*curtsies*

In unrelated news, delicious delicious icewater. About a quart of it. And I am still thirsty and want more. I am an insatiable minx for icewater.

Riffs Are Pouring Out Of My Fucking Ears.

I am writing the best music of my life up here in Alaska. I don't know why, probably because there's little else to do other than play guitar and watch movies. And it seems listening to pretty much nothing but Modest Mouse has me writing in that sort of vein of music, which is something I have been trying to do for a long time; focus on melodicism and dynamics. I've also found myself playing higher up on the neck than I ever have before.

But goddamn; kind of stoked to go kick it with Devin in SC and jam this shit out.

At the moment my brain is just oddly focused on the fact that it knows more words than i do.

I think it is probably just normal everyone-is-like-that sorts of biz, but it feels strange: Knowing how/where to use a word, without in the moment knowing exactly what the complete definition of that word is?

I guess it is just subconscious soakings-in of reading and listening, but it is strange. Like being able to speak a language without knowing really what you are saying... Simply sure, that what you want to convey is being conveyed by the noises you are making.



Also, and tangential to that brain oddwiring, i am listening to all kinds of shit via headphones today, and it is kind of nutty just how much reverb winds up on recoardings. Also interesting: just what kinds of decisions are made regarding panning on nice productions. Some definite weird ones out there.

Also: Cam, do you have a way to record that stuff? Or do you usually just remember riffs and stuff?

I always forget everything(or change the pace/rhythm in trying to remember something), so i have to bring recorders everywhere i bring guitars.

I unfortunately don't currently have any way to record..Though I may purchase some simple hardware device (with USB connectivity) for that sometime soon.

Fortunately; I'm pretty good at remembering riffs and the rhythms/chord shapes and changes. Plus I've been trying to keep shit simple by only having like 4 or 5 riffs in a song and using a loose pop-based structure (whereas I would try to jam like 8 or 9 in a 3 minute song).

I'm stoked to show you niggas some of my riffage, as it seems of The Regulars I am the least musically active/productive. I'm tryna change that up a bit.

It's funny how wet a vocal can be without you noticing it, then you pop one earbud out and you can hear it clear as day.

Started writing summink new the other night. Not sure if I'm gonna bother carrying it on as it's moar dullish britrocky type stuff, but I guess it's better than nothing. Excuse teh cheap sounding maplitube sound, couldn't be bothered to mess with the settings much - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15027660/asdfg.mp3

re: smoke alarms and bad noises. Peoplefolk are always surprised how sensitive my ears are noises I don't like. They figure - "The weird musician should have his ears blown out by now..." but my hearing it seems is much like a canines...

I will go batshit on smoke/fire/people incinerator alarms.

@Cam - I need to record shit although mostly I don't , I will alter riffs as I remember what I was doing but the rhythms I tend to forget, sometimes it leads to a nice new idea. Also, I've not recorded anything original in quite a while, well since I'm now the coverbandwhoreofmaplifiers

Nothing wrong with that, cover bands pay well and are easy gigs When I return from my travels I think I'mma try to get back into a cover band. If nothing else it forces you to learn songs and styles you may otherwise not have bothered with.

OHMYGODMOTHERFUCKINGTHIS!

and PA feedback is too!

Back in the day my dad would go totally bonkers on the things. This house used to actually have like tons of the ones that are wired into the ceiling without batteries, practically one in every room, which in this house works out to be: generally less than something like twenty feet apart from each other...

There are now more than a few gaping holes whence offensive devices were violently plucked and summarily destroyed. I think i have patched and painted all of the spots that were upstairs at this point, but there are definitely a couple in the basement still.

I think i am down to one working detector now? In the basement near the furnace, battery powered, and stuck up right next to a gaping former detector crater.

It is a small house. I will know if part of it is burning. I don't need five alarms going off when the toaster crumb tray needs to be cleaned out.

This. I could stand in front of a drum kit for hours and be fine, but a smoke detector or an ambulance siren or the film processor at work or a certain sort of screaming small child (sorry kids, it's true; I know this is a distress call evolution has granted you at least.) has some particular upper mid/treble thing that's like a square wave of hate DIed straight into my skull. I want to find out what this frequency is and have it banned by international convention.

I could not have said it better.

Yet I have children which somehow I care for, so I have them in my house. (detector/alarms) I change the batteries a lot so they don't go off when I'm not ready. But they make that chirp of death when changing batteries and I honestly look like Manny from Black Books while trying to change the batteries....

Total nineties vibe... feel like I'm watching an episode of Buffy!

I thought you had more hair than that.

Your chilluns are a bit older than the ones that emit this particular frequency with extreme prejudice though. And this isn't just my misanthropy and being weirded out by kids talking, it's whatever that frequency is that's common to all the aforementioned that's made out of pain.

My smoke alarm wasn't just chirping, it was full-on going off. I'd sooner get right up on the drummer in my metal band laying into rimshots on that vented snare he's got.

is that a good or a bad thing? All my recent offerings are a bit like that, I shoulda been born 10 years earlier. I'm gonna try to finish it over the weekend if I don't end up doing much else.

Well, I dig that kind of vibe.

So. Many. Fucking. Math. Rock. Riffs.

I am on a goddamn roll, gentlemen.

Oh! Cam... Do you have Slint's Spiderland yet? And some Jesus Lizard, while yer at it. (Though a different sound and feel... Duane Denison, who's in Tomahawk, was their guitarist.)

Also: I ripped the smoke alarm out of the hallway between the bedrooms this evening for the same reason.

I have neither of these albums, but I shall take it upon myself to check 'em out.




On another note: I have never possessed the amount of dexterity on guitar (something I lack for sure) as I do at this given moment. I have pretty poor motor skills, you should see my handwriting, but I feel like a fucking shred god right now.