http://virb.com/asettingsun Virb 2.0 (@asettingsun) en http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365307 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:06:40 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365307 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365306 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:04:08 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365306 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365305 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:58:40 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365305 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365301 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:54:11 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365301 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365299 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:52:18 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/audio/365299 http://virb.com/asettingsun/photos/1699422 ]]> Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:12:44 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/photos/1699422 http://virb.com/asettingsun/photos/1693085 ]]> Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:43:26 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/photos/1693085 http://virb.com/asettingsun/photos/1693084 ]]> Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:43:18 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/photos/1693084 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1088426 Men and Women Have Love to Give is an ambient mix I assembled in October of 2008. It is full of some beautiful and sublime music by many talented artists (see tracklist below). I give this as a gift to everyone, on a day dedicated to love, and I ask you to not be afraid to love men and women!

Men and Women Have Love to Give

It's pretty obvious that men and women need love. A lot of people think that love is the most important thing there is. I'm pretty convinced that it is, but what I'm also pretty convinced of is that people (me, and others) are not spreading it around nearly enough. We demand that others love us, but how hard do we try to love others? Every day I am amazed at how disconnected we all keep ourselves from one another. Walking on the street, we don't make eye contact. We avoid someone we know. We disclose minimal personal information when we talk with others. We dismiss real face-to-face contact in favor of the BlackBerry and the iPod. I recently read about a study saying that people don't hold hands as much as they used to. Our time is so precious.

But what are we really doing with our time? Really. We all seem to be simply wandering about, doing this thing or that, seemingly on a whim, taking whatever happens to us. Loving is a chance to do something meaningful, a chance to actually do something. Something, anything! But most of us, we don't take the chance. Human beings are so afraid. We are so afraid to lose that little bit of security that we have. I am no exception. Me too, I am afraid to hurt; so afraid to love! But what a good practice it might be to put ourselves out there to lose that cherished security, to make ourselves vulnerable. A friend of mine once told me that I'm more lovable when I'm vulnerable.

What does it take to open up to love? Maybe certain men and women are not meant for each other. Maybe one person's priorities cloud the fact that they may, indeed, be right for each other. Maybe a person is only right for another person at a given place and time, a given age. Can two people ever be right for one another other? If both people are not ready to surrender to love, how can they be right for each other? "I like this and this about you, but could you please change this? Could you please be less of yourself?" I'd prefer someone be themselves even if it doesn't work out in my favor. Even if it fucking hurts.

My friend and I found a framed picture in our basement, left behind by a previous tenant. The couple in the picture, presumably on their wedding day, have a happy-go-lucky feeling about them. They couldn't seem any happier. Their well-rehearsed smiles and American-dream-fulfilled (at last!) demeanor help them to exude a fairy-tale type of love, a kind of love I never believed was real. A few years ago I had a girlfriend whose na]]> Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:41:53 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1088426 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1084769
Fresh off of a month of nothing but grad school prep tasks, followed by a subsequent hard-drive death - in which I lost practically everything except for my newest tracks-in-progress - thank you God (and Craig)! - and a computer makeover from the ground up in Mac, including an upgrade to Max/MSP 5 (I am in production heaven, really), I am back to programming new synthesizers.

I was working on a 4-oscillator synthesizer with bells and whistles in excess, when I began to wonder how to - analog-style - patch a signal through another signal, modulating the original, or using the original to modulate a raw wave (sine, saw, square, or whatever). I got the idea because I've been getting really into Brian Eno's mid-70s recordings - especially where he was doing a lot of experimentation with Robert Fripp - most of which involved Eno running Fripp's guitars into his synthesizer and modulating ("treating") the sound. Okay, reinventing the wheel? Yes, I am.



While not achieving the result I set out to achieve (in fact, now I'm experimenting with multiple groove~ objects for this), I stumbled upon something else, which began generating very interesting sounds. What I have done here (as shown in the example images - click to take a closer look) is to modulate a sine wave by six more sine waves, each one modulating the next, and mix that with a small FM (frequency modulation) synthesis subpatch (called [p FM]), the sound of which is mixed into the six-sine cycle to the degree that the user specifies.

FM synthesis can sound very harsh (for example, much of Autechre's music involves lots of it). For the style of music I'm doing, that type of harshness is just not what I'm looking for. So by using a slightly altered version of FM synthesis 'proper' (or at least the kind outlined in Max tutorials), I found a sound that can give me what I want plus the control of adding bits of harshness to the degree with which I feel comfortable. Of course, adjusting the settings past certain levels will still achieve harsh, extremely synthetic sounds, if those are desired.

In Max 5, there is a 'presentation mode,' which basically acts as a user interface so that 1) the elements in your user interface can be organized and sized however you want without changing the original programming layout, and 2) none of the annoying-looking patchcords are showing. Also, instead of using comment boxes to indicate what each control does, I use 'hints' (unlike presentation mode, these were available in previous versions of Max) to conserve space. Hints are those tiny pop-up text boxes that tell you what something does (we are all familiar with these from common programs like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Windows).

My numerical controls in this case are 6 mod-rate (one for each modulating sine wave), one master phase, FM harmonicity ratio, FM strength, FM phase, FM exponent, FM mod-rate and FM mod-depth. Clicking on the 'master' or 'fm' headings will reset those numbers to their defaults. Aside from the standard amplitude envelope breakpoint-function editor (and duration control), overall volume, presets, and initial note-value keyboard, I have a slider for pan strength and a knob for master sine-wave constancy.

The panning feature is based on a noise~ object which is in this case generating random numbers every 250 milliseconds. The slider adjusts the strength; in other words, 0 means the numbers generated are between 0 and 0 (no pan), and 127 means the numbers generated are between -1 and 1 (full L and full R). Because our sine wave is modulated by six sine waves, there are some 'low points' where the LFO is hitting 0 and the synth is silent, so the constancy knob controls how much of the signal is always playing. All the way up means no constant tone can be heard (this will be for me, no doubt, the most common setting).

Because, let's face it, this is a pretty gangsta synth, I named it jb.gangstaFM. I look forward to working out a few more slight problems and improvising the hell out of it, to generate some good Sun Hammer-strength material.]]> Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:18:52 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1084769 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1070969

Say "Vell."

Those who have heard Views from the Real World or Moodgadget's compilation Expanse at Low Levels will be familiar with Viul. Personally, I was thrilled with Luke Entelis's remix of my "Walking Toward a Setting Sun," which left me dying to hear more. His two songs on Low Levels worked as a nice teaser, and now he is finally preparing his first proper release, Summer's Wet Work Is Done. The album artwork was done by Alex Koplin (who did Table for Two as well as my Men and Women series) and frankly I'm very jealous that it's not the cover of my next release.

In any case, Summer's Wet Work is awesome. Luke takes very careful drones that are on the metallic-sounding side and lets them icily glide along, like an origami sailboat down a nearly-frozen, snow-covered stream on an overcast winter's day. Though much more subdued, with more of a dark streak, and less "uplifting" than some ambient producers such as Stars of the Lid or - ahem - A Setting Sun, Viul's music is no less delightful because of it. I can't wait to talk this guy into collaborating on a project, if he can find some time away from his job over at the US Congress in Washington.

I asked Luke a few questions and he graciously granted me the privilege of his response:

JB: So what's behind the name of the album?
LE: 'Summer's Wet Work Is Done' is a title I've wanted to use since I was living in Ann Arbor a few years ago. It just seemed appropriate, and I did a small part of the work for one of the EP tracks over that last summer I was there. Mostly it's the fact that I love AA and leaving it at the end of that August was really hard, and there's something about the title that just seemed to vaguely capture that, as far as words can do that sort of thing.

JB: You and Benoit Pioulard have traded a few remixes. What's the connection between you two?
LE: Benoit Pioulard is a friend, a constant inspiration and just generally fucking brilliant, in my expert opinion. He and I admired some of the same music, etc., and ended up in a band together in Michigan called Esmae and we've managed to keep in touch since that sort of fell apart when we graduated. Obviously he's done a number of amazing things since, not limited to his work with kranky and Moodgadget. I was happy with my remix of "Ext. Leslie Park" from Pr]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:05:06 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1070969 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1068531 Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, which I took on 15 January 2009. This is an exam that most graduate schools require their applicants to take, as a general measure of intelligence. I am going to share my philosophy of studying for this exam, in the event that you, reader, might find it helpful in some way. Sure, everyone wants to tell you how to study, and I understand that. Are my tips necessarily any more valid than someone else's? Probably not; the only difference is that the whole studying process was undertaken as an experiment in creative living.

Here were a few loose guidelines I set out for myself.

1. Study. A LOT.
For this, I bought a few Kaplan books, and checked out many others from the library, including Barron's, ...For Dummies, Arco, and my favorite, The Princeton Review. ETS, the company who administers the GRE, also gives away their ETS PowerPrep software as well as the complete pool of "issue" and "argument" essay topics to look over and try out.

2. To balance out the mind's intellectual exertion, be sure to engage the physical, intuitive and emotional faculties of your being.
a. Get plenty of exercise, preferably every day (do not mix in GRE study with this!).
b. Appreciate art.
c. Do something creative! For me, this consisted of toying around on my guitar and haphazardly discovering a new style of playing. Not to mention, some passionate guitar-playing engaged my emotions quite a bit.
d. Meditate! Twice daily if possible.
e. Pay close attention to dreams, and take them seriously.

3. Use what's already in your life to enhance GRE study.
a. Writing. I contributed many music reviews to my favorite music site, RYM, mostly done in the scholarly, but to-the-point style that ETS supposedly prefers. To be honest, I enjoy this style of writing, and I got to think about music I love while doing it. I also dabbled in essay-writing, which has been more or less continuous ever since, much of which my find its way into this blog.
b. Reading. I love to read books, and this was a great time to increase the amount of time spent reading. Greg Olson's David Lynch: Beautiful Dark was my daily read (and nearly every page had a "GRE word"), and I dabbled in Zorn's Arcana III a bit as well. Exploring the works of art that these two touch on (i.e. ALL of Lynch's films) were a way I exercised 2b above.
c. Listening to Antipop Consortium. These guys use words that pop up ALL OVER the GRE word lists, and hearing them in a rapped context is not only educational, but entertaining as well. Plus their experimental hip-hop/electronic music is just plain awesome.

4. Listen to music that can provide one or more of three essential things:
a. Brain-stimulation,
b. Non-intrusive, aesthetically-pleasing background music, or
c. Wide range of vocabulary (see 3c above).
Okay, and maybe a fourth, (reflecting 2a above) very artistic.
Music list:
Antipop Consortium-Tragic Epilogue
Derek Bailey-Ballads
Kevin Drumm-Imperial Distortion
Fennesz-Black Sea
Johann Johannsson-Fordlandia
snd-4, 5, 6
Tim Sparks-Neshamah
Ulver-Lyckantropen Themes
Some of this stuff is very non-linear (esp. Bailey and snd). The more non-linearity the better!

5. Do things that are known to promote health. See most of 2 above, and add: attention to balanced and healthy diet, regular sleep schedule, plenty of rest, limited use of caffeine (okay, I'll admit, I more or less failed at this one), thinking positive thoughts, et cetera, et cetera.

6. Always think of the GRE as a toy to play with. Sure, you're going to feel a bit nervous when you get in there to take the exam, but there's no need to feel stress where you can avoid it. Deep... breath...]]> Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:28:20 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1068531 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1061082 Dial81 is one of my current favorite musical artists (along with the incredible Benoit Pioulard). Although maintaining a relatively obscure status (a fact that is inexcusable!) his music is exploding with focused creative artistry. Stylistically, the rapper and producer fits into the over-saturated, talent-scarce and claustrophobic genre usually referred to by some absurd name such as 'abstract hip-hop.' Last year's Boxcar Portal was his masters thesis in the genre, an exceptional, ingeniously-crafted display of talent that, in my humble opinion, was one of the finer records released in 2008.

Dial81's newest strategy for taking over the world (the world of experimental hip-hop at least) is to release four instrumental mini-albums within the next year, corresponding to each of the seasons. As the Mood Swings is the first in the series, representing musically the chilly feelings associated with winter.

The sound sits somewhere in between the post-trip-hop of Portishead and the hip-hop of leftfield mavericks cLOUDDEAD. At ten tracks totaling 28 minutes, the album is a non-imposing, accessible and inspiring listen. Highly recommended.

Download As the Mood Swings.

Visit Superior Belly here.]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:40:05 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1061082 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1055834
Table for Two is now available on iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, Moodgadget, and basically anywhere else you would want to buy mp3 files of good electronic music.

Please support us and buy this reasonably priced musical release!]]> Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:03:32 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1055834 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1053532
MUSE OR ICK
by Sean Lennon

What distinguishes music from other sounds? Why are some sounds pleasant and others painful? Why does Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata make me feel as though the secrets of the universe are being revealed, while LeAnn Rimes's Can't Find the Moonlight makes me wish some secrets were never revealed at all? Would Elvis have been as compelling if he had looked like Ralph Furley from Three's Company? And what is the difference between B flat and A sharp? Francis Bacon said the job of the artist is to deepen the mystery, so why does so much modern music deepen the misery instead?

People often ask me what kind of music I listen to, or what kind of music I like. The only honest response I can give is that I like "good" music. To me what makes music good is not what genre it belongs to, but whether or not it is beautiful. My definition of beauty is vague at best. I would qualify Slayer's Reign in Blood as beautiful along with John Cage's Prepared Piano pieces, and Chopin's Etudes, and Robert Johnson's Terraplane Blues, and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, and the Beatles' White Album as well. But before we define beauty, let's just try and define music.

The reason a cement drill makes noise and a piano makes music has very little to do with the skills of a construction worker, or what country he is drilling in (I apologize to any avant-drill players who might be reading). If you were to play piano for a boy brought up in the jungle, far away from the world, I'm fairly certain he would find it more pleasant than the sound of a cement drill. Does this mean Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was correct in asserting that "music is the universal language of mankind?" Absolutely not, everyone knows that power and money and good teeth are the true universal languages of man. Nonetheless, music is more universal than say, Sanskrit, or water polo.

Some people believe that the "color" of music - whether a chord sounds happy or sad - is cultural, meaning learned. I for one am not so sure. In the late summer of 550BC (as I presume it must have been), when the famous Greek playboy Pythagoras of Samos discovered that certain notes of certain ratios were harmonious in relation to each other, he set the foundation for the equal tempered scale we use today (simultaneously paving the way for such modern greats as Timberlake and Spears). The result is that most people think Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head sounds happy, and that Unbreak My Heart sounds sad. But what of our jungle boy? We have established that he prefers the piano to the drill, but what does he think of Toni Braxton? Is there something intrinsically sad about the opening lilt of "unbreak my..." as it releases into the minor "heart," that Tarzan would recognize as expressing something meaningful about his personal plight? It is possible that the relationship of a minor third to its tonic has an inherently more somber appeal than its major counterpart. How this could be is difficult to comprehend; perhaps there is a mysterious mathematical relationship between brain waves and sound waves; perhaps we are all subject to tides of invisible turbulence.

Even if we distinguish between music and noise, we are still left with the more daunting task of defining which music is good and which is bad, what music is beautiful and what music is not. The enlightened view is that there is no objective good where art is concerned, that each individual has an equally valid and personal view of the world. I disagree. The Sistine Chapel is beautiful, and anyone who say differently is trying to be cool or something. There are certain works of art that almost everyone would agree are objectively good, like the Iliad, or Hamlet, or Goonies. Instead of discussing those pieces of music that are for the most part a matter of opinion, e.g. Fergaliscious by Fergie, let's try and define beauty by returning to a song that is univerally accepted as a masterpiece: Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

Wilde says the artist is the creator of beautiful things. That vice and virtue are materials for art, and that art is neither moral nor immoral, it is well or badly "written." I believe this applies to music as well as literature. The reason Moonlight Sonata is so beautiful is simply that it is well constructed. Its architecture is so exquisite, so sublime, that it mirrors the beauty of nature. It is so well conceived that it rivals the elegance of the moon itself. Each voice interrelates as mysteriously as a cloud relates to the sky. It is by this construct of beauty that I measure all art: is it beautifully designed? This goes for even the most punk and avant-garde work as well. What would Duchamp's bicycle seat be if it were not aesthetically elegant? What would the Sex Pistols have been if the band didn't actually sound great? The artist, whether they be the Circle Jerks or the Beach Boys, must be the creator of beautiful things.

I have in my humble career had the opportunity to work with many great artists (and many not so great as well), people from every branch of music, from classical to avant-garde to hip-hop to rock and roll. The thread that ties them all together is their ability to create beauty where there was once only silence (not that silence isn't beautiful, in fact for the most part I prefer it). In a society that seems hell bent on manufacturing oceans of visual and audio manure, the true artist is more valuable than ever before; in a world of shit, art is not only helpful, it is necessary for our survival, lest we drown ourselves in a tidal wave of our own ignorance and ugliness.

-Taken from Arcana III, ed. by John Zorn. Hips Road Publishing/Tzadik, 2008. Used without permission. If you are the copyright owner of this work and wish for it to be removed, please contact the blog moderator, who will be happy to comply.]]> Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:46:43 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1053532 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1033530 Due to Empty Sound's success on eMusic, the site is now offering a free Moodgadget compilation. Along with artists like Mux Mool, Praveen, Shigeto and Benoit Pioulard, my song "Sun Position 6pm on a Summer Sunday" (from Views from the Real World) is featured.

Download for free here.]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:18:49 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1033530 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1028537
VINAPA, The Music Lover

"After years of perseverance and devotion / I mastered the vina's errant chords / Then I found the unstruck sound / And lost my self."

Vinapa was the only son of the King of Gauda, a realm bordered by Mother Ganga. He was dearly beloved by his parents and the court. Eight nurses indulged his every whim, and the court musicians came to soothe him whenever he was fretful. Perhaps this early exposure to the deep realms of music changed his fate? For, as the prince grew older, he ignored his lessons in statecraft and pestered the court musicians continually until they agreed to teach him to play the tambura.

Hour after hour, day after day, the young prince would pluck the four strings of the tambura. His fingers never seemed to tire of coaxing the deep droning hum, the breath of OM, from his instrument. He was so gifted that he mastered the tambura after a short while, and then he learned to play the seven stringed vina. As he plucked the vina with his plectrum, the additional strings of the instrument would vibrate in perfect sympathy. Entraced by the feminine insightfulness of this instrument, the young prince could not be parted from it. He was obsessed with the vina. He could hardly bear to set it down to take a few morsels of food.

But he was no ordinary musician. He was the heir-apparent to the throne. When the time came, would he be able to rule the kingdom with wisdom and compassion? Would he have the skill, the interest, to do so? His parents and the court grew more and more concerned.

Despairing, they finally summoned a highly trained yogin called Buddhapa in hopes that he could wean the prince away from music. At their first meeting the young prince was deeply affected by the remarkable qualities of this holy man. Recognizing his master, Vinapa prostrated himself before the yogin and walked around him in reverential circles. Then they sat down to speak deeply, from the heart, about life and death and all that lies between and beyond.

Buddhapa had known instantly that the prince was ready for spiritual training. In the course of their conversation he asked the young man if he was ready to undertake a sadhana, the practice that disciplines the mind on the path to Buddhahood.

"My music is my sadhana, venerable yogin," replied the prince. "Nothing matters to me but my vina and the sound of the tambura. The only sadhana I would practice is one that I could learn without abandoning music."

"If you are as dedicated to music as you say, then I shall teach you a musical sadhana," promised the guru. Whereupon he initiated the prince with the rite that mellows the immature mindstream.

"Meditate continuously upon the sound of your instrument," Buddhapa instructed him. "But while doing so you must free yourself of all distinction between the sound that is struck and what the mind perceives. Cease all mental interference with the sound. Cease all conceptualizing. Cease all critical and judgmental thought. Contemplate only pure sound."

The prince practiced the precepts he had been taught for nine years, during which time he grew to manhood. And as he grew in body he also grew in mind and spirit. All that lay between him and pure cognition was erased from his mind as shadows flee from a clear light. And this very light began to glow within him as though he were a precious butter lamp, and he attained the state of mahamudra-siddhi.

Wondrous were the feats he performed. He could foretell the future, read the thoughts of those around him, and appear in more than one place at the same time. He became universally renowned, and it was said that he had gained his siddhi directly from the deity Hevajra himself.

His true kingdom lay in the realms of spirit. All his long life he taught multitudes of beings how to find release from the bonds of existence. And when he completed his task, he was assumed bodily into the Paradise of the Dakinis.

-Taken from Buddhist Masters of Enchantment, trans. by Keith Dowman. Inner Traditions Publishing, 1998. Used without permission. If you are the copyright owner of this work and wish for it to be removed, please contact the blog moderator, who will be happy to comply.

-Currently listening: Slayer, Reign In Blood]]> Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:05:27 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1028537 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1021735 My desire to add new elements to my electronic music and to expand my sound has led me to get back into a daily guitar habit. In doing so, I have sort of wandered my way into a new style of playing that I never had before. I'm not sure where it came from; this is something that I didn't necessarily hear anywhere, nor did I really have any good reason in particular to start playing this way in the first place. (Surely it is an amalgamation of all the music I've had time to digest since I last put down the instrument, three or so years ago, filtered through my own personal lens.) Unmistakably, however, it is happening.

The main characteristic (and what also seems to be my desired outcome) of this new style is the achievement of interesting vibrational movement. Drone is a part of it, yes, as it is in my electronically-produced music, i.e. allowing notes to sustain and vibrate until they die out naturally. Droning on the guitar is interesting because as the sound of a string decays, it creates varying resonance with other strings (vibrating at other frequencies) which are decaying at different rates. But another element - which one can display more front and center on a guitar, if so desired - is the element of dissonance, and the interplay of certain intervals with certain other intervals. Vibrationally, there exists a vast number of possibilities.

I have discovered several ways of going about this vibratory manipulation, which I will enumerate shortly. A major part of this nascent guitar style is the implementation of nonstandard tunings. My favorite tuning - and the one I can anticipate doing a lot with - is very similar to standard tuning. Right now all my strings are tuned down half a step from standard, with the exception of strings 5 & 6, which are tuned down 1 1/2 steps. In other words, I'm using: Db Gb Db Gb Bb Eb. This tuning allows for a number of options.

Realizing that new potential lies not only in my latent guitar skills but also in laptop-guitar cooperation, my love for the guitar has been rekindled. I first picked up this instrument in middle school right about the same time that my good friend Kadence started to rap (sixth or seventh grade), at which time I ended a decade-long period of classical piano study. My newly formed interest appears to be the beginning of a third distinct guitar phase for me (all three completely self-guided). First, I was enamored with rock guitarists doing pretty standard things, and over this period of 5 or 6 years I was able to advance my style to a great extent using a wide array of effects pedals. During this time I was especially influenced by Page Hamilton, guitarist and leader of the extremely awesome band Helmet.

Second, just out of high school I became infatuated with the styles of people like Wes Montgomery and Grant Green. I transcribed, studied and practiced scales and voicings for hours every day for about a year. This phase was interrupted by my focus on sampling and sequencing on the MPC2000, and creating DJ Krush-like jazz-informed, instrumental hip-hop music.

Now, I bring my past experience with rock and metal, along with a little bit of jazz knowledge, to the more general familiarity with how music works (gleaned mostly from my extensive study of classical and of music theory in general, and also from my 10 years of experience with electronic production) to form something new which I may so daringly say is something unique of my own. Fueled more by a desired emotional effect (how vibrational qualities directly touch one's emotional center is topic of an entirely separate discussion) than by any technical standards of virtuosity, I can play however I want, no matter how unorthodox.

Thanks to people like Stephen O'Malley, Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, Oren Ambarchi, and so on, the term "guitar god" has taken on an entirely new meaning (no longer confined to the Kerry Kings and Dimebag Darrells of the world). The guitar can be processed in a computer - in real-time or through editing - but even beyond that, more generally, new techniques are adapted for the new styles emerging. We live in an era where genre-classification words such post-rock and neoclassical actually have palpable meaning. New styles bring new sounds, the effort at attaining such sounds brings new techniques. The new guitar gods have more than just a distortion, a wah, or a tremolo pedal to expand their sound; they have at their fingertips every possibility that modern signal-processing software affords.

Aside from the "new guitar gods" who use computers in tandem with their instrument, there are more "traditional" (by which I guess I mean jazz- and classically-trained) avant-garde players whose styles are having a big effect on my vision of the guitar. People like Derek Bailey, Tim Sparks and Marc Ribot utilize elements of rock, classical, jazz, klezmer, and so on, the mixture of which creates unusual techniques, and in borrowing from and recontextualizing these techniques, I do not hesitate.

Looking for as much emotional self-expression as possible through my musical outlet, I have been experimenting with mapping certain new areas within the guitar-as-universe, making from scratch a unique sound that I can integrate into my vision of electronic ambient music. Here are some of the ideas I've been playing with.

1. alternate tunings achieve interesting effects (e.g. playing several notes close together)
2. vibrations of strings on a clean (un-effected) guitar yield interesting harmonics (drone)
3. fingerpicking, tap-harmonics, two-hand fretting, and other non-standard (from a rock guitar perspective, i.e. use of a plectrum) ways of sounding strings can be used in fun and expansive ways
4. the more harmonics the better, especially if they "clash"
5. unusual voicings making extensive use of open strings can create unique feels
6. lots of reverb creates lots of amazing resonance

This is all simply pertaining to the guitar, in the absense of any effects (other than the reverb supplied by my Fender Blues Deluxe amplifier) or further processing. I have done some guitar processing in Max/MSP (which will be the topic of yet another post), and I will continue to do much more in the future. There is a Sun Hammer laptop-guitar sound that exists within the secret corners of the universe, and within the next year or two, I plan to find and develop it. Discovering hidden corners of the guitar (if only in a small way) has gently pushed me a bit further down this path of clarified channelled creativity.

Pictured: Angus Young Gibson SG electric guitar, retail price $4,029.00 (my next big purchase)]]> Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:28:17 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1021735 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1018976
EMPTY SOUND, BEGINNINGLESS, ENDLESS

I intend, through a brief series of written works by myself and others, to explore the concept of what I have nicknamed "empty sound." In other words, I want to ask the question, what is there to sound? Is there something inherently musical about certain sounds - certain relationships between vibrations - that makes some inherently beautiful and some not so? Is sound really "empty"? If the answer is yes, what does this mean to the musical artist? On the other hand, if the answer is no, what does this mean to the musical artist?

Rhetorical speculation on these questions and more, coming soon.]]> Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:54:58 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1018976 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1016464

Today marks the birthday of two important Capricornian mystics! In honor of these two profound influences on my life and thought, I dedicate this post.

Yogananda:
"The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's own happiness, the happiness of others."

Intricate Dialect:
"I've got the mind of a Buddha mixed with Kurt Cobain / What else could I be? / All apologies / Nirvana and a lama / Grungy and a freak."

Word.]]> Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:59:58 -0800 http://virb.com/asettingsun/posts/text/1016464