I have a few items of information that may be of interest to those following our illustrious music career. I’ve been up all night working on a tune, just churning out a bunch of synths until I found myself with a few quite different sounding textures that still worked when played together. I didn’t notice the time until the sun started coming in from my window that, hey, it’s the morning. It was well worth it, I think this is the most addictive beat I’ve made yet. Mostly it’s a the bassline, and how dirty the drums sound with such a hot bassline. Definitely some more experimental sounds in there as well, but definitely not a dark song at all. I’ve gotta run this by Hype, but I think this could be the beat we’ll use for Layin Shit Down.

Hype and I are going to be recording today, we’ll more than likely be doing some scratch vocals to a few songs, and we’ll also be finishing up a very minor part in Tha Chambers. We’ve finished Murderous Intent, and this evening after fix Tha Chambers, it gets sent out to a very exclusive preview network (don’t worry, you’re on it this time Nate - my bad). If you want to be on the network, just message us on this site or facebook. I’ll open 9 extra spots, which will probably take a few months to fill. Once we get feedback on the track, we’ll see which one our peoples want us to release, and which one to keep back. We can’t give all the tracks away, but we think giving between 1/3 - 1/2 of them out on the web is good, and keeping the rest as 30 second previews, that hopefully you people can buy.

So Hype came over on Wednesday to record a few tracks, which, in the past few weeks, we haven’t been able to do because of conflicting schedules. It feels good to get back to work though. We’d recorded the final sets of vocals for two songs: Murderous Intent and Tha Chambers. Murderous Intent will take a while, as the beat needs some touching up with another layer or two, as well as some work on the drums. The beat for Tha Chambers is done, as far as I’m aware, unless Peter wants to make anymore changes. He recently switched up the piano, which suits the song a lot better. The beat is smoother now, if that makes sense. Even though our lyrics are aggressive in this one, they really work a lot better on the new version. So, all I have to really do is mix the lyrics, link up a few effects with the backing vocals, get a wav version of the beat for re-encoding, and it’s pretty much a wrap - or rap.

We’ve also done the scratch vocals (again) to Thru Time and Space. We’ve done scratch vocals… I think twice before for this song, but it’s not a song we often rehearse, so the scratch vocals initially didn’t serve their intended purpose of hearing the flow of the song. We nailed it this time, obviously a good thing for us, but the backing is a far ways away from being completed.

So, In spite of the lack of significant progress within the last year or so, we’re finally catching up. I’d say around six of the months wasn’t our fault. There was about half a year of time where we had no choice in the matter. The computer wasn’t recording properly, or the computer was being sent in for repairs, or our schedules were conflicting. The other part of that year, I have to honestly look back and say it’s my fault. Looking back, there’s no way that I can look at the slower than desired progress we’ve made, and come up with any other answer. Hype’s always been doing his part, when he’s here, he’s ready. Admittedly, for this album, I do have the bigger share of the work, but that’s not an excuse at all. Hype comes over once or twice a week for recording. I have the entire week to “catch up”, but I generally didn’t. I’d play TF2, or I’d go on youtube, or post on forums. The forums one I’ve already gotten a lot better at, I’d be posting 2-3 hours a day, getting into these huge discussions, and although they were very entertaining for me, they weren’t doing anything for our common goal.

I’ve given up quite a few vices in the past year. I use to be addicted to MSN messenger, now I rarely ever use it, maybe once every few months or so. I don’t watch a lot of TV, mostly just MMA and a DVD series with my girl. I’ve also recently stopped playing TF2 (for the most part, an hour every few weeks is all I allow myself), and really cut down on youtube. The only thing I really have left is google reader, which I still consider an essential. I keep up on lots of music blogs, and a lot of personal ones as well. The difference between a month ago and now is that I’m a lot more selective in what I read. I skim for a bit and if it’s interesting I’ll read the rest. I’ve realized that I don’t have to read everything.

The biggest change I’ve made - which was very recent, probably within the last few weeks - is that now I meditate. I know mediation is supposed to be spiritual and yadda yadda yadda, but my version just means I concentrate on my goals. I think of things that will help me reach my goals, and any thought that conflicts with that, I “throw it away”. It’s a nice exercise that helps me realize my desires and to go after them. I don’t burn candles or hum or anything like that, I just think. I do it in public even. Waiting for a bus, maybe I’ll take two to three minutes to think about things I can do to reach my goals, again just throwing the other thoughts away. All I can say is that it works. When it comes time at home to make a choice on what to do, I know what choice I’m making, because I’ve already done the work earlier in the day. I’ve already made the choice to work on a goal, all I have to do is follow through. Every time I’m faced with a choice between a goal and something that distracts me from a goal, from sheer repetition, I now choose the goal.

And you know what? It feels good.

I wanted to write about an oddity concerning last.fm. Our group has a page on last.fm, and one of the features of a group page is something called Similar Artists. Here’s the thing, the artists listed on that page are not similar at all! It should really be called “People who have played your track play these songs”, except that, even as an acronym, that sucks.

Pretty much everything that was on the page was pretty cool though, so that’s a bonus. Hexes and Ohs are pretty awesome, they’ve got an electronic indie rock vibe to them. Bran Van 3000, which I’ve mixed up countless times in the past as Bram Vam or Bram Van. K-os and Mood Ruff are there too, I kinda figured K-os would be there. Obviously, the more times that the songs play, and the more people who listen, the more accurate the list will be.

I’m probably going to do a bit of integration on the next redesign of the website to include a playlist function on the side that will include a listening lounge of some sort, so it will be easier to hear our stuff as well as some fun stats from last.fm. It’ll be fun! In the meantime, a listening post with “Similar Artists” as us. Most of it’s pretty good. It’s kind of funny in the way, one of the reasons I make music is so that I can have something super-duper hot to listen to, but now all I have to do is listen to stuff like us instead.

Quite a few months ago I posted about being faith-free, and I’d written the first verse, probably in a matter of 20 minutes. My second verse for the song, however, took a lot longer to write. I didn’t have a cohesive message to this verse, every once in a while I’d just pick away at the verse, writing the odd line or concept. A couple of weeks ago, I found a common theme in most of the pieces so I ran with it. The premise of the verse is mostly about the Euthyphro dilemma, which asks, in more modern English “Are ideas moral because they’re commanded by God, or are ideas moral because of God’s reasoning?”

… Laws we abide by, decided by chance
A guide for mankind, constructed by fiat
Or does he put thought behind each selection // a
Design of perfection, we’d be foolish to reject it

Both hype and I have decided that this track will be on The Demo Tape, it’s a very important track to both of us. We’re going to review the track listing once again and see if there are any changes to be made. For example, if you check out our track list, song 14 is listed as “Feet, Life, and Munchies”, but we’ve opted to take this song of, just because it’s no where near as good as most of the other stuff we have to offer. We’ll probably release it for free as a B-Side or something in the future, after everything with the album is completed.

Nearing the completion of two beats right now, both being songs that we’ve done a long time ago, I’d just never got down to getting the beats past their skeletons. Since in both cases the chorus wasnt really fleshed out at all, the choruses that both Hype and I wrote no longer go with the songs we’d written them to. In retrospect, both choruses did need some upgrading anyways, so why not just make new ones?

Usually, when I’m writing, I don’t like to change things once they’ve been written. I’m not sure if it’s an unusual habit, but in general, I only rewrite something if I need to change the flow or the amount syllables, and the actual content rarely ever changes. These two songs are going to need a make over. Murderous Intent has a chorus which I wrote, and while I might salvage a part of it, but the music for this section is a lot “bouncier”. I’ll probably rewrite it as something sarcastic rather than morbid, but then again, it all depends on how the rest of the song turns out and how everything sounds in context.

Masheek, however, has the opposite task ahead of him. The chorus section of Dark Words, Dark Times now has way more punch and bang to it, so I’ve gotta get Hype to swing hard on this one. I’m quite proud of the changes I’ve made to both songs instrumentally, now we’ll see if we can work both of these songs and make some fire.

I’ve been working on too many new beats and not really getting anywhere with them, so I decided that I’d go back to an older song that hadn’t been finished. If you’ve heard the preliminary recording of the song Dark Words, Dark Times, which means four to five people who may be reading, I’ve changed a few things that . I’ve stepped up the drums a bit, I didn’t do anything too drastic for the verses, but the chorus is changed in a huge way. So much so, that I might have Hype rewrite the chorus. Sorry bro! I was supposed to go back and work on a song called Murderous Intent, but I just happened to open the wrong file. Oops.

Other than that, I’ve downloaded a web browser called Flock, and I’ve gotta say it’s decent so far. It uses the firefox rendering engine, and I’m using it’s blogging post feature right now, so lets hope this message makes it through the intarwebs properly.

…And I’m having a hard time getting to sleep, so I decided to post. Shane was over today and we recorded the vocals for our track “This Is Total Take Your Soul Music”. This is going to be my most ambitious piece of production yet. It’s going to be the longest hip hop song I”ll have produced, and probably the most experimental beat I’ll have made to date. I’m planning on working on the beat a bit more tomorrow night, and hopefully I can get the instrumentation done on the second verse out of four.

Anyways, that’s a short post, but I’m definitely heading back to bed.

Fuck yeah, I’ve got my laptop back which means I can start making music again.

Other than that, Hype and I have written another track, which won’t be going in The Demo Tape, it’ll probably be reserved for the next album. I know, writing songs for a 2nd album before the first album isn’t even half recorded yet. What can I say? We needed an outlet for our creative minds, so we wrote a next track, it’s called “When My Mind Wanders”.

It’s quite experimental in the way we laid out the track, and it’s very free-form in structure. Very rarely do I jump from thought to thought the way I’ve done in this song, let alone in the middle of a line, but I’m quite pleased in the way that it came out. It’s definitely not the way I’d approach a song over and over, but for this song, it just felt really good to let the ideas flow without being afraid that the idea isn’t concrete in it’s meaning.

Hallucination’s imagination is in unconsciousness
Expand to infinity, looping in its thoughtlessness
These lies in your eyes are only delusions //
At ease, — guiding the mind to conclusions //

I think it mostly started with the troubles that I’d been having with my computer. When Hype and I would try to record, a glitch in the machine would happen once in a while. I thought I’d solved it, but then it came back and I realized that I didn’t know what the cause was. The my graphics card/mobo combo decided to give out (I won’t place blame, even though I don’t think his dog reads my blog). Getting that sent off and back took a while, and when I got the laptop back, I’d rather play Team Fortress 2 with it than create music, mix, or do anything productive.

I find that it happens to me a lot, actually. It happened with jiu-jitsu and MMA training. I find that I get “good enough” at something, and it becomes boring. No longer fun, I’d say it becomes about as exciting as washing dishes. I find that my music creation process goes through cycles of sorts. I get really amped about it (usually due to a new toy, a new way or working) and then desire slowly fades away. Realizing that this is a recipe for failure, I can’t allow myself to fall into that rut. I know I’m capable of doing great things with my music, and this time I’ve got a friend that’s relying on me, so I can’t allow myself to fall victim the the lethargy.

Oddly, these thoughts coincide with a great piece of inspiration. A few days ago, I heard Peter Angelo’s song “Show Me The Exit” (right click and “save link as” to download), which I’ve now linked to since he’s put up the final final mix. I can’t believe someone I that know personally could make such an outstanding track. I’ve told him already, but I think the song is probably going to end up in my top three tracks to listen to — ever.

So the other night, when I came home from work at 2 in the morning, I turned on Reason instead of TF2, and I’d realized something. Part of why I think that I get into a rut, is because I approach composing a song in nearly the same way every time. My goal every time is to create a final product, or at least work toward it. It makes sense, because I want to make songs. But, the reason I initially want to make songs is because I find it fun. If I no longer find it fun, then making a song in a manner that I don’t find to be fun is pointless. So, my new approach to making music is to have fun, and if I get a song out of the process, then the song is just a fortunate event of that fun. It may take longer, but I’m going to be happier in the process.

Instead of working on a song when I booted up reason, I made a very simple synth patch, pressed record, and jammed on my MIDI keyboard controller for about half an hour. I’m not that great of a keyboardist, but who cares? I get to nail three birds with one stone this way. I can learn better techniques on the keys, get some material for music, and now I’m finally having fun again.

I’m a hypocrite. I’ve recently been made aware of this, and the only option that I can stand by is to change the actions that lead me to being a hypocrite. It’s something that I don’t tolerate it from anyone else, so obviously it’s something I won’t tolerate about myself.

The gist of the story is that I wrote a few lines in a song to insult Hype. I wasn’t thinking and I wanted to call Hype the most offensive word I could imagine, so here are the three lines that I started the verse with:

Yo you can’t touch me, getcha fingers away faggot // Get
Back in the closet and dress up in drag with –
All your fuckin homo friend’s setting up abnormal trends…

Yeah, it’s pretty offensive, but not in the way that I intended it to be. I intended it to be offensive in the “using harsh language” sense. The way it actually comes off is that I’m a gay hater. For me to actually use this as an insult, one would probably assume that I have something against being gay. Since I don’t have anything against gay people, I can’t stand behind my using of the word “faggot” as an insult. I also can’t believe that someone actually had to point his out to me.

So yeah, we have a song that will either not make the cut for the album, or will need to be reworked to be put on the album. In it’s current state, it’s definitely not going on. If we decide on reworking the song, we’ll definitely work on making it offensive, but only in the way that we intend it to be, nothing inadvertent.