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 July 20, 2010 at 3:50 pm by Severed Head
WTF happened, George?!
Long messy all-over-the-place rant-type deal
Guitar, Life, Limb, Music, Philosophy, Time Paradox
Posted June 29, 2010 at 9:14 pm by Severed Head
When I went to see CAKE (for the fourth time! second this year even) the other night, before they played Guitar, John went into his usual brief description about the song and how it was written in a very tall building. I’d heard this many times from the other shows and from many bootlegs. But this time was different. He talked about the meaning of the song, something he so rarely does. He said something along the lines of, “This song is about taking something and just throwing it away. What would happen if you just threw away something really important? Something as OH SO IMPORTANT as music?” When he said this, I laughed hysterically because of the crazy layers of what he was saying, and because the audience was cheering, probably not fully comprehending what John was saying. CAKE have been playing music for years, and I’m sure John has had to give up a lot for music, and over 10 years after the song was written, clearly, he has still not given up on music itself.
I remember reading about it before and writing about it on this website somewhere, but I read about it again recently: Scott Lucas, another frontman from one of my favorite bands, Local H, was talking about, in an interview, how he never left himself any option. He played music because that’s all he left himself. I really feel like that is what I need to do. I’m not sure how exactly I came to this conclusion, but doing anything else has always seemed a bit unsatisfactory to me. I get such a ridiculous amount of job and fascination with all things music. I view playing my instrument as a lifelong journey, not just some temporary outing. More or less, I think, going into the ASU school of music was an effort to prove to myself that I’m a serious musician. And a real one. And here I am! Almost done, and loving it.
But I have another degree coming. But will I do anything with it? And for that matter, does the actual music degree matter? Not really. I don’t want to do shit with either of them. I just got a job with Apple, and I love the company, though I’m kind of iffy about the job sometimes… Well, not even really. I feel like I’m way ahead of my coworkers in my technical support skills, and I genuinely like helping people. It feels good when I get off of a call and my customer is really happy that I was able to help them. Or when I check my customer survey scores and they are awesome! BUT. I guess the big thing right now is that I’m helping people over the phone, and that part kind of sucks. But there are advancement opportunities. And also, the timing sucks. A few weeks ago, for the past few months, I had somehow become a morning person, and was waking up early every day, and didn’t seem to have too much trouble dealing with it. Now, however, now that I’ve taken a 6-3 shift (after trading in my 12:30-9:30 shift!!), I’m no longer a morning person. I can’t stand it, and I can’t get to bed. I’ve been a night person all my life, so what the fuck? This schedule only has 5 and a half weeks or so left to run its course though, so it’s not all bad.
But like I said, I love the company. I can genuinely see myself having a career with Apple. I’ve loved them my life, and they treat me fucking awesomely.
But I don’t want to get too caught up. Not if the alternative is being a musician, whether or not I have healthcare or financial stability.
I suppose I never explained the relevance of the CAKE song, Guitar. Here is the chorus:
If I threw my guitar
Out the window so far down
Would I start to regret it?
Or would I smile and watch it slowly fall- fall- fall?
So… I’ve been thinking about the opposite. Not throwing out music, but rather, throwing out everything else. Most of the crap I own doesn’t have that much real meaning or use to me. Is it really necessary I have all this stuff and waste my time with this crap when I could be playing music? I could be writing songs right this moment, or learning songs, or practicing with a band.
Just some thoughts! I don’t know where I’m going with that or what I want to do about it, or hell, what I want to do with my life. This issue has come up a lot lately. Whenever I get together with my mom, she and my stepdad always ask me at least 5 or so questions about what I am doing after college. And I don’t know. And, from what I can tell, nobody knows. Hell, most people I know get about 2 years into their majors and go “FUCK. I don’t want to do this! I want to switch to this major, but it might take another 2 years, so I won’t”…
My chemistry degree started as something I might like to do. Then changed to the degree I’d use to backup my music career. Now I don’t want to do that at all… My ideal backup career would be something in psychology. A counsellor or therapist of some sort. I think I’d just find that fascinating. I often find myself studying any interaction between humans and analyzing the shit out of everything. I can’t stop. To be able to have that as my job and have people respect my opinion would be wonderful.
But still, right now, it doesn’t really compare to music.
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, one of which is the Nerdist podcast. Bill Burr, a comedian, was on today’s episode. They were talking about a comedian who said, regarding becoming a comedian and finding your style, “Go out and do 100 shows. Come back and see where you are at that point”… I really feel like that’s what I need to do with music. I just want to get out and play a fucking shit load of shows. Write my own music, particularly, and see what kind of stuff I like playing. Stop trying to be cool, and just play music. Not that I’ve ever really made a conscious effort to be cool, as anyone could tell if they listened to some of the samples of music I’ve recorded… I don’t know. I guess it’s really hard to evaluate the stuff I write, but I know what stuff is cool, and what stuff is not cool. But I guess I probably shouldn’t care? I have no idea. Haha.
But fuck… Basically, I guess I should just get out and play some music and see what happens. See what reactions I get, see how I feel (Again with the analyzing of all human interactions! I cannot stop!)….
Music, Philosophy, Pissed off rants, Propaganda, Robots, Time Paradox
Posted June 28, 2010 at 9:35 pm by Severed Head
It doesn’t get more pop than Bowie! But is is good fucking pop. What the fuck happened, music scene?
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
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
Awesome thing of the week, Music, Robots, Time Paradox, Website
Posted March 19, 2010 at 12:43 am by Severed Head
Just in the last few minutes I found this article, which is really quite amazing. My favorite part is the discussion, and I really feel like I could talk about this stuff forever.
With all of my friends who have large collections of music, I always ask them how they organize it. I didn’t realize there were so many people out there that do this too. I really feel like this thread should evolve into a message board with just questions and ideas regarding music collections. Specifically, the following topics would be very interesting: Software used to access it (iTunes vs. Windows Media vs. cetera), Proper tagging (use of MusicBrainz? How to handle genres), playlists, capitalization, etc. I am just a huge nerd for all of this kind of stuff.
Speaking of which, I’ve gone about the task of setting up an HTPC situation. For those of you who don’t know, HTPC is an Home Theater PC… But this is an HTMac. Basically, the idea is to have all of your media hooked up to your TV. So, from my TV, ideally, the end product is this:
A computer hooked up to the TV, very easy and quick to turn on.
A remote interface (right now, my iPod Touch)
A nice interface on-screen(XBMC w/Aeon)
Access to streaming services (specifically, YouTube/Netflix/Hulu/Any other new TV sites I’ve discovered recently)
A database of stored movies and TV shows
Now, my particular situation is somewhat unique right now. A lot of other people will just scrap up an old PC and strip it down to what it needs to work. Currently, I’m just using my laptop and an external hard drive, which I have to lug over to my TV every time I want to use them, but it really does seem a lot better than just watching them on my laptop’s screen. Soon though, I’m looking to purchase an old MacMini and a 1 TB NAS drive. The NAS drive would allow me to access all of these movies and TV shows wirelessly, but I’m not really exactly clear on how all of that works.
One feature I really want, that doesn’t seem readily available, is a shuffle feature for TV shows. I don’t have cable right now, but I do have a fair amount of TV show DVDs. I have a few episodes on my computer so far, and I’d like just to be able to put them on shuffle, as if I had a TV station composed entirely of shows that I love with no commercials. That really seems like the ultimate HTPC situation.
I also seem to be one of the few XBMC users who wants to store deleted scenes from DVDs and TV shows, and have them link up with the movies/TV episodes themselves. I’ve finally figured it out a solution, but it’s not exactly satisfactory. Right now though, it’s only a matter of ripping everything to my external hard drive
Coming soon: Piracy is in the news, and I want to defend the pirates. But not in some stupid way like Cory Doctorow. His point seems to be that “the industry” are restricting the user’s copying of data to very specific ways, which really don’t make a lot of sense, and I completely agree with this. My beef with Cory is that he doesn’t seem to come right out and go “Fuck you guys, stealing is so awesome and convenient that everyone should do it,” but posts a lot of articles suggesting things like “Suing pirates seems wrong” and “Shutting down torrent sites seems wrong.” He seems to avoid the idea that this is stealing, and that these sites have a bunch of movies/music that people are downloading for free to circumvent any sort of payment system.
But maybe I’ve simply misinterpreted something here or there. I’m not posting all of my opinions yet because I’d like to do a bit more research first…
Also, check out this site for healthcare: Top 10 facts to know about health care reform… There are a lot of uninformed/misinformed people out there with strong opinions, so here’s a neutral source with good information. Please read this if you’re going to speak out about these issues. You’d be amazed at how many vehemently angry people are just completely wrong because some stupid fucking chain e-mail got to them first.
Wow. This has become like an actual blog again, and I’m acting like people read this. WEIRD.