i feel like i am not doing as much as i could be, and that i am losing muscle mass, despite it only ever being a single day. it's a strange feeling though. i even did some squatting today just to keep the feeling away but it remains. i wonder what's doing that. it's not such a big deal, all things considered, it's just something i am conscious of at this instant, the instant of beginning the entry.
much like yesterday, not an excess of work done. however i have played with music a little. i decided to also try and do some more with that circuit simulator plugin / program as well, and drafted some other stuff, mostly the only other thing that works is this thing based on the harmonic percolator, which sounds good, i rather like it and find it does some very useful things, still i find that perhaps it is not as loud as it could be, despite this the version i have does some unique things and so i'd like to keep it and maybe iterate in other ways, make it louder. but the other thing i did as an iteration seems to be some sort of obscene lower octave thing. it's very quiet, though, and it has very little sustain. so it's kind of frustrating. but the percolator itself, its useful effects are numerous, it sounds very real to me, it makes sounds sound more physical, too, it makes a synth scarcely attempting to sound like a guitar have much more of those qualities i am in search of. the big issue is that this only happens on chords. however if other distortion follows, i think it can be really good and i am even wondering about maybe using it in the course of reamplification, perhaps even in parallel with a dry out, in particular because of something i discovered later on.
i decided i liked the sound so much that it could be worth throwing it onto one of the tracks of recorded guitars, the one from the laptop mic. i thought this would be interesting at least, i found it seemed to create a lot of glue and do away with some of the uglier frequencies i didn't like. so i went to print that to its own track, because it's so cpu intensive it's best to just keep it like that and not have it running, and that's where i saw that part of its special nature is that, how i've done it, it seems to only output negative frequencies, in a very gated way, and the gate is so immediate and textured that it isn't really a gate. but it preserves transients and the spiky portions of a wave, that i figured i would invert the phase, run that in parallel with the original recording from the laptop, and this has created an effect which glues the mids down, and lowering the other recording a bit to keep those mids less aggressively loud / present, it also pulls out the transient around the fundamental much more. it's a really exciting sound, to me, it's much closer feeling, and the harmonic richness in the upper region is also very helpful in giving that sense of tightness. i really like the texture it gives, and this isn't necessarily something i need to do on everything, but i think it's helpful to have in the back of my mind.
but i did that to one song, and i need to check again, eventually. but i don't wanna get too excessively invested in 'fixing' something, it was already a bit of an ordeal earlier in the day. i'd like to spare myself. i'll get there, eventually. currently, unless i decide i hate the guitar sound, i think the issue is the bass. hardly present, and it's hard to find the space for it in the song. especially since i like this low end transient created in the guitars by this fun harmonic percolator thing.
it's such a fucked up idea, too, this thing, that's part of my fondness, it's the kind of coloration i really want.
i am also considering how these songs are mastered, the levels they're at. like how dynamic should i be. i like the sense of dynamics, the movement of the kick away from the listener as it fades, other things come in. however the guitars sound so good when everything's slammed together. it's just hard to get right, and i think movement also helps delineate portions of a song more, if everything's kind of just up front, it can be a little hard to listen to.
once again, i just need to trust that i'll get it eventually. but for the time being, maybe i should consider other tracks i try this harmonic percolator thing on. or stuff i need to re-record since i have a bit of a fun idea now, with this process running out of the computer into analog distortion and an amp and recorded. i feel that will sound quite good. especially some of the upper harmonic stuff that will be generated.
also this one:
puppet is fucked up good. ramona king's you say pretty words is very good too, though, it's really dramatic but the thing that really sticks out is this insane guitar sound, just like, kind of monstrous and really low.
it's not that late but it feels like bed time for me. only so much time in a day, today, from waking up, felt a bit like waking up on a shore after being thrown around in the ocean a while.
i did cook, today, which turned out good. some things i do can still be good. even while others struggle to come into their being good.
but i did something which i find satisfying, creatively, which was not music, nor writing, but more picture taking. i had an idea last night after concluding that spasm of picture taking to do something more involved with lighting and mirrors and stuff, a little arranged thing i could improvise my way through a bit, here is some of that:
i may use some of these for art for covers or something, i certainly want to, i think something is coming into view between these and the last of some kind of thing i can do. i ought to try and plunge deeper into ways to arrange things so as to give a wider sense of the distance between one and an image, that it is never the thing but something already mediated and created, developed in that instant. then perhaps from there, move out from this idea into some way to constitute something else.
i saw people talking about david hockney, who passed a few days ago, his work reminds me of that geoduck shell image on wikipedia i found so inspiring, a while ago, these huge collages of images assembled around a scene or an object, their focus and subject is clear, they aren't collages arranged out of disparate objects but are an attempt, on his part, to better capture how people see. i find this, also, rather inspiring, and i find it sad that i had not known of him sooner, or known him better, the name seems familiar but distant.
currently trying to find the surfaces and compacts and things that i can use as additional mirrors, and ways to get them to bounce light and image around in more complex ways. also wondering about other surfaces i can bring into arrangements. there is a lampshade we have on a lamp we never use, i am considering how to use this. this feels like a good project to pour some time into, if only because it gave me a positive feeling i don't get very often while making things. that feeling wasn't satisfaction of an end, necessarily, but this pleasure and wondering about the next thing. not that i am going to sit working on this first thing forever, and theoretically i could do it again, i could run some more shots of this, having all the pieces still, and i could do things like shore up the framing or keep alcohol pads nearby so as to wipe off fingerprints off of surfaces. keep things pristine. but there is no fun in this. they add to the textures present in the images, i think. there is something tactile about them, to me. maybe this charm will dissipate. but i feel something was done here. i am happy, the idea to put the little sylvanian in the wrapping that goes around the wrapping that goes around packs of cigarettes makes me happy, the idea to use that tea tin lid as an additional blurry mirror also pleases me, it colors things so interestingly, the images that linger fade into some hazy elsewhere. so i should do this, sometimes, at least. and it's a perfectly fun thing to do as my gf sleeps.
i also like how this camera looks out of focus. at least on a stand, with some stability, the softness is more texturally interesting. the blur on top of shaking hand can be more distracting that interesting. but there's something compelling there. this too, feels explorable.
i messed with music some. a friend showed me their guitar tone and that they're using this circuit modeling vst called livespice, which seemed interesting enough to try. it's cpu intensive but it sounds rather good. i am trying it on some things where i find daw guitar synth stuff lacking, i also feel it will sound really good on bass but i need to try and use it strategically since it is sooo difficult to run with everything else. the good qualities it has are things that i just don't notice very much in other distortion emulations, the tones shift in ways that feel rather realistic and organic, there is variance in the sound, there is bloom. they are immediately compelling and physical sounding in ways that most saturation is not. i am unsure why the math there would produce such different effects, but it does. perhaps it is more a voicing thing. but that makes no sense, after saying it. i fiddled with the whole circuit aspect and you really do lay out parts like you're making a schematic and it runs the math on that, in real time, when you have it running as a vst. i am going to be trying to copy my friend's harmonic percolator circuit to see how this comes out but in particular, i find its mxr distortion + clone very compelling, and its rat clone is compelling as well. i wonder if there's anything i can throw together, also. but i used it on something, as a layer and i think it produces some nice effects in the mids. but maybe i skewed a little hard on the saturation on the other side of the mic'd stuff with the tube screamer simulation so i'll go in tomorrow and lessen that, and probably just pull up low mids / mids on that in eq rather than using saturation to squish stuff together at that stage. might be less punishing.
i guess i didn't eat that much. i was kind of doing a lot of other things today. not a lot, but some. maybe a lot. i guess an okay amount. not enough, never enough, ideally there would be writing too. but i need to get my sleep okay and maintain that for a bit and then i think i'll feel less unstable. i'm praying for that, i guess. without praying, really, hoping, aimlessly, that i stop feeling so crazy. today began pretty good, i woke up feeling strange and laid in bed but it wasn't depressive. it's just that night was falling, through the window, the effect was rather pretty. so i lingered in that. i was also exhausted for some reason but this too was not such a bad feeling. getting up, going around, doing things, and when my gf went to bed, i began to clean. i started to do the floors a bit, not scrubbing with a brush, but trying to use this weird thing she got instead of a mop or like, a broom, it's this thing you attach a lysol sheet to and scrub at the floor with that. it's not especially useful but after doing some sweeping to get at some dust and whatever is on the floor, and neither in good condition to scrub the floor nor an appropriate time, i did this pseudo mopping thing instead, which seemed effective enough. obviously imperfect, what can i do though. it gets things in better shape at least. some bathroom cleaning, as well. after this i washed up and cut up chicken for dinner, when i cook, which could be tonight, it could be tomorrow night, or, whenever, i don't know how to count the days properly. after doing the chicken i went out to take out the remains of the unused parts of the breast, this was at 4:50 am, it was really pretty out, the dawn was very pink. as i walked i felt very light, and like i was floating outside of my own head, there was a distance between myself and my actions, on the way back in, after staring up at the sky some, the light pinks to the kind of dull blue, veins of clouds mostly dying out, i don't think we've had any serious cloud cover recently but what do i know, this has been the first time in a few days i think, that i've been beneath the light of the sky. when i was returning though, i stared up at our light fixtures, all under the second outside floor / the landing (is that what it is, it seems an appropriate word for what they have), and their ceiling overhang having the same fixtures. it seems like nobody's come and emptied out the insect corpses in a long time which is common, probably, but it's shocking, a little, to register the weight of all those dead things.
when i got back in, i felt very loopy, i don't know why. i washed my hands and sat in my gf's chair and looked around, and i felt very exhausted. it was a little disconcerting, i don't know why it took so much out of me. i decided i must have been hungry so i ate rice crackers. which is not the best i guess. i could have eaten something more solid. but that is what i did. while eating rice crackers i noticed floaters and things in my vision, like insects descending from the ceiling, but there was nothing there. i don't think this qualifies as a hallucination or anything but i dislike that i am so wired to detect that stuff now that random visual phenomena like some an eyelash catching light or dust funny now triggers some kind of alertness, and that my alertness seems to make the incidence of things like this increase. too much, too much, too much.
i began working on music after this, which was a rollercoaster, i became very upset and frustrated with it, i felt so worthless, i decided i couldn't let it be that way, i went to go work on something else, i was trying very desperately to pull from these things the initial excitement of the song, i went and did one i have recorded but have not phase aligned, and did all that and got it exported, and in the course of doing that, i thought i should be as brief as possible with the processing, and instead make bigger swings with it. instead of accruing saturation, try something bigger earlier on. i did so, by placing a tube screamer emulation on the recorded tracks. i will have to wait a bit to double check this but my sense is that this has worked well and is another trick i can lean on, i think. it saps some high end, focuses mids, and i can tune it sort of to be more high / low focused. i think i should lean into this, it's a good sound, and it retains the connective qualities of the highs without having them be painful, it glues everything together as well. in doing this, i also thought that maybe i need to get the drums to be more tight / compressed, squish them more. so i used a clipper for this, to get the level in a tighter region. this too, i think, is a good effect. it's fine if things are a bit louder, at least, it feels that way right now. at the time of doing that, i figured it might be a good thing to do to the other problem track, so i did that, the drum thing and the tube screamer emulation stuff. there was a third track today, which i didn't do the tube screamer thing to, but then in the middle of the sentence i decided to try it, and found it good there, this time using it in parallel to the dry signal but a little more driven (generally i am leaving the drive at like 1-8% but this had drive up to 22% and was 92% dry or so), and having the tone in the middle, so as to create more solidity in the mids and have the highs fall away just enough, so that they are not the only thing one is hearing in the song. which wasn't the case really with that one but they were too loud.
i am happy with that, for now. tonight is enough, onto the next night, with the next disappointment, to turn that into less disappointment, and on and on, until it is in some kind of shape i like.
i also took some photos today, and more camera issues continued, and i find that upsetting, it's that this little switch which is triggered by pulling this lens shield to the side, which turns the camera on (olympus d-520 zoom), and then pushing the opposite way to close it release this latch, it has become very sensitive, meaning something has eroded over my time using it. i wonder if disassembly would be responsible, if there is anything i can. despite this, the photo stuff itself works fine, and looking at ebay, it seems affordable enough, to get another. but i should think more about that. but it's a camera i really love, the look it produces is very pretty to me, in some ways it doesn't feel especially digital.
i have now messed with that and i have diagnosed the problem, at least. on that sliding piece, something broke off (obvious) but what it was is a small plastic support which draws it nearer by a very small amount, i can stick a bit of ribbon underneath and it seems to solve the issue entirely, if i smack the side it doesn't undo the latch and shut the camera off, instead it remains on. so the issue is now what am i to do to have something more permanent, for a solution. this ribbon thing is nice enough though. hopefully that sticks as a solution. maybe take a cutting and glue it? but i feel gluing would have many other issues and i don't want it to be too difficult to slide. something fabric is a much better solution than paper, though, at least. it does make taking photos a little inconvenient but i'm not out and about doing that so much, lately at least. anyway, here are some of those photos i took:
the idea came to me thinking about cover art collage stuff, i like these on their own as much, though. i really love this bear pin. i should photograph it more. and i should take advantage of my lack of mobility with the camera to do some more stuff like this. i'd like to do more with my gf's stands and lighting. i took some photos using one of her stands as a tripod but i cannot post those.
was listening to this as i took the photos of the bear (and the sheep).
now i am going to eat a sandwich and probably go to sleep. today at least feels like quite a bit happened, despite wishing i did more. i am happy about this stupid idea with music working out rather well. things feel approachable because of this, and it's such a dumb way to get things to work it's hard for me to not be fond of it. i guess i feel good about today outside of this instability and weird distance from the goings on of life that i feel, weirdly out of body, like i am dozing off except it's some bodily function splitting off from the axis of the spine, like a portion of a jet falling away mid-flight, or transference into something ghostly. clearly, i just need to sleep,
but i feel better than yesterday. the main thing is i think the mic thing really did work out, there's something here which bothers me significantly less, this doesn't mean perfect, necessarily. but it does mean there are nice qualities and what is lingering in an irritating way might be able to be dealt with. the main thing i want to try doing is blow it out a little more. i also think i should be able to be more comfortable throwing higher distortion into this mic setting, and maybe even let more bass through the amp despite it sounding a little swampy to me. maybe that's good. it's not like the music needs to be totally articulate. it mostly needs to be texturally dense and harsh.
i have messed with that more. writing about it always makes me do that. leaning more towards having everything kind of squashed, right now. but that might change. it's strange how that seems to deal with certain tonal issues as well as get everything kind of where one imagines it. i do wish, though, that i were able to figure out a way to make this kind of music with a little more variety in dynamics.
i should have been in bed sooner, but i got absorbed looking around at old periodicals and catalogs on internet archive, i never imagined i would find wallpaper catalogs on there, or clothing catalogs from finland, from the 60s. it's a good place to stumble into things on, i also came across a licca-chan catalog.
and from anttila tavaraluette:
among the especially charming things about this is the way most models come off very awkwardly, beyond the outfits being really excellent and things i would like to have more of, the way they don't know how to really exist in front of a camera is something i find easy to grasp, and their inability to really sell any given scene, despite selling the clothes well enough, the feeling it creates is rather unique, both funny and a little disconcerting i suppose. i think it becomes especially funny when looking at male models where they seem the least prepared for a photoshoot:
the only guy who really seems to get it is the guy with those huge buddy holly glasses, whom i find rather charming. the man in the hat with that leather jacket feel like a lunatic. i guess it's the sense that in each of these photos there is at least one person, though typically two to all of them, clearly thinking about something else, one woman appears to be looking elsewhere, which is the kind of thing a model would do but it's somewhere between that and not being prepared, and this being good enough, or chosen, for whatever reason, out of many photos. each person's life is not visible, but in its absolute invisibility, and in the inability to believe in these images, it's a very heavy absence. the effect is both comical and causes one to become invested in these people who seem totally normal, but in such proportion that being a normal person at all seems freakish, or it is revealed to be freakish, being at all, is freakish, one's own sense of being freakish in front of the glass eye of the camera resuscitated in these people's near-floundering. i don't mean to say any look bad though, it's just very charming. it also makes one wonder about different vernaculars for existing on the far end of a camera, that it seems strange here because i am used to the highly effective american stuff, and british stuff, from this period. i have at times seen some other european things from this time, though often, i'd root around in the 20s for a lot of that. the 40s/30s stuff i had seen had a strong and rigorous sort of glamor. it's the attempt to be cool and casual, that seems to produce this, probably.
there is also the fact that at times, they seem to be wearing wigs, and the wigs are huge. but maybe that's just their hair and they went crazy on getting it to be huge looking.
from this magazine muotisorja i noticed less of that, it was more competent, it also had clothes i wanted:
among the other things i found, like i said, wallpaper:
which i am over the moon about, i think this will all be exceptionally helpful for collages.
on the finnish uploader's account, who put all this up, i also found a very funny men's magazine, which seemed racy when looking at the cover, mostly it was random things, including photos of people after shark attacks, eventually opening up to photos of male nudity which were of such baffling character i found myself looking, confused, at how they were framed. one man in particular, standing naked, in front of a car at dusk, the sky purple, extremely muscular, seemed less like a human and more like how an alien might arrive on earth, trying to engage in some communicative act which no one can really understand. from what i can gather, which is little since i do not speak finnish, is that these were all men from different parts of the world, an attempt to do something, i don't know, scientific, exhibit them. which makes it all stranger. it's not really attractive, it's mostly confusing, the aim is clearly not pornographic, so it's this weird competitive thing, maybe? i don't know. it seems masculine i guess, in the generally bad and pathetic ways, in such excess it's rather funny. there were also advertisements for dildos in shapes i've never seen before, for good reason, i think, they all seemed painful. as i said the magazine was mostly not sex, save for the cover, these ads, and then this exhibition of men, which made its sexual features seem almost mechanical, both to sell and then to increase some kind of performance. this is an unpleasant vision of sex, and sexuality, of course it's not like one would expect these magazines to have a particularly good one, their general purpose is to reduce women into ancillary things. which makes the naked men funnier, it is pure homosociality. just baffling stuff.
jacobvanloon
ellievsbear
stormborns
dededos
2087
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
