None of these tracks is complete, but given the rate at which I finish the old and start the new (slow and fast, respectively) I wanted to share what I’d done so far, going in a few different musical directions. I’m interested in feedback, if anyone out there is inclined to write, since as I compose, in general, when I like what I’ve written I often make the mistake of listening to it too many times, to the point that my mind accustoms itself to the music and anticipates every note, becoming unable to experience or appreciate what the music sounds like as something fresh. When that happens it’s hard to go forward, because the inspiration that led to creation of the original melody has also had that melody burned in to the point that it’s gotten tired and gone somewhere else. It’s most effective to compose something in one sitting, as quickly as possible, I believe, and to only flesh out the instrumentation later; however I hypocritically have never been able to fully follow this method.

By posting these tunes I’m freeing myself to move on and improve, although I may come back and work on any of these.

006: (download) As-yet-untitled track with a slightly jazzy style. I combined the bassline with the "Reticul8" instrument lead in a single pattern, so those complement each other well. Listen to the piano chord progression when that comes in, it meshes like a charm. (The kind of charm that meshes, or as it is commonly known, a meshing charm.)

006-outtake: (download) Outtake segment from the above tune , where I was playing with the lead and added some notes to form chords. I didn’t even have to customize the drums, as they came from the patterns already made for the above song.

Pompous: (download) I was experimenting with a nice sounding VST (a standard plug-in architecture for software generated instruments, and the instruments which hook in using it) called "Reticul8" (mentioned above) which I’d downloaded, and this clip is what resulted.

Padding-01: (download) Something a bit different from the above. A series of background chords played by electronic strings, with a simple bell-like melody in the foreground.

Square: (download) Square waves, sine waves, maybe some other wave shapes.

010: (download) An electronic progressive track with sparse experimentation in dynamic filter/resonance adjustment.

"Underwriting, this is Michael."
"Ichael?"
"Michael."
"EIGEL?"
"No, MICHAEL."
"EIGEL."
"No, uh, how can I help you?"

Y. said "You really haven’t seen Predator before? Where’ve you been all this time?". And I said "You know, the guy in the video store said the same thing to me. Would you guys lay off it?". So this is the movie that started it all, though what ‘it’ is I haven’t really thought about in this context. Featuring Jesse Ventura at his finest ("I don’t have time to bleed") before he gets a large hole blasted through him, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the stogie-smoking hero, who unfortunately doesn’t make use of the word "stogie" within the movie. I’m disappointed, I really wanted to hear Arnold say something like "I’ll be back, I forgot my stogie".

Besides a little bit of plot silliness (why would Tom Cruise’s character turn out the lights in the building hiding someone he was trying to find and kill, except to make it harder for himself and, more importantly, suspenseful for the audience) and severe character one-dimensionality (but really, the whole thing is an exaggerated view of life, anyway), a decent movie. Three thumbs up (out of four). That’s two thumbs and my left big toe.

After having made fun of it based on its title in what probably was a very unoriginal manner (“Why don’t they just randomly pick two movie monsters, say, King Kong and Godzilla, and pit them against each other, and make a new movie out of that?”), I saw this movie and thought it was great. The title is a bit misleading, at that, in more ways than one: It isn’t so simplistic here as to be just a drawn out Street Fighter- or Tekken-style videogame battle. Who cares about the acting and the plausibility of the story; this movie had a big, encompassing atmosphere, good special effects, and was just fun to watch. (Hey, has King Kong vs. Godzilla been done?)

Now you must know, at the dinner table my family members are a bunch of punsters. We throw attempted wittiness back and forth like a hot potatoe, every phrase uttered heard as intended and then heard again as a disjointed sequence of words to analyze and put back together with a different meaning, a process from which some sort of hilarity generally ensues. My father is king of this game, and has constructing “bad jokes” (which are really quite funny, which would make them good jokes, wouldn’t it) down to an art.

Sometimes puns are intentional, and sometimes we stumble upon them, the latter generally being the much funnier case.

One night, I brought up the subject of public pie-ings. Perhaps you remember a while back when Bill Gates had a cream pie thrown in his face, or perhaps you’ve even seen the video. Anyway we talked about that for a while, and then my middle brother, Aaron, said something to the effect of “I wonder if anyone’s ever tried to do a public pants-ing”. I immediately replied to this, without thinking, “that would be a bit harder to pull off”, and only then did I realize what I’d said, and of course so did everyone else, and there you have it.

“We’ll beat anyone’s advertised price, or your mattress is freeee.” Slogan of Sit-N-Sleep. Why would they ever opt to not beat someone’s advertised price and give a mattress away free(ee) instead? Am I missing something here?

“Arthur prodded the mattress nervously and then sat on it himself: in fact he had very little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta are very throroughly killed and dried before being put to service. Very few have ever come to life again.” –Douglas Adams/HHGTTG

The premise reminds me of that of System Shock (and the Animatrix, and, well, I’m sure there are hundreds of similar science fiction storylines). Yet, a mighty fine piece of action entertainment. The original books by Isaac Asimov explore the moral implications of having conscious creatures bound to obeyance of the author’s Three Laws of Robotics through short stories wherein robots are confronted with dillemas and conflicting priorities and act in certain (seemingly unexplicable) ways; humans then need to illuminate the choices and actions of the robots leading to further understanding of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the Three Laws as they are “field tested”. The movie deals with this obliquely and just assumes the laws are perfect as is: Or are they? Not particularly cerebral, but I could watch this movie again.

Interesting psychological study. A movie that will keep you wondering what’s going on, and when it’s done and your curiosity has been fed and satisfied, what the point of it all was (beyond that psych study). If this purports to be a horror movie (I haven’t seen any previews or read any reviews) it fails in that regard, though the actors are convincing and the audience can tell they are scared, and why. The movie plays, in a vague sense, like a close-up view of something strange and unusual, a slice, where the camera gradually pulls back and we finally see the whole object and recognize it in its context. And that’s all there is to it, since it’s hard to identify with the characters or feel other than objective.