I’ve got a desktop computer with a huge monitor working here, re-arranged my room and all I need now is a slightly bigger desk - surface might be a better term - and a stand for some speakers and I’m ready to go. The last two months of my lap top were not pretty, as I couldn’t even load up a drum machine with a single synth without the computer telling me that the cpu was maxed out. I guess technically it didn’t tell me that, it more or less spazzed anytime I’d hit the play button, so I stopped doing it. The only time I’ve been able to work on music in the past 2 months was when HYPE graced my presence with his computer, and of course himself.

While cleaning and re-arranging my room, I came across the warranty for my laptop, and I’ve got a month left on it.  I think I’ll make them sweat it out a little before I claim it. I’m picturing some guy in an office looking at my warranty date, hoping that I don’t call in so that they can make a profit on my purchase. They shouldn’t have sold pieces of shit acer products if they intended to make money by selling extended warranties.

I’ve also decided that the website looks terrible funny, but terrible. I’m going to try and come up with a more minimal design. Yes, more minimal than a wall of text with a header at the top.

I support the war.

It’s unfortunate, but I can’t help it. I don’t mean to support the war, but I do it anyways. You could say it feels like I’m forced to support the war. Actually, I am forced to support the war. Huh? What am I going on about?

I was talking with an acquaintance about the war in Afghanistan, and while we were speaking about it, he told me that he didn’t support the war. When he said that, I became fixated on the word “support”. It’s such a blanket term, it sounds like a term that we’re taught to use to hide what’s actually going on. It’s not unlike “collateral damage”, as most people know that it’s just a term to cover up a brutal and ugly truth, the harming and killing of innocents. It’s difficult for people to think of innocent people dying, so they give it a new label to disassociate the words from the truth.

“Actually, you do support the war. You may not like the war, but you support it” I told him. While neither of us morally support the war, we both supply it with the finances it needs to continue. It’s not our fault, we’re forced to. We live in a society where we aren’t given the freedom of choice to avoid funding the war. We are forced to support what we find morally wrong. If I find the killing of innocents to be evil, what does that say about the institution that forces me to pay for the killing of innocents?

Saying that we don’t support the war is a way of deceiving ourselves, lying to ourselves just so that we can be more comfortable with the situation of being forced to fund evil.

I’m always fascinated by people who know about Euthyphro’s dilemma, but still think that God can somehow choose what is moral without it being completely subjective. It’s very simple, if God needs to think about anything while creating a moral, then whatever he had to think about is an outside source. Let’s forgive the fact that he wouldn’t be omniscient if he had to think of anything. If it’s an outside source, then there’s something outside of God that God used to reason and decide, which means that there’s objectivity, but it’s not God’s choice that the moral was good. If it’s not something outside of God, meaning there was no outside reasoning or evidence, then morals are subjective and mere preferences by any definition. When there is a standard that we can judge God with, then objectivity can exist.

There have been a few criticisms that people have run across, but none of them fundamentally change the issue. If God is ingrained with goodness (and again, did God ingrain himself with this, or was this goodness external), then everything God does must be good. Otherwise, there would be no point of God being fused with goodness, if he can just ignore it. “We can’t know God’s reasoning because he is such a superior being”, is what many people say, but this is nothing more than an attempt to deflect further thought. Remember, if God is ingrained with goodness, then everything God does must be good. Any action that God takes is the most good. So when God punishes people for eternity for disobeying his rules, then this is a good thing.

Many people have a hard time with this, because the instant conclusion that most people jump to is that if it’s good to torture people when they disobey your rules, then why does it not apply to humans? Goodness becomes subjective. The common counter to overcome this issue, is that God trying to teach us morality, is like us trying to teach morality to an ant. Again, thinking about this with a few brain cells for more than a few seconds will help us spot a few important differences. We aren’t holding ants morally responsible for their actions, while God is holding us responsible. This is key, because there are only two possibilities. Either we as human beings are morally responsible, or we are not. If we are going to be accountable to morality, then we should have the capacity to learn morality. Otherwise, God is seen as nothing more than a person who punishes ants that have no comprehension of the criteria that they are being judged by. Do we think it’s just to jail and torture an emotionally and mentally retarded person for killing someone, even when we’ve given them the knife and didn’t bother to make sure they knew the consequences of their actions? Of course not, but then again, we’re not as smart as God, so what we consider morality in this situation may not be the case.

One further objection is that God gives us moral rules that are attainable as humans, but that runs into issues as well. Either we’ll be accountable to the morality that God applies to himself, or we’ll be accountable for a version of morality he thinks that we’re capable of handling. The first option doesn’t speak very highly of the goodness that’s fused with God, as mentioned above. But, if God is judging us by an alternate version of morality than ethics that is not universal, we have a few issues, the most important is that the rules are just made up and arbitrary, and again, subjective.

Thoughts?

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.