garbagetownusa:

Today is a solemn day. It’s Friday, February 20^th, and my dog passed away at an unspecified time last night. The last day I saw her was Monday, February 16^th.

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garbagetownusa:

9 track album

Hey all,

This tape is the latest release from my band, elch. I wanted to use this space to talk a little bit more about some of the details of the release. 

The bassist of the band, James, and myself originally conceived of this two-part project back in October of 2012. We planned to have it out last August, but as time went on it became increasingly more obvious that we really wanted to make this project special. With that decision, we expanded what was going to be two 10-15 minute long tapes into a nearly 40-minute-long tape and a 20-30-minute-long tape. 

This tape, {routine}, is the first part of this tape series and we plan to release the second sometime later this year. We began actually recording {routine} in August of last year, and we just finished it in late-February of this year. 

We quickly got it mastered and made a number of tapes for our release show that was planned for the end of March, but our drummer, Ryan, suffered a severe concussion just before the show. We thought we would still be able to play, but we found out the day before our release show that his doctor said he would suffer “permanent brain damage” if he played. We obviously couldn’t risk it and had to back down from playing our own release show. It was extremely disheartening, to say the least. 

However, it worked out for the best. Because this tape was giving us so much trouble, it inspired us to make the second part as best as it could be. With the help of fellow Garbage Town member, Mike Davis, we recorded the second part of this series in what would become the single greatest recording experience of my life (more on this when the second part actually comes out). 

Not only that, but we were able to have our release show during Ground Zero’s 20th anniversary. For those unacquainted, Ground Zero is a teen center/music venue that is solely responsible for our collective passion in music and art. The place is home to some of the greatest people I know and has been a huge part of my life ever since I first attended a show there when I was fifteen. It seemed only fitting that we have our release during an event that celebrated such a wonderful place. 

And now it’s out. Two years of work and we have finally came out with something much greater than what we originally had in mind. It is extremely relieving to finally have it out, and it stands as my favorite musical creation I’ve been a part of thus far (including part 2). 

You can listen to the whole thing if you follow the link, and if you click on each individual track you can read a little story/fun fact about each of the tracks. 

I hope you enjoy!

-David

garbagetownusa:

Last Wednesday, I had the strange coincidental experience of not only learning about the intricate nuances of internet fame, but intimately witnessing the resulting volatile phenomenon such fame invokes. YouTube user Ian Danskin, AKA Innuendo Studios, recently uploaded a video titled, This is…

For those who are unaware, I’m part of a new collective that serves as a catch-all site for all the creative efforts of a ton of really great people. We have podcasts, music, videos, and now, features! I just wrote the first major one and would love if you checked it out and gave feedback on it! Thank you!

I made this as my final project for one of my English classes. My premise was to take a corporate jingle–something that is deliberately manufactured in order to create a false sense of intimacy between commodity and consumer through music–and “reclaim” the medium by transforming it into something completely different. The end emulates breathing in order to literally “humanize” the source after it’s been destroyed. I’m pretty happy with a lot of the sounds I was able to get with this project. 

It was made primarily using SuperCollider, but I did some processing of the end portion using Reaper. 

Anyone else listen to the new white suns yet? This album proves that they are truly the masters of restraint. Such a special band. 

Here’s my latest supercollider project. It’s far longer than anything I’ve done in the program previously, and also far more complex. The idea was to mostly utilize single note events with complex amplitude and frequency envelopes that generally last the entirety of the piece. As a result, I was able to create both dramatic changes as well as subtle ones that lay themselves on top of static sections of the piece. The low frequency content of the piece mimics a breathing cycle, hence the title “Breath”. The piece primarily uses additive and granular synthesis. No recorded sounds, all done in-program. 

Working in supercollider can be so slow…6 hours into my current project and I only have a minute and a half’s worth of music. 

A short study I recently did in supercollider. Once again, everything is done in-program using no outside sources. This definitely could have gone on longer, and it cuts off pretty abruptly, but I intend to use the ideas from this for the piece I’m composing next week. This is essentially a small preview. That said, I also want to add more organic sounds, but seeing that doing so is pretty difficult in supercollider that might not happen. 

(I’m working on a couple supercollider projects by the way and will have them posted by next week.)

Coding can be the most frustrating thing in the world. I’ve spent the last two hours trying to fix an error that only occurs on my system (I got the code from my professor who ran the code flawlessly) and actually had to change the source code that one of the CLASS PROVIDED extensions. It’s a shame that supercollider runs so differently on different operating systems. It’s an amazing program no doubt, but it needs work to run more uniformly across all platforms.