Listen to all the music in my music collection
Posted August 2, 2010 at 9:32 am by Severed Head
Fuck it. That’s right. Most of the Buckethead albums are terrible. I’m going to figure out which ones those are and just delete them. I’ve finally come to a state where I feel I can delete the unnecessary crap. I won’t be going back to listen to them, because they’re bad. I’m still going to keep my discographies and bootlegs from some of my favorite bands, but do I really need music by The Revolting Cocks? Or First Arsch, the early version of Rammstein? No, because they are terrible. That’s right, I’m going back on another lifelist item so that I can do this one. Ridiculous, eh?
Over the next month, I’m going to delete a lot of music that I deem unnecessary to keep. We’ll see how that goes.
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1, 2
Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Posted August 1, 2010 at 3:07 pm by Severed Head
Finished. Finally. Took a lot longer than I thought it would. That said, I did things differently throughout. Each album ended up looking different in its sheet music file/structure, but I’ve got it down now. I don’t remember what I last decided or what I last wrote, but, basically, my goal is to be able to make a short version of the sheet music, and a long version. My goal is to be able to play the song with only the short version. The long version isn’t much different, but has lyrics too. And if I need lyrics, whatever, I guess that’s cool too. Basically, I just want to get all these songs down and into a nice PDF with good font and working links (so that I can tap the album name/index, then the song name, and have my sheet music come up)… Ideally, I’d like to be able to read this on an iPad, so that I could have entire discographies of sheet music at my fingertips, but I don’t have one, so I’m stuck with an iPod Touch, which is still pretty good.
Now to the ballboy aspect of things! What do I have to say about ballboy after playing through every song? There is obviously a definite style there. Gordon rarely strays from the I-IV-V, but all the songs still sound good. One reason it is kept so well together is the way he relates the words to what chord is being played. For example, the word “home” will be sung at the same time as the I chord, and the tension of the lyrics will be over the V chord. It’s the subtleties that really make ballboy sound so great… Aside from the obvious: the heartfelt, incredibly personal, intimate lyrics. The melodies just stick in your head and stay there. There were songs I didn’t care for at all, “We’ve All Had Better Days” for example, that I love now.
It’s interesting to see the arrangements change over time. At the beginning, on the first album, Club Anthems, almost every arrangement is different. The second album continues with different arrangements and different textures. The third album is almost entirely acoustic. It’s kind of a breakup album. Almost all the songs have the same chord progression repeated over and over throughout the entire song, without any bridge or structure at all. It shows the kind of loop that one gets stuck in after a breakup. The endless cycle. It works perfectly!
The later albums end up with more instruments being used for different effects, and newer different chords. Key changes even! But the recording quality definitely suffers on I Worked on the Ships, the latest album. I had already heard most of the songs in their purest version, with Gordon on acoustic on his podcast, so the only newness upon first hearing the album were the arrangements-and they are terrible. Disney’s Ice Parade on ukulele? Why? It takes away any of the weight of the song.
All in all, I feel like I’ve learned a lot more about songwriting and how songs work, and how to be a good musician with only 3 chords. Hopefully I’ve subconsciously learned a little something about melody too.
Next is how to become a successful musician with 3 chords, some distortion, and some screaming. Here I come, Nirvana!
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1, 2, 3
Posted June 1, 2010 at 11:59 am by Severed Head
Made chicken parmesan and chicken adobo a while ago. The chicken adobo actually took a few tries. The first time, I didn’t prepare enough, and I used a crappy recipe, but the second time, I used a recipe my grandma gave me. My mom helped me out with this, and it turned out amazing. I took some pictures of the chicken parmesan, but unfortunately none of the adobo. 
Here’s what I have left: Beef stroganoff, teriyaki chicken, shrimp fettucini alfredo, and rigatoni with roasted white chicken
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1
Posted April 18, 2010 at 10:53 am by Severed Head
I’ve talked about it a bit before, but this is something I’ve pretty much always wanted…
The first NAS didn’t work, so I returned it, and this weekend I’ve finished finally setting it up. All of my music and movies are now streamed wirelessly to my computer. Soon, hopefully, I will have a MacMini permanently hooked up to my TV so I don’t have to worry about moving my laptop back and forth all the time and whatnot. The problem with the MacMini that I’m getting is that it’s a PPC instead of an Intel Mac… And it doesn’t have any wireless, so I’m going to have to use an external wireless unit, which might be a little tricky. I’ve done it before, but we tried setting it up on the XBox 360 and that didn’t work. Hmph. I guess I should check if all of the software will be compatible with this. Otherwise, I’ll have to buy a newer MacMini. I also have my eye on a Logitech X-540 5.1 Speaker System, since, currently, when watching DVDs, I have to really crank up the volume. Why the fuck are DVDs like that, does anyone know? Every goddamn TV and DVD system I’ve had requires that I turn up the volume a lot when watching most DVDs. It’s really annoying.
For anyone unaware of what an HTMac is (also known as an HTPC), it’s the idea of having a computer for a home theater system. I currently have hacked the crap out of my Wii so I can store games on a hard drive for faster load time, as well as the ability to play old video games (ROMs, functional for even N64!) using a wireless controller. But this covers TV shows and movies and music and whatnot. I use XBMC mainly for the movies and TV shows, and Firefox for any online streaming stuff (Hulu, The Daily Show, Sober Housem, etc.). I also have a setup so that I can use a remote (HippoRemote) on my iPod Touch. It works extremely well. I also want to include Megaman Effect, which is pretty much the coolest thing ever.
Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Posted April 18, 2010 at 10:31 am by Severed Head
Haven’t had as much time as I’d like recently. I did finish The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories on the 11th, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to even get to The Royal Theatre until next week, and then it’d be another week for I Worked on the Ships, and probably 2 for all the b-sides, leaving the finish date 4 weeks from now, May 15th.
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1, 2
Future progress on this lifelist item: 4
Listen to all the music in my music collection
Posted April 11, 2010 at 12:05 pm by Severed Head
Here’s where my statistics class comes in handy. I’ve been keeping track of the amount of music I’ve listened to every week, as well as how much music I own. Unfortunately (fortunately), about a week ago, my super secret super high quality music torrent site I use allowed free downloading of music, so I got a ridiculous amount of new music in a short period of time, making my percentage overall, as seen here, go down. I’ve still been listening a lot though, as you can see in my “absolute” diagram.
Finally, to figure about how long this will take, I figured out a line of best fit for only my recent entries (setting the date of 3/7/10 as day 0). In order to find out how long it’ll take for me to listen to 72.7 days of music (currently the amount I own), I have to plug this value in for Y. Using this, I found that it will take 265 days from day 0. It’s already been 35 days, so it will really only be 230 days from today. That day will be November 27, 2010! Initially, I thought this might be a bit too early of an estimate, since I will probably get more music by then, but really, it is probably a conservative estimate, since I’ll have more time to listen to music over the summer.
Let’s say that, come May 11, the day after my last final, I start listening to my unlistened music twice as much as I currently do for the rest of the music. Currently, according to the line of best fit, my listening is at .1216 days (3 hours) of music per actual day. This would mean that during the summer, my estimate for twice as much would be 6 hours… This is actually probably too high of an estimate. With 8 hours to work and 8 hours to sleep, this leaves me 8 hours of other stuff in the day. 3/4 of the time listening to music would be great, but that’s probably very unrealistic. Let’s say that it’s 4 hours a day on days I don’t work and 6 on days I don’t. This means that 5/7 of the time, it would be .1666 of my day, and 2/7 of the day, it would be .25, giving me a daily average of .1905.
If my rate continues until the end of school at this rate, I’ll have 48.2194 days listened to by then. School starts on 8/23, 105 days after school is out. Multiplying this by my daily average, I will listen to exactly 20 days of new music over summer. This only leaves 4.4806 days of music left to listen to, which would take about 37 days under my during-school listening rate. By this estimate, I’ll be done 9/29/10.
My initial prediction was (more or less) 8 months after 3/7/10. My prediction now, using math and fancy graphs, is about 7 months. Pretty good, I’d say!
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1
Future progress on this lifelist item: 3
Posted April 5, 2010 at 7:21 am by Severed Head
Particularly, this time, I’ve made lasagna! It was DELICIOUS. Probably the best food I’ve ever made. I just copied off of the recipe on the box and oh man was it good…. It took a good 2 or 3 hours to make though because I had to run out to the store once or twice. It takes a lot of ingredients. So many parts to it too… Cooking the ground beef, cooking the noodles, cutting the parsley, laying out all the food, baking it… Yeah. Check it out: Not the greatest quality picture…. I’m getting so hungry right now I might have a square/rectangle/rectangular prism.
Other things I’d like to make from scratch and bake: brownies, cookies, and cupcakes
By the way, even though I bought the noodles and sauce and everything, it’s enough “from scratch” for me. Screw you if you disagree.
Obtain all of the works by Rachmaninoff
Posted March 28, 2010 at 9:27 am by Severed Head
I found a giant torrent the other day, and now these are the only works I have left to download (source: Wikipedia):
Romance in A Minor (1880s) (violin and piano)
String Quartet No. 1 (1890)
String Quartet No. 2 (1896)
Piano Concerto No. 4 (1926), Op. 40 (1928 version)
Paraphrase of Mussorgsky: Gopak from the Fair at Sorochyntsi (1926) (piano and violin)
Deus Meus (1890?), Song of the Nightingale (1894?) (four-part mixed chorus and piano)
Two Boris monologues (1891)
Most of these I’ve found on iTunes… There is only one known recording of the 1928 version of the piano concerto no. 4… I have found it on amazon though. The two Boris monologues I’ve found on amazon as well. Unfortunately for both things on Amazon, I have to purchase the full albums. The only ones I wasn’t able to find anywhere online in recorded form were Deus Meus and Song of the Nightingale
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1
Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Posted March 21, 2010 at 10:03 pm by Severed Head
Finished Club Anthems last night. This process takes a bit longer than I thought, but after performing through the album, I’m very confident in my ability to play these songs… Luckily these are all pretty easy. I’ve started the process for “A Guide for the Daylight Hours,” and not only is this album shorter, but it is easier. I anticipate having this done in the next day or two. I also want to try to finish The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories by the end of the week. At this rate, if each album is a week, I will be done before the end of April. So I am still on track!
My repertoire is currently at 14 songs (1:05:02 in length). I definitely know more songs than that, and I actually probably already know most of Local H’s catalog, but I want to wait until I’ve gone through that process to add stuff.
Also, I’ve decided that for step 4 (“Be able to play through the album entirely without sheet music or a recording”), I think it’s fair to be able to look up the lyrics if I can remember the melody. Which I have been doing. With great success. 
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1
Future progress on this lifelist item: 3, 4
See my top bands at least once
Fun, Fun Facts, Lifelist, Music, Time Paradox
Posted March 13, 2010 at 12:07 am by Severed Head
The doesn’t include the obviously un-doable aspect of the dead or broken up! At the time of original writing, my top 11 were:
The Offspring
Paul Gilbert (saw 3/14/07)
Static-X (saw 11/11/01… and 12/13/03, 7/24/04, 6/13/05, 11/09/05, 4/4/07, and 10/29/07)
Local H (saw 6/6/08 (in Hollywood!), 11/9/08 (in Tucson!), and 11/10/08)
Queen (saw as Queen + Paul Rodgers 3/31/06)
Radiohead (saw 8/20/08 (in Seattle!))
Cake (saw 9/13/01, 1/27/06, and 12/31/09 (in Seattle!))
Andrew W.K.
ballboy
Primus (saw 12/9/06)
Muse (saw 12/12/04, 7/22/06, and 9/20/07)
Andrew W.K. and ballboy are the only 2 bands on the list that I haven’t seen… For ballboy, a trip to Edinburgh may be in order! All of the bands I would still consider among my favorites, although I’m not sure if I would include Andrew W.K. up there or not. In terms of bands, the only one I could think of who could replace him would be Nick Cave… Whether I changed them out or not, I have not seen either perform. That said, Andrew W.K. is coming on the Warped Tour, but I don’t know that I would want to sit through a bunch of terrible bands to see him play a short set. I guess if he were one of my favorite artists, then I would. But that’s part of the question then, isn’t it? Either way, ballboy is going to be the most difficult one to see (or Nick Cave if he is added to the list)