likely to alienate both potential listeners than it is to build a crossover audience.

i suspect they're going to need another record or two to really coalesce.

the bossy thing is a strange kind of feminism. the way i understand feminism is that it's the analysis of male hierarchy, with the intent of constructing strategies for it's abolition. opening up spaces in the hierarchy for women is a way to co-opt feminism - and the struggle against hierarchy in general - rather than a type of feminism, itself. it's reactionary. in the end, the hetero-patriarchal capitalist system remains in place, and it's effects remain in place, it just has a few women in it to give it an identity politics gloss. it merely takes away an effective argument for reform, and replaces it with this neo-liberal concept of "equality of opportunity". this tactic has actually been successfully implemented in quite a few ways since the 80s. the prime example is south africa. today, the government is primarily black, but the apartheid regime has not been meaningfully altered. the upper class has merely opened a few spaces for black faces, while the mass of the population carries on in exactly the same condition that it has for centuries.

how about "let's get together and replace the boss (whatever the boss' gender) with democratic decision making bodies"?

it kind of gets to what i'm saying about ambition. i'm used to hearing indie rock and punk musicians argue against bossiness and domination altogether. this kind of music is generally paired with concepts of anti-establishmentarianism, egalitarianism and anarchism. it's a part of the appeal. the logic of "if men are dominating then women should be allowed to be dominating, too" exists in some kind of other alien spectrum, where domination is not an inherent injustice - the injustice is an unequal opportunity to be dominating.

a part of it might be the cultural changes that accompanied the reagan revolution; i encountered this kind of chicago school logic when i was organizing with occupy by self-identifying leftists, and basically none of them seemed to understand how internalized this kind of capitalist ideology really was in their thinking. you grow up with certain assumptions, and if nobody challenges them then they just don't get challenged. reality tv shows and dramas like game of thrones are more than entertainment - they're cultural propaganda. and they work at levels that we often don't realize.

but it does expose somebody trying to take over the world...

ambition is not an inherently negative trait in a musician, it's just something that needs self-discipline and a network of friends and acquaintances to put bounds around, to ensure that plans of global domination do not interfere with the quality of the output. the talent here is obvious, and global domination may be inevitable. but i'm guessing, from the results, that those checks and balances are not currently in place.

you're supposed to be able to stream flac by putting it in an ogg vorbis container. which is something that should be done on the software side; there's no good reason to waste that much memory when it's a minor conversion process. it would make no sense for me to convert these to a lossy format to conform to the server side logic that i'm trying to abolish...

i basically have no idea why i can't get this to work and it's actually really pissing me off. it seems like the most simple thing you could imagine, and yet nothing. and i basically can't do anything until i figure it out...

grargh.

i've more or less concluded that this is a bug in firefox - i'm just not sure if it's a bug they're going to acknowledge as a bug, or a bug they're going to wave their hands on. i've filed a bugzilla report and am going to keep building the discs.

i'm not interested in chrome. it's basically toolbar spyware. and i don't even care if it works in ie or not - it's, like, stop using ie....

they won't admit it's a bug, but i've verified this can't work. oddly, there doesn't appear to be an alternative.

this is willful marginalization, from what i can tell. it should be very easy to allow streaming of flac through the ogg container, and just as easy to allow it to work through installed codecs (which is what it does for mp3s). rather, there seems to be a push from somewhere to discourage native lossless streaming. it's easy to blame adobe, but it's probably more a conspiracy of network admins that want to keep down bandwidth.

i actually don't disagree. but there are valid, local uses for flac embedding. and, whomever breaks first is going to see a boost in usage.

finalizing clarity (inri054)

inri035 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/clarity

finalizing the wave (inri053)

inri034 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-wave

finalizing jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj (inri052)

inri033 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

finalizing strung out / give ‘em hell, harry (inri051)

inri032 has been permanently finalized without being updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/give-em-hell-harry-strung-out

finalizing existence (inri050)

no, that was silly thinking...

they're really inaudible in four of the five mixes unless you're listening specifically for them, and they're sparse at that, but i've updated the string mix to be click free. it was mostly noticeable over the end section. i'd have to do this for the chamber mix comp, anyways.

inri031 has been updated and permanently finalized.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/existence