NewSc2

Good read. [link]

Quote: “3. Put the hours in. Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.“

I was listening to NPR today and the commentator was talking about American Idol. He didn’t watch the show to hear the beautiful voices — instead, he watched the show to see Simon Cowell’s scathing reviews. To him, the mediocre people who tried out for the show, thinking they were the best because their church or their family told them so, needed a harsh dose of reality.

Not everybody can be a Super Bowl MVP, and not everyone can reach their goals just because they say they can.

To the NPR host, artists and athletes always attributed their success to a fairy tale “I believed in myself — look at me now” story. But they were the minority — a gifted few who gave others false hope.

His main point was correct — only be a handful of kids today will become quarterbacks in the NFL. But if a kid doesn’t try (within reason) to pursue his dreams, the chance for him to become a professional football player is zero.

The cartoonist I linked to above would probably disagree with the radio host.

The cartoonist makes some really interesting, motivating, and sobering points. He cautions people to not give up their day job, and to not expect, or even desire, commercial success. But when it comes to judging art, I disagree with him. I mean, I’m not a successful artist, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I feel like he’s a little bit too me-me-me.

Like the cartoonist, I do believe it’s necessary for each person to find their own unique creative path. But even if we all have our inner artist, we also have our inner psycho. Pandering to the public gives us some foundation to distinguish one from the other. Good taste is important, and we rely on our society and culture for many things. I think a little feedback is important to keep yourself grounded and motivated.

There’s a balance between what pleases ourselves and what pleases others. It’s up to the artist to find their own personal harmony. But then again, I guess that’s what separates the Warhols out there from the Kinkades.

A few months ago, Bill Simmons commented on the current ESPN Ombudsman: - [link]

“Sad note: Two weeks ago, I joked that Buffalo’s coaching staff could have doubled as an all-male cast for a porn movie called “Lotion In the Basket.” Much to my delight, a few readers took a crack at photo-shopping the movie poster, including one reader who bemoaned, “Thanks, I wanted to make it as authentic as possible and ended up seeing some things that I can’t unsee.” The two best ones made me laugh out loud to the point that I started coughing.

Unfortunately, we can’t run them because I don’t want to offend our Ombudsman — not just because she’s my favorite ESPN.com columnist, but because I’m truly, legitimately, unequivocally terrified of her. Every time I check my e-mails, I fear seeing one from her with the subject heading, “Do you have time for a quick interview to tell your side?” She’s like a prison warden at this point — I don’t even want to make eye contact with her. So you’ll have to use your imagination for the “Lotion In the Basket” posters. As much as it kills me.”

I remember browsing over her articles then and yeah, they seemed good. They were better than the last ombudsman, George Solomon, whom I rarely paid attention to. Simmons’ comments stuck more because I imagined the ombudsman as a scary old lady; the part about her being his favorite ESPN columnist completely passed over me. I thought he was just trying to suck up to her.

I’m starting to fit the ESPN mold better (the Male, 24-39 demographic), so I’ve begun to actually write the Ombudsman with a few complaints, and paid attention to her more. Her recent article, criticizing ESPN for being the news, instead of reporting on it, was pretty enjoyable [link], so I started to seriously sift through her archives.

Turns out the Ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, has a strong resume: she was the first female sports editor for a major newspaper (the NY Times in 1980), she was Tony Kornheiser’s boss back when he first started out at the Times, and has gone on to be an editor for other publications and has taught at Columbia’s graduate school of journalism. In the end, this doesn’t matter much — the former Ombudsman was qualified too, but he was boring.

Anyway, I decided to dig around and found a lot of good gems. Her writing style is very specific but casual and personable at the same time. Her first article praised ESPN for being the only commercial network with an ombudsman. But that’s where the praise stops — her next article was an immediate backlash, calling out Colin Cowherd for shutting down a site critical of ESPN, and criticizing ESPN’s response.

The piece after that, her first true report, was a sort of “state of ESPN” critique, calling out famous sportscasters for yelling too much and talking about stupid points with a general air of “certainty.”

If anything, this article is the one you have to read. She totally shuts down people like Jim Rome and Sean Salisbury with a quote: “Certainty is the place you stop [at] when you are tired of thinking.”

I mean, look at this absurdity:
“when I returned to the living room, two more heads were hollering. It was Jay Mariotti and Woody Paige mixing it up on “Around the Horn” about whether Colts quarterback Peyton Manning was going “to get the monkey off his back.” I would be hearing that phrase a lot over the next 2½ weeks, until the Super Bowl was over, and everybody finally agreed that the monkey was indeed off Peyton’s back. But on that first day, after watching Mariotti and Paige have a go at the monkey, I got to hear Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon take on the monkey on “Pardon the Interruption.”

And her genius rip on Sportscenter:
“Then, whooooosh, up came the roaring red powerball. It was time for the real sports news on “SportsCenter.” Who would the anchors be? Before I could figure that out, I heard yelling again. Highlights were being shown, and at first I presumed the audio was from the original announcer getting carried away in the thrill of the moment. But no, it was the as-yet-unidentified anchor, doing some rehearsed yelling.”

Schreiber makes some great points throughout, comparing PTI to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, and bashing Skip Bayless (easily one of the worst ESPN personalities) in favor of Chuck Klostermann, whom I love (read the HGH part of the article). I think she goes a bit far in her PTI vs. Around the Horn comparisons — personally I like Around the Horn more, because I like watching Michael Smith, Bill Plaschke, J.A. Adande, and Tim Cowlishaw more. But her points on Tony Reali scoring for entertainment’s sake were valid.

Regardless, the sports blogosphere loves her, and everyone seems to genuinely be a fan of her stance against ESPN. I enjoy her because she gives me a lucid view of my most-watched network and most-read website. I’m also trying to pick up on her writing style — I should refer to concepts more than individuals. Throughout this whole entry I’ve been using “I” and “her” too much; I should refer to statements as a third party in itself.

But I do have one last thing to say to Le Anne: Tune your radio to your local pop/hip-hop station. Tell me if you don’t hear the same loud, angry, and obnoxious vocals. It’s pretty much the culture of today.

Ugh… why didn’t I think of that last night?

I know I’ve been lagging on the picture output, but I shoot everything in RAW format (lossless). It’s extremely tedious for me to process the 2-3GB of photos I can easily shoot in a night, but eh, I guess it’s gotta be done somehow. I’m probably going to start shooting in small JPG + RAW (large JPG is nice to preview details on the fly), and try to use iPhoto instead of Photoshop for faster uploading. On second thought… I hate iPhoto’s file management, so maybe not.

So over the next week or two I’ll slowly chronicle everything my camera lens has seen since the last photo update I did, which… was Vegas I think? (back in June?)

Without further ado, here are some shots that my sister wanted me to send to her. I figure it’s best (and laziest) to start with what I’ve already cropped/corrected.

It’s from a trip my dad, Lillian, and I went on to Disneyland back in August:

Well, so my birthday came (as did 2009). I had figured to play a live set completely off my Machinedrum, but I kept feeling too limited. The good news is that I did record a 20ish minute live set straight off just the Machinedrum in my room, a couple days before the birthday set:

2008-12-28-Birthday_Practice (right click, save as. scroll through to hear the basics, I messed up a couple times, but most of my main ideas are in there)

With all the preparation I did, I really got to learn the Machinedrum well. I can pretty much fly around it, and while I still have things to figure out, I feel like I know the Machinedrum about 80% well. All the important workflow commands (copy, paste, save, clear, undo, load, etc.) come naturally.

Anyway, in the end I didn’t end up playing the set off the Machinedrum.

The day before my birthday (Dec. 29th) I got back my finished, soldered x0xb0x. It’s a clone of the famous Roland TB-303:

About 30 minutes before Evan stopped by to pick me up, I figured out how to sync everything together. I set my TR-909 up with the Machinedrum and x0x, and boom! Acid House :D.

The birthday set went pretty well. I didn’t hook up all my equipment together until like, 1:30am-ish? There were only like, maybe a dozen people at the Brewbakers warehouse, and I was pretty buzzed by then, so it was just a mish-mash, but it was nice to have stuff to play and tweak. It’s really hard to not make a good set with the x0x and 909.

I really should have prepared more for the set, but I didn’t anticipate the x0x+909 combo to work out so well. Admittedly, I only had 3 x0x patterns, and had let the C2H5OH take over a bit too much, but I think overall it went well. The classic mute-unmute and snare rolls are hard to beat for movement and familiarity.

I need to work on getting more patterns down, and trying to add complexity in sequencing and textures. I bought an MPC (2500) for this very reason, but I’m going to need to work even harder to master the 4 machines. I anticipate using a laptop (as a sound source) later on, too, so I’m going to have to figure out how to master plan all these things together. Realistically, I could just take the laptop out and put on the exact same show, with a good amount of live control still.

Apart from the live stuff, the new year’s here, and I need to start working on production again. It’s been odd — I almost seem more interested in the process of creating music (music theory, learning software) than actually sitting down and looping and creating sounds.

So I have two goals for the next several weeks:

1. Hone down a better live set, first with just the MD+909+x0x, and then with the MPC (percussion, breakbeats, vocal samples, background loops). I’m guessing the laptop or Virus for live PA will come in later, or I might just end up recording all those hits onto the MPC.

2. Produce a few tracks on Ableton or Logic to familiarize yourself with the workflow.

P.S. I set up acoustic bass traps in the corners of my room today. My room sounds so different now — the bass is much tighter and I can hear a much wider soundspace. The music overall just sounds way better. I’m still getting used to the way my voice sounds in here. It sounds like my room is 3-4x as large as it really is. It’s like I’m in an abyss.