The Theoretical Pool of Molten Lead

Over the course of my music making “career”, I have explored different avenues of actually creating music. Or, rather than avenues, a more concise word is methods. I began simply - with an electric guitar and enough pedals to wall off seven European elk for half of the majority of eternity. Synthesizers came next. I bought a few Doepfer semi modular thurks and used them mostly for lead lines though were I to return to that period, I’d spend more time working on low end textural ideas. Too late now, however, as they were sold epochs ago.

Still, these two methods involved actually playing most of the notes that arrived into Ardour and comprised whatever piece I was working on at the time. Ok - that’s not strictly true. I actually wrote Lilypond scripts that spit out midi files that I played the semi modulars with. So there was a bit of sequencing going on občas. I ended up expanding into an actual modular set up and subsequently procured hardware sequencers.

So the second method was sequencing.

I then got into Supercollider for a few years (though I never really came close to mastering it). So, programming the “sound design” (synths) and sequencing and whatnot came next. That was the third method, and I eventually abandoned it completely (I think the last album I used it on was Pagan Park) as I felt I lost much of the immediacy I craved in music making. One might argue that Lilypond would be much the same, but one would be incorrect. I never had the immediacy loss sensation whilst using Lilypond. Why? Sometimes there is no why.

The point is that I kept trying new things and I’m actually, at this point in my career, not sure if it was or is currently a good thing to diversify so much in this manner. In fact, I feel like I have stifled my progress over the last year and a half or so because of this and because of another reason that I shall detail in a bit.

I decided sometime in the not too distant past to learn Renoise because I’ve always been particularly fascinated by the concept of Trackers and using them for composition. I’d never taken the plunge into the theoretical pool of molten lead. Now I have. And I am certainly of two forebrains about it. I took a very simple ambient improvisation through a fixed sequence of chords and fed it into Renoise with intent to add to it with the synths therein, creating repeating, hypnotic patterns that would cause even the most infidel of humans to turn back to a life under the Buddha’s tutelage.

I must admit that it is fun and I like what I have done so far, but the overreaching result is that the entire process has taken me away from actually sitting down with my guitar and writing and recording music. Yes - I know that were I to dedicate a chunk of time every day to Renoise and were I to be disciplined into maintaining a similar chunk every day, I’d eventually get to the point where I’d be proficient enough to quickly sketch ideas and then expand on them without fumbling about like I do now. And even thinking about the prospect gets the bile pumping through my lungs - at least a little. But, bohužel, I feel the crushing weight of time upon the crown of my head too often these days. I need to follow my own advice and narrow the methods in which I make music to a few and be as creative as possible with them. There can be always room for different compositional or improvisational methodologies, but I feel I am just being stalled by seeking new ways to “get the notes from my head into the machine”.

Reading back on this blog entry, I am complaining quite a bit, so I shall augment that with another complaint! I curse my need to work on many albums at the same time. Yes - I am old school and I work towards chunks of music that are analogs of albums from all those epochs ago when artists or bands released vinyl platters or even compact discs. Bohužel, these usually comprise of groups of pieces that are thematically bound and can’t be separated out, though I’m changing that idea up a bit on something I’m devising at present, as the pieces of music are really not related at all. Thus, it will be lump after lump of music that could be listened to in discreet lumps or even in sequence or shuffled or reversed or spindled, garbled and played through a widening, interstellar funnel. That being stated, working on too many albums at the same time prevents me from actually finishing one of them so it can be released. What does being released mean? I’ll leave that to the imagination of whomever is reading this.

There are many albums in process:

• Dobbs revisited - the closest to being done.
• Dissolving pool - all the pieces need to be revised, but I believe the composition part itself is done.
• Sir Alfred IV revisited - I’ve done demos of three pieces. This one’ll be another lump after lump of music that could be…, as well, but I don’t know when I’ll get back to it.
• Lee’s album - two demos are done. Since Christian has to sing on basically everything here, it probably won’t be released until 2637 or so.
• The new lumpy one. I’m on the third piece. They are simpler, compositionally, excepting the piece I wrote for Ivanečka, but that one is done. I’ll just work on this album incrementally until I have enough that makes me feel as if release is imminent.

In other news, I’m rewriting my static blog and website rendering software from scratch in Rust. In fact, this will be the first blog entry that is not processed by the engine (I laughably call it an engine) I wrote in Elixir (and revised multitudinous times) epochs and epochs ago.

I began perhaps four days ago and have six Rust Crates that together take care of

• My poems
• Spontaneous ideas that I throw to my personal nostr server
• The legacy blog posts
• All the mostly static content that is translated from markdown by my own special method and placed within various templates

Rust is amazing, I must say. I’m still learning, but improving every day. Soon I’ll be a Rust wizard! Imagine that! I’ll instantly oxidize anything I come into proximity with.

Oh - I just made a bad pun. Puns are the lowest form of humor. I shall be punished.