NewSc2

Yes, yes you do. I’ve pretty much taken most of my journal entries private, so I wouldn’t have to worry about being too explicit or revealing about my life on here. Of course, even my private journal entries are still mostly filled with boring stuff like:

“What I Learned Today, 7/6:
- Finished the Electro Tutorial:
- even 3-4dB in volume automation shifts makes a big deal
- solid, big bass/lead patches have a good blend of 3-4 oscillators
- set up delays and reverbs on sends, 2 each should be good enough
- a little “bleep” or tonal sound effect at the end of an 8 bar can be paired with a dropped kick and bass very effectively”

and

“Analyzed Danny Tenaglia - Bottom Heavy 2008 (Phunk Investigation Dark Mix)
- very progressive song
- very basic song — synth parts only play 3 notes, most play 1
- 5 drum tracks (kick, snare/clap, snare/tom, off-beat CH, distant stuttering sample, 16/16 CH pattern - only plays in main after break)
- 1 bass track (2 parts, 1 Eb vamp, 1 Eb vamp + slide at the end)
- 5 synth tracks (main melody, higher bell-like duplicate melody, delayed Eb line, delayed arpeggio Bb-Eb)
- 2 vocal tracks (vocal “oom” and spoken word)
- 3 effects tracks (1 or 2 reverse swooshes, cymbal, and a sharp woman’s vocal to finish the breakdown)
- something happens in every 4-8 bars, without fail
- because of the sparse elements, it’s usually a reverse swoosh into a melody coming in or out, or a drum sound dropping in or out.
- breakdowns are done very effectively
- maybe it’s because of the good call and response with the “buum” sound effect and the sparse melody?”

and

“Did two chicks at the same time. Threesomes are awesome!” … just kidding…  …   =(

As you can tell, not much is going on in my life. Well, okay, I have actually been going out quite a bit over the past couple weeks, but it’s winding down.

Burgers, meat, and beer = few pounds gained, no matter how tough my workouts have been. In fact, I think the tough workouts + high-calorie food spazzed my body into a bulk cycle. I deadlifted 295 the other day, my max in a very long time, and clean & jerked 130 lbs. (new max), with relative ease.

Growing strength means growing muscles, which also means bloated muscles, which — isn’t a good thing during beach season. My weight’s back up to around 172 lbs. — hasn’t been that high for a year — and I have to flex to see good ab definition =(. I was holding steady at 167 lbs. for a while, with my low around 163-164. On the flip side… my upper back and shoulders have never been stronger~

Work hasn’t been doing so hot lately, and on top of that there isn’t much to do at work itself. I’ve been feeling really Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde with work transitioning between a 3-4 hour, internet-browsing lull to a 3-4 hour “omg-must-finish-report/must-figure-out-new-ideas/must-outwork-this-slow-spell.”

I wasn’t perfectly sure of it till today, but it looks like I’m going to take a week off. Went in to talk with my mom, and decided an unpaid leave would probably be the best for TACCIA and me.

I was getting frustrated with my music studies, pulling my hair out for days on things like how the i-IV chord progression could sound so good and natural — those chords aren’t in the same key — (try i-VII-VI-IV — a descending C min, Bb maj, Ab maj, F maj).

Downtime at work would see me on the internet, researching topics like “diatonic chord progressions” and “modal interchange”, without a piano in front to play with. And then I’d have to take care of a bunch of stuff from Taiwan, whose workday starts at 6pm PST. I wouldn’t leave the office till around 9pm, and that pushed studies back till 11pm-3am.

Anyway, I’m gonna dedicate myself to a good 8-10 hours of studying per day this week (which happened today… 1pm-6pm, and 9pm-1am). It’s a little frustrating because every concept I learn usually opens up 4-5 new questions, but there aren’t many ways around this.

I need to start cutting through the crap and just delving in. I already upgraded from reading forums to watching videos, and now I start needing to conceptualize stuff on my own, and not having somebody hold my hand. Produced a track today, figured out why it sucked, and then analyzed tracks like it to figure out why my track sucked so much. And I learned a couple things. Which I’ll try out tomorrow, on a new track.

Johann Sebastian Bach once said, “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” If that’s true, then I’m sorry God. Give me the knowledge so our ears won’t be in such pain for much longer. =)

Practiced this for about an hour tonight.

Chords: E, B, Db min, A. (variations of the I, V, vi, IV chords — the infamous “doo-wop” chord progression is I-vi-IV-V)

EDIT: Speaking of which, who the heck is “Bic Runga”? Wikipedia’ed it but never heard of her before.

Thank you for saving that damn “I’m Beautiful” song from ever getting horribly stuck in my head again.

“I’m more than a bird, I’m more than a plane… I’m a bird-plane. A motherfuckin’ birdplane!!”

Things to do this weekend:

Saturday:
- run (6 miles)
- review Prodigy videos
- move the Motif, MPC, rack out of the way
- laundry

Sunday:
- deadlifts
- re-review SA’s trance videos
- move the other table to the right of this desk, hook everything up
- clean
Finish Trance track.
- add some drum fills to keep the interest going.
- drop the various drum parts out, bring in 16/16 HH pattern for another element
- get a big reverb-ed kick drum hit to hit mid-section
- noise swoosh track, with a rising synth underneath
- sidechain pad towards the end
- drop out pads for a section

Monday:
- review Stefan’s feedback (hopefully, if he gives it back to me by then)

Obligatory Monthly Picture (me, Will, Andre — Hi Will!)

I know what you’re thinking. That Cinco de Mayo picture looks like Will failed. (We caught him mid-blink). Unfortunately, well… all 3 of us failed. Miserably. I barely remember taking this picture. It was like, Drink #11. And it wasn’t our last. Easily the worst hangover I’ve had in over a year.

Hm, what else. Surprisingly, I don’t have a lot to say. NewSc2.com is one of my bookmark tabs. I got sick of clicking on it to see a 3-week old blog update, so here I am.

Might as well use this space to list out all the good things I’ve stuck to in 2009 (the shitty things go into my private Gmail diary }=)> )

Reading/Communication:
I’ve been keeping up with a reading schedule, and I’m pretty happy with my finishing rate. There’s maybe a dozen books that I haven’t gotten to yet, and about a dozen more that I started but put aside, but I’ve finished about a dozen in 2009 so far:

- Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
- The Art of Seduction, Robert Greene
- IV, Chuck Klosterman
- Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman
- Neatest Little Guide to Personal Finance, Jason Kelly
- Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing, Jason Kelly (re-read)
- On Writing Well, William Zinsser (re-read)

Okay, so maybe that isn’t a dozen, but it’s over a book a month. I have several more that I’ve half-finished, and will get around to (Now I Can Die In Peace, Bill Simmons and The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, among others).

I’d highly recommend the Personal Finance book (out of print, but it’s about $2 used on Amazon.com + $4 shipping) and The Art of Seduction (torrent it). Surprisingly good. Blink, well, isn’t that good. You can read the Wiki.

On top of all the reading, I’ve been listening to a lot of Adam Carolla and Bill Simmons podcasts.

Reading a lot of well-written non-fiction and listening to social/sports commentary has given me a lot more confidence to speak my mind. It’s sort of like writing papers back in the day. In high school, I stuck to a format. In college, I started to branch out and explore my voice. Somewhere in that transition, and to this day, I started to realize that top-notch writing wasn’t some magical, fantasy skill. All the articles I read for fun (ESPN, New Yorker, Slate, Economist, gaming mags) were examples of the written word from top professionals. As long as I wrote in the same voice and style as the stuff I’d been reading, I could come close to good communication.

Same with my voice. If I just fleshed out some of my thoughts and philosophies, put in some interesting anecdotes, and honed succinct storytelling skills, I could probably be an effective verbal communicator. I feel like I’ve matured a little bit in that respect in 2009.

Personal Finance:
Say, @ age 25, you save $13k per year in a 10% account. By 30, you’ll have about $100k. Save $10k every year, and continue to put it into this account. By 40, you’ll have about $400k. By 50, $1.2mil.

By 60 (retirement age), $3.2mil. And that’s all off $365k total saved. The magic of compounding interest.

The DJIA, up until 2006, grew at an average rate of 10.5% over the previous 75 years. Yes, I know there was a crash. I haven’t re-calculated the returns up to 2009, but a 75-year period is a long time, and shouldn’t affect the overall return rate by too much.

Music:
Currently going through a Trance course. I’ve gotta say, my productions have gotten somewhat better over the past several months. I was probably around a 2.5 (out of 10) in 2008, but now I’d put my music production skill/knowledge at about a 3.5. My songs aren’t that much better, but I have more arrangement knowledge. My songs aren’t coming together due to luck and random button pressing — I actually have some experience on how to approach a track.

I need to hammer out a few kinks and tricks over the next couple months, but there isn’t much preventing me from getting that 3.5 to a 5.

Hopefully, the end of the year will see me at 6 (i.e., “that song is actually kinda decent~”). Dunno how I’d get to be a 7 (”hey that’s actually pretty good!”), or 8 (”wow… I might put this on my iPod”). But I’m not thinking that far ahead. (Don’t bother asking where I come up with these subjective grades.)

Fitness:
Still continuing my weekly/twice weekly 4-mile runs, and 3-4 trips to the gym. My fastest 4-mile trail run came in at 32 minutes back in March, but I put in a 33 minute run last week.

I think I’ve been doing crunches wrong for the past 4 years. I guess I was leading in with my head and neck, and a couple people at the gym commented that I was arching my back. So I adjusted my balance to lead in with my chest, and keep my back straighter, and I was sore for like, 4 days.

Weight’s stayed pretty steady at 166 lbs.

Anything Else?
I need a haircut. Photography is coming along pretty well. Thinking about buying a second flash, or at least an off-shoe flash cord.

Oh, and I guess I did have a lot to say.

I wish somebody told these to me 4 years ago. Everybody bashes these rules in music forums, but fuck it, the reason they talk down on it are because they’re easy and they work.

1. Use only 3 or 4 notes. For example, in C minor, use C, Eb, F, G, and maybe B. That’s it. You could easily build a track off just C and G, with another note thrown in somewhere. Fuck the 6th and 7th notes.
2. Rule #1 does not apply to chords. Program a MIDI note generator to play 9th, 11th, or 13th chords, so you can press 1 note to hear a full chord.
3. Intervals are your friend.
4. Compress everything (at least slightly). Compressed sounds sound good. Do your sounds bleed all over the place? Compress! Compression gives you easy control over your sounds.
5. I would say something about a transient designer, but I don’t have access to one.
6. Sidechain everything to your bass drum. It makes a track punchier.
7. EQ everything. Don’t be afraid to boost.
8. Low-cut everything that isn’t a kick or bass.
9. Arpeggiators, reverbs, and delays are your friend. Almost every hot track out there utilizes these tools for movement.
10. Perfecting arrangements is difficult and probably the most important skill and discipline to have. My ratio of unfinished:finished tracks is something like 20:1.
11. Transitions within songs are key to perfecting arrangements. Automation is the key to transitions.
12. Rolling beats. Grooving bass. Sexy leads. Focus on these adjectives.
13. Polished, well-rounded tracks have these elements: Lead, Pad, Percussion, Beats, and Rhythm. Lead = voice, lead sound. Pad = strings, pads to fill out space. Percussion = polyrhythms, everything besides mm-tz-ka-tz. Beats = mm-tz-ka-tz. Rhythm = Arpeggios, rhythm guitar, delays, tonal percussion.
13. Rules are meant to be broken.
14. When I say “everything” I really mean “almost everything.”
15. DJ. You’ll be surprised how fast you’ll end up training your mind to figure out what songs are good and what aren’t with a 10 second listen.
16. Presets are your friend. Tweak them.

I would say more about layering sounds and sampling, but to be honest I don’t know much about that, yet. And I’m not a good producer, so take the rules with a grain of salt.

I’ve seen Radiohead, Kraftwerk, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Richie Hawtin, Sasha & Digweed, Chemical Brothers, Tool, Beastie Boys, The Pixies, Common, MIA, Weezer, Iggy Pop, Flogging Molly, Blue Man Group, The Cure, Prince, Carl Cox, Air, Sigur Ros, The Crystal Method, Infusion, Rabbit in the Moon, Jeff Mills, Deadmau5, The White Stripes, and Prodigy live.

Nothing ever came close to Daft Punk (Chemical Brothers, Pixies, and Kraftwerk tried to).

It’s kinda funny how personal these blog posts can become. I’m not really sure how an outsider would gloss over these words, but reading back… my intonations, my sentence structures… they feel like they reveal too much. Maybe I’m looking too deep into things.

I haven’t posted on here in a while; I guess I’ve been retreating into a sort of anti-social shell these days.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have enough time to write a post (even though these blog entries can sometimes take upwards of an hour). It’s not even that I haven’t had enough to say, because my Gmail’s littered with saved daily diary entries.

And it’s not even me not being comfortable with letting others into my deeper thoughts — if you know me well, you’re probably sick of hearing me blab on about myself when we hang out.

Back in high school, I used to be a pretty social guy. Every weekend would see me out, and even most weekdays would find me in a group chatting at Starbucks or over at someone’s house.

One day somebody asked me why I felt the need to be in the company of others — why couldn’t I be satisfied by myself.

I spent most of my childhood moving around from town to town (my family moved 6 times before I turned 13), so I guess I always had to rely on myself for company.

But that comment rekindled some of that independent spirit, and it’s echoed through myself ever since. From time to time, I like to take a couple weeks off, relax, and have pleasant discussions with my inner voice.

No need for company.

Anyway…

As long as I’m here I might as well update this blog with some history. I finished my 4-week techno course; you can hear my final exam track here:

(will upload mp3 later, it’s freakin’ 4am)

I know it isn’t very good, but it’s something to build off of. The course was very demanding and jam-packed with information, so I’ve taken a couple weeks off of music since it finished. I was putting in about 20-30 hours a week for studies, and I needed some R&R.

And, well… other than that… I guess there isn’t much else to say.

No, but after years of cooking, this may be the first time I’ve seen twins. On second thought, I might’ve seen it a couple times before… I ate the pictured, mutated egg with a Chinese onion pancake, but left the yolk kinda runny. (Probably wasn’t paying attention as I ran around with my camera.) It wasn’t that good. The natural order of yolk:white was off.

Bulletin time! What happened today?

- Saw a woman run out of gas at a stoplight in Newport Beach. She panicked, ran across the street to the Shell, and an attendant walked over and filled her car with a gallon of gas. The car was a Bentley Continental GT. Damn woman, yes your husband let you drive his nice car — it guzzles gas like a mofo, keep it filled.

- I was driving alongside an ambulance a couple miles on Brookhurst. A fire truck came blaring over the overpass, slowed down, motioned to the ambulance (as traffic was stopped), and the ambulance followed suit. Thought that was kinda cool.

- Randomly saw several hot chicks at Barnes and Noble and Kean Coffee. Dunno why, but seeing a hot chick almost brightens my day. I’d talk more about it, but it’d probably come off as chauvinistic, or desperate, or.. something…

- Ran 4 miles today, in 40 minutes (total). Paused a couple minutes to take pictures of the Fire Department hosing down portions of Back Bay. (Different fire truck)

- Weighed in at 165.6 lbs. today, after a 20-hour fast. Down from 175 after a huge meal last week.

- Read up on Fantasy Baseball. Draft is tomorrow.

- 4 days and counting of no alcohol! Coffee, however, is a different story…

- Fleshed out 2 new tracks for the music course I’ve been taking. Assignments are due tomorrow. Need to start from scratch for my assignment because the beta software I’ve been testing is not backwards compatible with the course.

I’ve been pretty busy these past couple weeks. Tax time is around the corner, and I’ve been trying to save up as much as possible, which has kept the staying in to a maximum.

I’m also taking an online techno course, and this past week/the next week are the busiest two weeks of the 4-week course. The course is taught by a music school in London called Point Blank, and so far I’m very pleased with the results.

The basics of minimal techno music production get crammed into 4 sets of lessons, and this past lesson covered sound sythesis and rhythmic sampling. Needless to say, sound synthesis (programming basses, leads, sound effects) is a topic that can’t be fully touched upon in 1 week, but the exercises we’ve had to do are pretty deep and rewarding. Of course, this means I’ve been holed up in front of my laptop and computer for 4-5 hours a day, practicing, and it’s left little time for anything else (which is a good thing).