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 //

So Hype and I are probably going to abandon “Rhyme So Tight” for now, it’s probably not going on The Demo Tape, but on Friday night we had a writing session and we wrote a verse each, that turned out pretty good. Our faith, or lack of faith to be more accurate, was our topic of choice. It’s been coming up a lot more in my discussions recently, so I decided I had to write something about my views of the world.

…Stick to what’s real, they make up fantasies // A
Romantic view of the world, it’s so sad to see //
People get bitten by these leeches and liars
Some bend over to every preacher’s desire

I think it’s going to have a very stop and go type flow to it, almost mechanical, and I also have a few ideas for a beat that have been rolling around inside my head. I also have a pretty good idea which direction it’s going to go in. We’re probably going to do two verses each, but I’m not sure how it going to affect our track list, or the order, but I think it’s definitely going on the album. Anyways, my break at work is almost over, so I’m saving the post, publishing it, spelling mistakes and all. No firefox to spellcheck for me.

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.

So I recently acquired a program called Melodyne. Basically it’s a real time pitch correcter that I can use on singers. The intent with the program isn’t to make people who aren’t singers to magically sound professional (although it probably could), it’s just a time saver. I read somewhere that Frank Sinatra for one of his songs did over 70 full length takes to get the ‘perfect’ version. Most of us don’t really want to wade through 78 takes. I say you get 5 near perfect takes, splice the best parts together, and any part that’s still a bit off can be corrected. It’s just a tool to save time and money.

When I first started sound school, I was quite against the idea of using the computer to “perfect” a vocal line, thinking it was unnatural to do so. My teacher told me that he was against it at first as well, but he changed his mind. His view was, that the music recording and creating process is anything but natural. You record all the instruments one at a time, as opposed to playing them all at once. You don’t search for “the perfect drum kit” or “the perfect guitar”, any instrument will have its faults. Is the kick drum lacking in the 120 Hz range? Beef it up with some EQ. Does the snare sound a little dry? Add some delay and a touch of reverb. Guitar sound too clean? Run it through a distortion unit. Does the amp have a hum? Take out the 60 Hz cycle with EQ. The singer is a bit loud in one part and a bit too quiet in another? Use the volume knob or put some compression on that.

Knowing that we mutilate our music to enhance the good parts and get rid of the bad parts, why should anyone draw an arbitrary line, saying that we shouldn’t do the same to pitch? We shouldn’t. Drums don’t really sound like that when they’re recorded, nor do guitars, nor just about any other instrument, why do we draw this distinction with the voice? We shouldn’t. If we wanted a realistic sounding music, we’d record an entire band at the same time, with two flat response mics, nested inside a device that mimics the human head and ear drums. If anyone wants to record that way, and only records that way (like many classical orchestra recordings), those are the people that have a right to bitch about the use of pitch correction. Anyone else that doesn’t record in that manner and feels that pitch correction is a detriment to the singer is a hypocrite.

I have a few news items to post.

First, we’ve finally come up with a name for another one of our parters in rhyme. Well, when I say we, I mean he came up with it himself. We identify him by the short form of his last name, Nate. So he came up with a great pun in Resin Nate. As soon as he said it, we knew it was going to stick.

We’ve written 4 more tracks, with the following titles:

• Feet, Life and Munchies
• Wheels of Fate
• This Is Total Take Your Soul Music (or affectionately, TITTY SM)
• Braggadocios (featuring Resin Nate)

Feet, Life and Munchies is pretty much self explanatory, just a funny idea to combine a few very different verses into one song. Wheels of Fate is a short solo track from Hype (and I’ll be writing a short solo of my own soon). TITTY SM is a track that I can’t wait to start. It’s going to be very experimental from a production standpoint, and I’ve got the basic idea for it in my head. I kind of want it to be a surprise to everyone, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be unlike any hip hop song I’ve ever heard. Braggadocios is our first track featuring Nate. All I can say is, Nate is ready to rhyme. We wrote it over a few days that spanned a few weeks, but I think the track is going to turn out quite sick. We’re definitely aiming for a Boot Camp Clik styled song, shout out to those guys, some of my favourites are from that crew.

We’ve also recorded a few songs. I’ve been mixing one of them (The Weed I Need) for a while, getting the vocal flavours to my exact liking. I’m done pretty much everything that I have to, we just have to record another set of back up vocals and then we’ll have that under wraps. We’re gearing up to do a long haul of recording sessions.

I’ve appointed Peter to produce the beat on “Tha Chambers”. I swung by his place last week to get a sneak peak of the beat that’s he’s creating on the PC. I don’t know why I did that. In any case, the beat was really nice, very distinct an different from my production style, but it’s a welcome contrast. He’s got a great style on the song and I can’t wait to rap to it.

Masheek has acquired a new microphone for our recording session, so now we can both record at the same time if need be. I might need another stand and pop filter, but it’s all good.

So that’s the update. Look for more frequent updates as we step up our game. peace

Well, I know I’ve been away from the site for a while, but a lot has been going on as of late. Kawlinz and myself performed at a friend’s party on June 16. We performed 7 tracks that will be on the album that is coming out in October: Dark Words Dark Times, Party Track, Rhyme So Tight, The Weed I Need, Thru Time and Space, Murderous Intent, and to close it off the source of Origins.

But after the performance Kawlinz and myself got right back into things and started writing new tracks to be added to the album. Also on a side note we have some of the performance recorded, we didn’t get the first few tracks recorded but that’s okay. Also I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who was at the party for their support, it was greatly appreciated and we hope to perform for you again. Special thanks go out to Nader for letting us perform at his place, to Caker 194, for recording the performance, and also Barry for getting a camera for us to use on such short notice. That’s pretty much all I can say about that.

I did mention that we were working hard on writing these tracks so here is a track list of what we have so far:

Dark Words Dark Times
Party Track
Rhyme So Tight
The Weed I need
Thru Time and Space
Murderous Intent
The Source of Origins
Years of Destiny
Tha Chambers
Layin’ Shit Down

Now there isn’t a particular order in which these tracks are listed right now, it’ll probably be different once the album is finished.

I’m not sure if I should spell it “Thru” or “Through”, as I like the aesthetic look of the former, but I like the fact that the latter is correct. Something that I usually despise is when a title has “1 4 da money” or “Beat Dat Foo”, like purposely spelling things wrong for the sake of looking uneducated, or “cool”. I’m using a lot of quotation marks, so I’ll stop.

Anyways, I’d rather not give away the near obvious influence for the song, or at least I don’t want to talk about the exact method for penning it, I want everyone to come up with their own conclusions. What I will mention is the intention of the song, which is to create a hypnotic rhythm, with fairly trippy and droning lyrics. The beat that I’ve made so far reflects this quite well, and I was kind of in a trance while I wrote the lyrics. When I turned the beat off I felt kind of — empty I guess would be the best word. So I’ll be adding a few more pieces to it, but keeping it very minimal, like most of my stuff.

A few friends of mine, Peter and Nick, are coming over tomorrow to record some rocking guitars. Basically, Hype and I recorded some lyrics over one of my beats, and although it kind of goes together, I think it’d be a lot better for this song to have some hyper-aggressive guitars and some killer rock drums. What we have so far is us rhyming loudly over a dark beat, but it’s not hard enough for my liking. It’s a good beat, but it’d probably be suited better to something else.

This will be the second song on the CD with live guitar work. I think that’ll be it for the guitars on this album, as I wouldn’t want to carve a niche in that particular area. I might do one more if I can get Brendon, another friend of mine, to lay down something for me. He’s got a very different style of playing and it’d probably be a more somber and mellow piece rather than something that ‘bows you in the face. Don’t get me wrong, I love guitars, but it’s just not the overall direction that we want to take our album in, but we don’t mind making a few stops there along the way.

It’s pretty odd, it seems like we’re so far away from being done, but I sometimes forget how much we’ve completed. Hype was at my place writing some stuff. I was supposed to be out of town but I was too exhausted to go because of lack of sleep. So we chilled for a bit and got to writing a new song, and finished it in about 45 minutes. Sometimes the ideas just come to us so easily, those are great writing days.

The track we’ve written is called “Murderous Intent”, and it’s a dark track about, well, intentions of murder. It’s not about having guns and all that, but yeah it’s pretty vivid at parts, more about spirituality than anything. I like writing these “creative thinking” type tracks, as we get to write a lot of metaphoric imagery for them. These are probably my favourite lines that I’ve written for this track…

But it’s not easy, slaughter eases the pain
A crimson river in the path of the slain
A desire so intense that it bends the laws of physics
I dream a sequence, and the spirits get with it

So far we have only 2 songs completed so far, but we also have 5 more beats either ready or very close to it, and 5 songs ready to be recorded. We’ve recorded one of those, actually, but I decided against using that be for that particular song, as I’ve got a better idea for it that is much more suiting. We have 5 full songs memorized for the upcoming party. We’ll probably do a set of 6 or 7 come party time.

I’m really excited about the performance coming in June, I haven’t performed in front of a crowd in at least 7 years, it has to be at least that long ago. This time we’re actually going to be prepared. The last time we tried, we wrote 3 songs within a week and tried memorizing it, it was a bad effort on our part. Yeah, we got cheers but I’m sure we could’ve torn the house down if we’d practised for more than one night.

So it’s like 4 in the morning and I’m working on a beat, really slow but I’ve got a pretty kickin synth sound going on. I’m going to go for a hypnotic sound at the moment, but I always let my mood and heart decide what happens to the music, not my head. Basically it means I have no qualms about changing a beat half way through.

Masheek and I are heading downtown tomorrow, and I’m planning on getting some marshmallow, bubblegum, and mint papers. I’m most excited about mint because I think it’d taste pretty damn classy, but marshmallow sounds like a damn good flavour too, in a less classy sense.

Afterwards we’re heading back to the studio and start writing something to it, possibly record as well if we get it done early. We usually do a set of scratch vocals first, which basically are vocals that aren’t the best of quality, rough vocals to be exact. We listen to the scratch vocals for a few days and use them to help us remember the lyrics, and also to listen to any parts we’d like to change. If something annoys us after a few listens, either the flow or the wording, then we take a note of that and take measures against the “mistake”. Then we give a good take when we’re ready, and then it’s up to me to engineer the vocals. I usually do a decent job.