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jokertrap-ran · 3 years

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(光与夜之恋 Light and Night) Osborn’s 5✩ Inspiration: Interdigital Heartbeat [指间心音] Date Translation (END 1: Do Nothing)

"Okay, Miss Directionless. How about you lead the way this time?”

*Light and Night Master-list | Osborn’s Personal Masterlist *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *Join the Light & Night Discord (＾▽＾)~ ♪ *This 5✩ Inspiration has 6 Endings!! *Osborn’s tag will be #For Night, For Freedom

✥ Choice: Do Nothing [都不做]

Slightly hesitant, I glanced back and forth between Osborn and Liyuu, unsure of what would be more appropriate to do at this point.

Then, one of the employees called for Liyuu from a distance away. He looked around to see where they were before turning back to us with an apologetic look on his face.

Liyuu: Sorry, but I have to go check on them over there.

Osborn: Sure. Go on.

He shot me an apologetic smile before he turned and left.

My stomach suddenly rumbled out of nowhere, reminding me that we'd unfortunately forgotten to get some food in our rush to get here.

Osborn: He won't be able to wrap up that quickly. I'll shoot him a message later. Let's go grab dinner first.

MC: Sounds like a plan!!

⊹ ˚✩ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ∘◦ ✥ ◦∘ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ✩˚ ⊹

And that's how Osborn and I ended up going to a nearby family restaurant for dinner.

Just as we were finishing up the last bit of food, we received a call from Liyuu, who delivered us a piece of entirely unexpected news.

Liyuu told us that due to personal reasons, Seed might not have any more performances in the future.

I felt very broken up about it as I recalled every single moment of the live performance today. I hoped to perfectly commit their performance to memory.

⊹ ˚✩ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ∘◦ ✥ ◦∘ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ✩˚ ⊹

Another two weeks passed after that.

One night, Osborn and I were having dinner at a place near Warson when his phone suddenly lit up with a message.

He took one look at it, his face gradually morphing into one of suspicion.

Osborn: It’s a number I’ve never seen before, telling me to go to “Chimes Piano Shop”. They say I have something there.

MC: Oh? How curious.

MC: But, Chime’s Piano Shop? That’s just nearby. Won’t you know if it’s a scam or not if you just drop by and pay them a visit?

Osborn: Okay, Miss Directionless. How about you lead the way this time?

MC: Hey! This place is around my workplace! Don’t you underestimate me!

⊹ ˚✩ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ∘◦ ✥ ◦∘ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ✩˚ ⊹

After we’d finished our meal, I easily led Osborn to Chime’s Piano Shop, a place that was located deep inside an alley.

Peering through the glass windows of the shop, we could see that it was brightly lit inside. Its interiors were tastefully furnished with a mix of retro and trendy, and there were a variety of brand-new instruments scattered around, being displayed out on the floor.

No matter how we looked at it, it was nothing more than an ordinary piano shop. Hence, we pushed open the doors and stepped inside.

The bell hanging from the door made a pleasant jingle, alerting the clerk to our presence. The uniformed clerk raised his head, smiling as he made his way towards us.

Clerk: Oh. You must be Mr. Osborn, right? I was the one who sent you the message earlier. I’m a friend of Liyuu’s.

Clerk: He left Guangqi City a couple of days ago and placed his electronic keyboard here before he left. He said that he hopes to entrust it to your care.

Osborn: ...An electronic keyboard?

Clerk: Over here.

Following the clerk, we stopped before an electric keyboard that was placed in a corner.

It was clean, but old, considering its slightly outdated style. It stuck out like a sore thumb despite having been placed in a corner, like an old man that possessed a good many stories.

Osborn: He wants to put something this huge in MY house? Gee, he sure knows how to trouble someone.

Clerk: He’d also said that you can give it to someone else or even leave it here for sale if it’s inconvenient for you to take it.

Osborn wearily rubbed his temples before he turned to question me.

Osborn: Do you know how to play?

MC: Oh… Just a little.

Osborn: How about I give it to you then? It's your idol's beloved keyboard.

MC: Don't want it.

He was teasing. I glared at him in dissatisfaction, taking a serious tone with him.

MC: This is the keyboard that Liyuu has used for many years, it must mean an awful lot to him.

MC: I think maybe he doesn’t intend to give up on music.

MC: You’re the one who gave him the motivation to do it, so I think that he’s hoping that you can take it under your wing. To protect and take care of this important dream of his.

MC: Who knows, maybe he’ll come back one day to reclaim it from you!

Osborn: That guy… He’s still as whimsical as ever even after all these years, huh.

⊹ ˚✩ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ∘◦ ✥ ◦∘ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ✩˚ ⊹

Osborn glanced at the keyboard, helplessly shaking his head, as if what stood before him wasn’t his friend’s keyboard, but rather, his friend himself.

After a while, he sat down on the sofa before the electronic keyboard, slowly lifting the heavy black cover that had hidden the keys of the keyboard from view.

The keyboard had been maintained well, but the keys all shone brightly from years of wear and tear, inflicted by years of practising.

His slender, yet strong, fingers slid across the keys, gently pressing on a few.

The black and white keys played a series of pleasant-sounding notes. He lowered his eyes in thought as the sound reverberated in the air.

Osborn: "Take care of his dream for him"? ... I'm not all that noble.

His tone was reminiscent of a sigh. I shook my head and walked up, standing before him.

MC: You don’t have to bear any responsibility for this, Osborn.

MC: You might not understand, but…

MC: Some people just have to exist and do whatever it is that they wish to do. That in itself is something that those who do matter will find solace in.

You fixed your gaze firmly onto him as the thought ran past your mind.

And you, Osborn; you are that existence.

⊹ ˚✩ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ∘◦ ✥ ◦∘ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ✩˚ ⊹

After a while, Osborn sighed, seemingly having come to a compromise about it. He covered the keyboard and stood back up once more.

Osborn: Alright. I'll take it for your sake.

He looked me up and down playfully, his dashing eyes slowly curving upwards in joy.

Osborn: But, you've got something wrong here.

MC: Huh?

Osborn: How could I ever "not understand"?

Osborn: I’ve already long since found the one who’ll safeguard my dreams and aspirations for me.

I froze. I was just about to ask just who this person was when he bent down slightly, his piercing pale green eyes staring deeply at me.

Just as I took notice of the little figure being reflected within his orbs, I heard the notes of a keyboard ringing out in the air, resonating with my heart.

It was then, at that moment, that the answer to the underlying question hanging in the air was self-evident.

⊹ ˚✩ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ∘◦ ✥ ◦∘ ━━━━━━━━━━━ ✩˚ ⊹

✥ Choose your Ending:

END 1 | Choice: Do Nothing [都不做]

END 2 + 3 + 4 | Choice: Call Out [呼唤] ⊹Speak⊹

END 5 | Choice: Listen [倾听] ❖ASMR

END 6 | Choice: Heart-throb [心动] ★Night★

❖☆————— ⊹ For Night, For Freedom⊹ —————★❖

Previous Part: Prologue

#光与夜之恋 #Light and Night #Otome #Translations #Tencent #萧逸 #Osborn #For Night For Freedom #指间心音 #Interdigital Heartbeat

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alanlicht · 4 years

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Alan Licht’s Minimal Top Ten List #4

A few weeks ago, near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my friend Mats Gustafsson sent out a mass email encouraging people to send him record lists to post on the “Discaholics” section of his website--top tens, favorite covers, anything. I immediately thought of the first 3 Minimal Top Ten lists I did (now found online here) back in 1995, 1997, and 2007 respectively, for the fanzine Halana (the first two) and Volcanic Tongue’s website (the third), and sent them to him. Those articles have sort of taken on a life of their own, and I still see them referenced as the albums get reissued and so on. Occasionally people ask me if I’d ever do another one, and looking at all three again made me think now is the hour. I started writing this in the midst of the lockdown, and the drastic reductions in people’s way of life—the restriction of any activity outside the home to the bare essentials, the relative stasis of life in quarantine, even the visual stasis of a Zoom meeting—make revisiting Minimal music, with its aesthetic of working within limitations and hallmarks of repetition and drones, somehow timely as well.

The original lists were never meant to represent “the best” Minimal albums: they were ones that were rare and in some cases surpass, in my opinion, more widely available releases by the same artist and/or better known examples of the genre. Some were records that hadn’t been classified as Minimalist but warranted consideration through that lens. Likewise, the lists aren’t meant to be ranked within themselves, or in comparison to each other; the first record on any of the lists isn’t necessarily vastly preferable to the last, and this fourth list is not the bottom of the barrel, by any stretch. In some cases the present list has records I’ve discovered since 2007; others are records I’ve known for quite a while but haven’t included before for one reason or another. I’ve also made an addendum to selected entries on the first three lists, which have become fairly dated in terms of what is currently available by many of the artists, and to account for some of the significant archival releases in the 25 years since I first compiled them.

Unlike the mid-90s, most if not all of these records can be heard and/or purchased online, whether they’re up on YouTube or available for sale on Discogs. So finding them will be easier than before (although I haven’t included links to any of the titles as a small tribute to the legwork involved in tracking records down in olden tymes), but hopefully the spirit of sharing knowledge and passions that drove my previous efforts, forged in the pre-internet fanzine world, hasn’t been rendered totally redundant by the 24/7 onslaught of virtual note-comparing in social media.

1. Simeon ten Holt Canto Ostinato (various recordings): This was the most significant discovery for me in the last decade, a piece with over one hundred modules to be played on any instrument but mostly realized over the years with two to four pianos. I first encountered a YouTube live video of four pianists tackling it over the course of 90 minutes or so, then bought a double CD on Brilliant Classics from 2005, also for four pianos, that runs about 2 and half hours. The original 3LP recording on Donemus, from 1984, lasts close to 3 hours. It’s addictively listenable, very hypnotic in that pulsed, Steve Reich “Piano Phase”/”Six Pianos” kind of way, with lots of recurring themes (which differentiates it from Terry Riley’s “In C,” its most obvious structural antecedent). Composed over the span of the 70s, as with Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Sei Note in Logica, it’s an example of someone contemporaneously taking the ball from Reich or Riley and running with it. Every recording I’ve heard has been enjoyable, I’ve yet to pick a favorite.

2. David Borden Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments (Red Music, 1981) 3. Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. Like a Duck to Water (Earthquack, 1976): These were some of my most cherished Minimal recordings when I was a teenager in the mid-80s, and are still not particularly well-known; they’re probably the biggest omission in the previous lists (at least from my perspective). Borden formed Mother Mallard, supposedly the first all-synthesizer ensemble, as a trio in the late 60s, although there’s electric piano on the records too. He went on to do music under his own name that hinged on the multi-keyboard Minimalism-meets-Renaissance classical concept he first explored with Mother Mallard, as exemplified by his 12-part series “The Continuing Story of Counterpoint” (a title inspired by both Philip Glass’ “Music in Twelve Parts” and the Beatles’ “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”). I first heard Parts 6 & 9 of “Continuing Story” (from Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments) on Tim Page’s 1980s afternoon radio show on WNYC, and bought the Mother Mallard LPs (Like A Duck is the second, the first is self-titled) from New Music Distribution Service soon after. I mail-ordered the Borden album from Wayside Music, which had cut-out copies, maybe a year later (c. 1986). I wasn’t much of a synth guy, but I loved the propulsive, rapid-fire counterpoint and fast-changing, lyrical melodies found on these records. “C-A-G-E Part 2,” which occupies side 2 of the Mother Mallard album and utilizes only those pitches, has to be a pinnacle of the Minimal genre. Interestingly, Borden claims to not really be able to “hear” harmony and composes each part of these (generally) three-part inventions individually, all the way through. The two-piano “Continuing Story of Counterpoint Part Two” on the 1985 album Anatidae is also beloved by me, and there was an archival Mother Mallard CD called Music by David Borden (Arbiter, 2003) that’s worth hearing.

4. Charles Curtis/Charles Curtis Trio: Ultra White Violet Light/Sleep (Beau Rivage, 1997): Full disclosure: Charles is a long-time friend, but this record seems forgotten and deserves another look, especially in light of the long-overdue 3CD survey of his performances of other composers’ material that Saltern released last year. This was a double album of four side-long tracks, conceived with the intent that two sides could be played simultaneously, in several different configurations; two of them are Charles solo on cello and sine tones, the others are with a trio and have spoken vocals and rock instrumentation, with cello and the sine tones also thrown into the mix. (I’ve never heard any of the sides combined, although now it would probably be easily achieved with digital mixing software.) The instrumental stuff is the closest you can come to hearing Charles’ beautiful arrangement of Terry Jennings’ legendary “Piece for Cello and Saxophone,” at least until his own recording of it sees the light of day; the same deeply felt cello playing against a sine tone drone. And it would be interesting to see what Slint fans thought of the trio material. Originally packaged in a nifty all-white uni-pak sleeve with a photo print pasted into the gatefold, it was reissued with a different cover on the now-defunct Squealer label on LP and CD but has disappeared since then. Stellar.

5. Arthur Russell Instrumentals 1974 Vol. 2 (Another Side/Crepuscule, 1984) 6. Peter Zummo Zummo with an X (Loris, 1985): Arthur Russell has posthumously developed a somewhat surprising indie rock audience, mostly for his unique songs and singing as well as his outré disco tracks. But he was also a modern classical composer, with serious Minimal cred—he’s on Jon Gibson’s Songs & Melodies 1973-1977 (see addendum), and played with Henry Flynt and Christer Hennix at one point; his indelible album of vocal and cello sparseness, World of Echo, was partially recorded at Phill Niblock’s loft and of course his Tower of Meaning LP was released on Glass’s Chatham Square label. He’s the one guy in the 70s and 80s (or after, for that matter) who connected the dots between Ali Akbar Khan, the Modern Lovers, Minimalism, and disco as different forms of trance music (taken together, both sides of his disco 12” “In the Light of the Miracle,” which total nearly a half-hour, could arguably be considered one of his Minimalist compositions). Recorded in 1977 & 1978, Instrumentals is an important signpost of the incipient Pop Minimalism impulse, and the first track is a pre-punk precursor to Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca’s appropriations of the rock band format to pursue Minimal pathways (Chatham is one of the performers in that first piece). The rest, culled from a concert at the Kitchen, features long held tones from horns and strings and is quite graceful, if slightly undercut by Arthur’s own slightly jarring, apparently random edits. [Audika’s 2006 reissue, as part of the double CD First Thought Best Thought, includes a 1975 concert that was slated to be Instrumentals Vol. 1, which shows an even more specific pop/rock/Minimal intersection]. Zummo was a long-term collaborator of Russell’s and his album, which Arthur plays on, is a must for Russell aficionados. The first side is made up of short, plain pieces that repeat various simple intervals and are fairly hard-core Minimalism, but “Song IV,” which occupies all of side two, is like an extended, jammy take on Russell’s disco 12” “Treehouse” and has Bill Ruyle on bongos, who also played on Instrumentals as well as with Steve Reich and Jon Gibson. A recently unearthed concert at Roulette from 1985 is a further, and especially intriguing, example of Russell’s blending of Minimalism and song form. (That same year Arthur played on Elodie Lauten’s The Death of Don Juan--another record I first encountered via Tim Page’s radio show--which I included on Top Ten #3; Lauten as well as Zummo played on the Russell Roulette concert, as their website alleges).

7. Horacio Vaggione La Maquina de Cantar (Cramps, 1978): Another one-off from the late 70s, and yet more evidence of how Minimalism had really caught on as a trend among European composers of the time. Vaggione had a previous duo album with Eduardo Polonio under the name It called Viaje that was noisier electronics, and he went on to do computer music that was likewise more traditionally abstract. But on this sole effort for the Italian label Cramps, as part of their legendary Nova Musicha series, he went for full-on tonality. The title track is like the synth part of “Who Are You” extended for more than fifteen minutes and made a bit squishier; but side 2, “Ending”--already mentioned in the entry on David Rosenboom’s Brainwave Music in Top Ten #3--is my favorite. Kind of a bridge between Minimalism and prog, and a little reminiscent of David Borden’s multiple-synth counterpoint pieces, for the first ten minutes he lingers on one vaguely foreboding arpeggiated chord, then introduces a fanfare melody that repeats and builds in harmonies and countermelodies for the remainder of the piece. Great stuff, as Johnny Carson used to say.

8. Costin Miereanu Derives (Poly-Art, 1984): Miereanu is French composer coming out of musique concrete. Unlike some of the albums on these lists, both sides/pieces on Derives are superb, comprised of long drones with flurries of skittering electronic activity popping up here and there. Also notable is the presence of engineers Philip Besomes and Jean-Louis Rizet, responsible for Pôle, the great mid-70s prog double album that formed the basis of Graham Lambkin’s meta-meisterwork Amateur Doubles. I discovered this record via the old Continuo blog; Miereanu has lots of albums out, most of which I haven’t heard, but his 1975 debut Luna Cinese, another Cramps Nova Musicha item, is also estimable, although less Minimal.

9. Mikel Rouse Broken Consort Jade Tiger (Les Disques du Crepuscule, 1984): Rouse was a major New Music name in the 80s, as was Microscopic Septet saxist Philip Johnston, who plays here. Dominated by Reichian repeated fills that accentuate the odd time signatures as opposed to an underlying pulse, this will sound very familiar to anyone acquainted with Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin albums on ECM, which use the same general idea but brand it “zen funk” and cater more to the progressive jazz crowd rather than New Music fans, if we can be that anachronistic in our terminology. Jade Tiger also contrasts nicely with Wim Mertens’ more neo-Romantic contemporaneous excursions on Crepuscule. Rouse later performed the admirable (and daunting) task of cataloging Arthur Russell’s extensive tape archive for the preparation of Another Thought (Point Music, 1994)

10. Michael Nyman Decay Music (Obscure, 1976): Known for his soundtracks to Peter Greenaway films, and his still-peerless 1974 book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (where I, Jim O’Rourke, and doubtless many other intrepid teenage library goers learned of the Minimalists, Fluxus, AMM, and lots of other eternal avant heroes), Nyman is sometimes credited with coining the term “Minimal music” as well, in an early 70s article in The Spectator. Decay Music was produced by Brian Eno for his short-lived but wonderful Obscure label. The first side, “1-100,” was also composed for a Greenaway film, and has one hundred chords played one after another on piano, each advancing to the next once the sound has decayed from the previous chord (hence the album title). For all its delicacy and silences, you’re actually hearing three renditions superimposed on one another, which occasionally makes for some charming chordal collisions (reminiscent of the cheerfully clumsy, subversive “variations” of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D major” on Eno’s own Discreet Music, the most celebrated Obscure release). This is process music at its most fragile and incandescent. In hindsight it may have also been an unconscious influence on the structure of my piece “A New York Minute,” which lines up a month’s worth of weather reports from news radio, edited so that one day’s forecast follows its prediction from the previous day. I’ve never found the album’s other piece, “Bell Set No. 1,” to be quite as compelling, and Nyman’s other soundtrack work doesn’t hold much interest for me, but I’ve often returned to this album.

11. J Dilla Donuts (Stones Throw, 2006): One more for the road. Rightfully acclaimed as a masterpiece of instrumental hip hop, I have to confess I only discovered Donuts while reading Questlove’s 2013 book Mo’ Meta Blues, where he compared it to Terry Riley. The brevity of the tracks (31of ‘em in 44 minutes) and the lack of single-mindedness make categorizing Donuts as a Minimal album a bit of a stretch, but Questlove’s namecheck makes a whole lot of sense if you play “Don’t Cry” back to back with Riley’s proto-Plunderphonic “You’re Nogood,” and “Glazed” is the only hip hop track to ever remind me of Philip Glass. Plus the infinite-loop sequencing of the opening “Outro” and concluding “Intro” make this a statement of Eternal Music that outstrips La Monte Young and leaves any locked groove release in the proverbial dust. There isn’t the space here to really explore how extended mixes, all night disco DJ sets, etc. could be encountered in alignment with Minimalism, although I would steer the curious towards Pete Rock’s Petestrumentals (BBE, 2001), Larry Levan’s Live at the Paradise Garage (Strut, 2000), and, at the risk of being immodest, my own “The Old Victrola” from Plays Well (Crank Automotive, 2001). On a (somewhat) related note I’d also point out Rupie Edwards’ Ire Feelings Chapter and Version (Trojan, 1990) which collects 16 of the producer/performer’s 70s dub reggae tracks, all built from the exact same same rhythm track--mesmerizing, even by dub’s trippy standards.

Addendum:

Tony Conrad: “Maybe someday Tony’s blistering late 80s piece ‘Early Minimalism’ will be released, or his fabulous harmonium soundtrack to Piero Heliczer’s early 60s film The New Jerusalem.” That was the last line of my entry on Tony’s Outside the Dream Syndicate in the first Top Ten list in 1995, and sure enough, Table of the Elements issued “Early Minimalism” as a monumental CD box set in 1997 and released that soundtrack as Joan of Arc in 2006 (it’s the same film; I saw it screened c. 1990 under the name The New Jerusalem but it’s more commonly known as Joan of Arc). Tony releases proliferated in the last twenty years of his life, which was heartening to see; I’d particularly single out Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (Superior Viaduct, 2017), which rescues a 1972 live recording of what is essentially a prototype for Outside played by Tony, Rhys Chatham, and Laurie Spiegel (Rhys has mentioned his initial disgruntlement upon hearing Outside, as it was the same piece that he had played with Tony, i.e. “Ten Years Alive,” but he found himself and Laurie replaced by Faust!) and an obscure compilation track, “DAGADAG for La Monte” (on Avanto 2006, Avanto, 2006), where he plays the pitches d, a, and g on violin, loops them over and over , and continually re-harmonizes them electronically--really one of his best pieces.

Terry Riley: The archival Riley CDs that Cortical Foundation issued in the 90s and early 00s don’t seem to be in print, but I feel they eclipse Reed Streams (reissued by Cortical as part of that series) and are crucial for fans of his early work, especially the live Poppy Nogood’s Phantom Band All Night Flight Vol. 1, an important variant on the studio take, and You’re Nogood (see Dilla entry above). These days I would also recommend Descending Moonshine Dervishes (Kuckuck, 1982/recorded 1975) over Persian Surgery Dervishes (Shandar, 1975), which I mentioned in the original entry on Reed Streams in the first Top Ten; a lot of the harmonic material in Descending can also be heard in Terry’s dream-team 1975 meeting with Don Cherry in Köln, which has been bootlegged several times in the last few years. Finally, Steffen Schleiermacher recorded the elusive “Keyboard Study #1” (as well as “#2,” which had already seen release in a version by Germ on the BYG label and as “Untitled Organ” on Reed Streams), albeit on a programmed electronic keyboard, on the CD Keyboard Studies (MDG, 2002). As you might expect it’s a little synthetic-sounding, but it also has a weird kinetic edge (imagine the “Baba O’Riley” intro being played on a Conlon Nancarrow player piano) that’s lacking in later acoustic piano renditions recorded by Gregor Schwellenbach and Fabrizio Ottaviucci. But any of these versions is rewarding for those interested in Riley’s early output.

Henry Flynt, Charlemagne Palestine: A few of the artists on that first Top Ten list went from being sorely under-documented to having a plethora of material on the market, and Henry and Charlemagne are at the top of the heap. I stand by You Are My Everlovin, finally reissued on CD by Recorded in 2001, as Henry’s peak achievement, but I’m also partial to “Glissando,” a tense, feverish raga drone from 1979 that Recorded put out on the Glissando No. 1 CD in 2011. Charlemagne’s Four Manifestations On Six Elements double album still holds up well, as does an album of material initially recorded for it, Arpeggiated Bösendorfer and Falsetto Voice (Algha Marghen, 2017). The Strumming Music LP on Shandar is a definitive performance, and best heard as an unbroken piece on the New Tone CD reissue from 1995. Godbear (CD on Barooni, vinyl on Black Truffle), originally recorded for Glenn Branca’s Neutral label (which had also scheduled a Phill Niblock release before going belly-up), has 1987 takes of “Strumming Music” and two other massive pieces that date from the late 70s, “Timbral Assault” and “The Lower Depths”; Algha Marghen released a vintage full-length concert of the latter as a triple CD.

Steve Reich: Not a particularly rare record, but his “Variations on Winds, Strings and Keyboards,” a 1979 piece for orchestra on a 1984 LP issued by Phillips (paired with an orchestral arrangement of John Adams’ “Shaker Loops”), is often overlooked among the works from his “golden era” and I’d frankly rate it as his best orchestral piece.

Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue: As with Henry and Charlemagne, after a slow start as “recording artists” loads of CDs by these two have appeared over the last twenty years. Phill and Eliane’s music was never best served by the vinyl format anyway—you won’t find a lackluster release by either composer, go to it.

Jon Gibson: I called “Cycles,” from Gibson’s Two Solo Pieces, “one of the ultimate organ drones on record” in the first Top Ten list, and it remains so, but Phill Niblock’s”Unmounted/Muted Noun” from 2019′s Music for Organ ought to sit right beside it. Meanwhile, Superior Viaduct’s recent Gibson double album Songs & Melodies 1973-1977 collects some great pieces from the same era as Two Solo Pieces, with players including Arthur Russell, Peter Zummo, Barbara Benary, and Julius Eastman.

John Stevens: In Top Ten #2 I mentioned John Stevens’ presence on the first side of John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Life With the Lions; the Stevens-led Spontaneous Music Orchestra’s For You To Share (1973) documents his performance pieces “Sustained Piece” and “If You Want to See A Vision,” where musicians and vocalists sustain tones until they run out of breath and then begin again, which result in a highly meditative and organic drone/sound environment. In my early 00′s Digger Choir performances at Issue Project Room we did “Sustained Piece,” and Stevens’ work was a big influence on conceptualizing those concerts, where the only performers were the audience themselves. The CD reissue on Emanem from 1998 added “Peace Music,” an unreleased studio half-hour studio cut with a similar Gagaku--meets--free/modal jazz vibe. I also mentioned “Sustained Piece” in my liner notes to Natural Information Society’s Mandatory Reality too, if that helps as a point of reference.

Anthony Moore: Back in ’97 I wondered “How and why Polydor was convinced to release these albums [Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom and Scenes from the Blue Bag] is beyond me (anyone know the story)?” That mystery was ultimately solved by Benjamin Piekut in his fascinating-even-if-you-never-listen-to-these-guys book Henry Cow: The World is A Problem (Duke University Press, 2019)—it turns out it was all Deutsche Gramophone’s idea!

Terry Jennings, Maryanne Amacher, Julius Eastman--“Three Great Minimalists With No Commercially Available Recordings” (sidebar from Minimal Top Ten list #2): Happily this no longer applies to these three, although Terry and Maryanne are still under-represented. One archival recording of Jennings and Charlotte Moorman playing a short version of “Piece for Cello and Saxophone” appeared on Moorman’s 2006 Cello Anthology CD box set on Alga Marghen, and he’s on “Terry’s Cha Cha” on that 2004 John Cale New York in the 60s Table of the Elements box too. John Tilbury recorded five of his piano pieces on Lost Daylight (Another Timbre, 2010) and Charles Curtis’ version of “Song” appears on the aforementioned Performances and Recordings 1998-2018 triple CD.

Whether or not Maryanne should really be considered a Minimalist (or a sound artist, for that matter) is, I guess, debatable, but I primarily see her as the unqualified genius of the generation of composers who emerged in the post-Cage era, and the classifications ultimately don’t matter—remember she was on those Swarm of Drones/ Throne of Drones/ Storm of Drones ambient techno comps in the 90s, and I’d call her music Gothic Industrial if it would get more people to check it out (and that might be fun to try, come to think of it). She made a belated debut with the release of the Sound Characters CD on Tzadik in 1998, an event I found significant enough to warrant pitching an interview with her to the WIRE, who agreed—it was my first piece for them. Her music was/is best experienced live (the Amacher concert I saw at the Performing Garage in 1993 is still, almost three decades later, the greatest concert I’ve ever witnessed) but that Tzadik CD is reasonably representative, and there was a sequel CD on Tzadik in 2008. More recently Blank Forms issued a live recording of her two-piano piece “Petra” (a concert I also attended, realizing when I got there that it was in the same Chelsea church where Connie Burg, Melissa Weaver and I recorded with Keiji Haino for the Gerry Miles with Keiji Haino CD). While it’s somewhat anomalous in Amacher’s canon, making a piece for acoustic instruments available for home consumption would doubtless have been more palatable to the composer herself, who rightly felt that CDs and LPs didn’t do justice to the extraordinary psychoacoustic phenomena intrinsic to her electronic music. “Petra” is more reminiscent of Morton Feldman than anything else, with a few passages that could be deemed “minimal.” Some joker posted a 26-minute, ancient lo-fi “bootleg” (their term) recording of her “Living Sound, Patent Pending” piece from her Music for Sound-Joined Rooms installation/performance series on SoundCloud, which is a little like looking at a Xerox of a Xerox of a photo of the Taj Mahal; but you can still visit the Taj Mahal more easily than hearing this or any of Maryanne’s work in concert or in situ, so sadly, it’s better than nothing (and longer than the 7 minute edit of the piece on the Ohm: Early Gurus of Electronic Music CD from 2000).

A few years after Top Ten #2 I was on the phone with an acquaintance at New World Records, who told me he was listening to a Julius Eastman tape that they were releasing as part of a 3CD set. Say what?!?!? Unjust Malaise appeared shortly thereafter and was a revelation. Arnold Dreyblatt had sent me a live tape some time before then of an Eastman piece labeled “Gangrila”—that turned out to be “Gay Guerrilla,” and is surely one of my five favorite pieces of music in existence (the tape Arnold sent was from the 1980 Kitchen European tour and I consider it to be a more moving performance than the Chicago concert that appears on the CD, although it’s an inferior recording). The other multiple piano pieces on Unjust Malaise more than lived up to the descriptions of Eastman performances that I’d read. The somewhat berserk piano concert I mentioned in that entry seems similar to another live tape issued as The Zurich Concert (New World, 2017), and “Femenine,” a piece performed by the S.E.M. Ensemble, came out on Frozen Reeds in 2016. Eastman’s rediscovery is among the most vital and gratifying developments of recent music history--kudos must be given to Mary Jane Leach, herself a Minimalist composer, for diligently and doggedly tracking down Eastman’s recordings and archival materials and bringing them to the light of day.

The Lost Jockey—I was unaware of any releases by this group besides their Crepuscule LP until I stumbled onto a self-titled cassette from 1983 on YouTube. Like the album, the highlight is a piece by Orlando Gaugh--an all-time great Philip Glass rip-off, “Buzz Buzz Buzz Went the Honeybee,” which has the amusing added bonus of having the singers intoning the rather bizarre title phrase as opposed to Glassian solfège. Also like the album, he rest of the cassette is so-so Pop Minimalism.

Earth: Dylan Carlson keeps on keepin’ on, and while I can’t say I’ve kept up with him every step of the way, usually when I check in I’m glad I did. However I’d like to take this opportunity to humbly disavow the snarky comments about Sunn 0))) I made in this entry in Top Ten list #3. Those were a reflection of my general aversion to hype, which was surrounding them at the time, and of seeing two shows that in retrospect were unrepresentative (I was thunderstruck by a later show I saw in Mexico City in 2009). Stephen O’Malley has proven to be as genuinely curious, dedicated and passionate about drone and other experimental music as they come, and the reissue of the mind-blowing Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea on his Ideologic Organ label is a good reminder of how rooted Minimalism is in ethnic music, and how almost interchangeable certain examples of both can be.

And while we’re in revisionist mode, let’s go full circle all the way back to the very first sentence of the introduction to the first Minimal Top Ten: “I know what you’re thinking: ECM Records, New Age, Eno ambients, NPR, Tangerine Dream. Well forget all that shit.” Hey, that stuff’s not so bad! I was probably directing that more at the experimental-phobic indie rock folks I encountered at the time, and expressing a lingering resentment towards the genre-confusion of the 80s (i.e. having dig through a bunch of Kitaro records in the New Age bins in hopes of finding Reich, Riley, or Glass; even Loren Mazzacane got tagged New Age once in a while back then, believe it or not), which probably hindered my own discovery of Minimalism. What can I say, I’m over it!

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adabassist · 4 years

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NOT EXACTLY THE SUMMER OF ‘69, BUT I WAS NEVER AS COOL AS BRYAN ADAMS ANYWAY

Recently someone asked me how I ended up a bass player. I forget what I told them, but it was short, sweet, and long on understatement. The real answer is a lot more complicated.

My earliest memory is from before I was 2 (yep, 2 - believe it or don’t), sitting at the 70-year-old upright piano we got for free from a garage sale down the street, pounding on the low keys, because they made this GLORIOUSLY ENORMOUS SOUND… To this day, I cannot recall ever hearing an upright piano where the notes were as big sounding, although I’m sure my small ears had a skewed sensory experience compared to later years.

We (I have an older sister and brother) would play a musical piano game called “Thunderstorm”, where we would try to recreate the thunder (lower 1/3 of the keyboard), lightning (middle 1/3), and rain (higher 1/3) associated with a big storm (our parents were thrilled). I remember trying to pound on the higher keys in desperation, wondering why they lacked a powerful sound no matter how hard I hit them. I began to see the notes played in terms of size, with the lowest notes “appearing” to be largest in my mind’s eye.

Before long, I could hear how certain notes sounded good together - just octaves and fifths at first, then other “hip” intervals like a minor 7th (though I had no name for that interval in my head - I just liked the sound). I even wrote a song called “Dun” somewhere along the line, played with the index finger on each hand; left hand stayed on G (same pitch as a G string on a bass), and right hand moved between D, E, and F. “Dun” got its name because I played it so often that my siblings would mock me by singing that song back to me: “DUN DUN DU-DUN DUN DU-DU-DU-DUN DUN….”

You could say that my fate was sealed.

I would regularly sit down at the piano and play whatever my heart desired. Back then I had never taken piano lessons, and had no idea how to read or even what was “proper” to be played on a piano. I just figured stuff out when I felt like it, and otherwise just had fun learning the sonic relationships between the keys. But I thought I was pretty good anyway. I even used to make “tickets” for the family (markers, scissors, and construction paper) and make them “attend my concerts” from time to time. Let’s just say I wasn’t a big hit.

I auditioned for the school talent show in 1st grade, figuring I was a shoo-in, regardless of what my family thought (lousy philistines). I got through to the 2nd audition, and upon completion, the music teacher said, “That’s not what you played for the first audition. Can you play that song?” I said no, because everything I play is all off the top of my head. I didn’t make the talent show, and I remember thinking how “rinky-dink” the songs were by the people who did get to perform…

Somewhere along the line, I learned the names of the notes, and even found out that I could do a neat trick: if my sister played a note on the piano, I could name it - every time. I was so good at it that she was sure I was cheating or peeking, so I was marched into the next room to continue the game. This of course changed nothing; I had discovered that I could simply name the notes upon hearing them. I didn’t know what perfect pitch was, but I had it. When my cousin - well-recognized at his school for being a talented violinist - came to visit, and couldn’t do the same trick as I could, he got more than a little annoyed. But that’s the nature of perfect pitch; you can develop it to a degree, but largely, you either got it or you don’t.

I was about nine when I found a harmonica in a box in our garage, brand-new, no idea what it was doing there. I began to play with it and discovered that the same scale I played on the piano was also recognizable on a harmonica! I had never played another instrument before, and I was enthralled. After a while I got the idea that I could play the harmonica and the piano at the same time, so I went into the living room with the harmonica and sat down at the piano. Blew a C chord on the harp, and played a C note on the piano.

YUCK. That sounded AWFUL.

I couldn’t understand it - the harmonica was clearly marked “C” (this might be what gave me the idea to try them together). But the “C” on the harmonica didn’t sound good at ALL with the “C” on the piano.

Turns out the piano was tuned exactly one half-step flat. Possibly because it had spent most of its life in the salty air near the San Francisco Bay, and the soundboard had rotted just enough that it couldn’t keep strings at tension or pitch anymore. Tuning it so it at least played in tune with itself was a logical decision.

But it forever skewed my sense of what a “C” actually sounded like in my head. To this day, I refer to my condition as “IMPERFECT pitch”.

I did figure out that if I played a Db scale on the piano, it worked well with the harmonica, but it was too difficult to wrap my brain and hands around all of that when the piano was ten feet from the front door, and comings and goings were a constant distraction. So the harmonica went the way of the bread machine you got as a gift sometime around the turn of the 21st century: stashed away in a box, likely never again to see the light of day.

Not long after that, my mother asked me if I’d like to take piano lessons. Just out of the blue. I don’t even remember why she asked, or how she knew the person I was to take lessons from, but I thought it was a brilliant idea! A little structure, a little edification, learning to read and play actual songs instead of the meandering stuff I already knew how to do. Great! I’m sure I was one of the very few kids in my town who was excited about piano lessons. But I enjoyed them, and there’s no doubt they helped me many years down the road, as any professional musician who took piano lessons as a kid can attest to.

One day I was visiting a friend, who had been gifted an old nylon string guitar. He didn’t play it, keep it in tune, or want much of anything to do with it, really. I started messing around with it, and I realized that the frets were the same 1/2 steps I played on the piano! As long as I accounted for the “black keys” by jumping 2 frets instead of 1, I could play a major scale on any single string, no matter how it was tuned or not-tuned. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know how to tune a guitar; just seeing the relationship between frets and 1/2 steps was enough to make me see notes in a whole new light.

When I was trusted enough to ride my bike downtown (about 3.5 miles from home on roads with sketchy bike lanes), I began renting instruments for a month at a time to see if I could make them sound good. Woodwinds, mostly - clarinet, flute, alto sax. There was that same major scale, easy to play in one key, difficult to figure out in others, plus the weird keys weren’t logical - if I wanted a note to be sharp or flat, I had to press some random key that seemingly had nothing to do with the order of notes. It made no sense to me, I had no idea what I was doing, and at the end of the month, I traded it in for another instrument. This cycle of “lather, rinse, repeat” went on for several months until one day when my brother arrived home with a bass, a guitar, and a big amp.

The sound coming out of his bedroom was INCREDIBLE. Warm yet exciting, like a smoldering fire with a little bit more residual energy than is safe. I was totally enthralled - here was an instrument that I could see made sense already, sounded fabulous, and vaguely reminded me of the lowest notes on the upright piano. I said, “THAT’S what I wanna play!” But my mom said NO - she was not going to have her sons fighting over the same instrument, especially because we already fought over everything else. My brother chose bass first; I got to play the guitar instead.

Playing guitar was pretty cool, actually - it was a cheap japanese red Flying V knockoff, difficult to wield, barely stayed in tune, but it was COOL. A little distortion, a little reverb (only used sparingly because I hated hearing my mistakes echo), and I had a good time. I had my little practice area in the basement next to my brother’s bedroom, and I played an awful lot. But to be honest, it always felt a little… weak. Like trying to throw a cotton ball. Yes, you could get angry and loud, but there was something missing. And every so often, I’d get the urge to sneak into my brother’s room and play his new bass (the first was apparently just a rental) when he wasn’t around. And every so often, I’d get caught, and I’d get “scared straight” for a month or two (my brother was built like a Sherman tank, and I looked more like Chunk with long hair). But the urge would always return, and the cycle would repeat itself. Until one fateful day…

I was in 8th grade, and I took the bus to school. My brother went to the high school half a mile away, so he was always home first. So when I walked in the front door, I could hear his bass booming through the ductwork like always, and like always, that made me want to play my guitar. So, like always, I dumped my school bag, full of assignments that would be ignored until morning like always, by the door and headed for the basement.

I never noticed that the bass notes stopped at some point; all I remember is descending the short staircase that led to the lower level, making a sharp U-turn as I prepared to go down into the basement, and jumping back out of the way because A BASS was flying through the air, up the stairs, right at me. I was fast enough to avoid it, and it hit the floor HARD in front of me. I immediately peeked around the door jamb down the stairs, and saw my brother stomping towards his bedroom door.

So I called down: “Hey - do you want this bass anymore?”

My brother hollered “NOOOOOOO!” and slammed his bedroom door behind him.

I looked back at the bass, and thought, Great! So I grabbed it and ran downstairs, plugged it into my guitar amp (quietly, I knew better), and for the first time in recorded history, played a bass in my house with something tantamount to permission.

And it was GLORIOUS. Bottom end! Like the piano upstairs, but BIGGER! Notes made sense, I could find my way around because I’d played guitar, and the stuff I’d been trying to play on those other instruments - piano, guitar, clarinet, sax, flute, recorder, even the harmonica - was much better suited for the electric bass, and I finally GOT that. Here was the sound I’d heard in my head for 10 years married to the notes I wanted to play for 10 years, and my fingers were causing it to happen.

And somewhere in that 23-minute span, I remember feeling - not hearing, feeling - a Voice in my head, and it spoke to me with absolute clarity: you remember this moment, because this is what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.

I say 23 minutes because I always got home at 3:20, it took about 2 minutes to shed my coat and bag and head downstairs, and my practice area clock said 3:45 when my brother tore open his door and came around the corner, snarling, “GIMME MY BASS BACK.” And so I did. But the wheels had been set in motion; 23 minutes of bass playing versus years of piano, guitar, and everything else… there was no contest.

So I talked things over with my mom (and mentioned in passing what my brother had done with his beautiful new bass), and that Christmas there was a wonderful new Ibanez Roadstar II bass and a Fender Bassman 20 amp. Within a week I had nickel-sized blisters on 7 different fingertips, and that wasn’t enough to get me to slow down. They started calling me Froggy Fingers when I went back to school after Christmas break. I didn’t care. I finally had to take a scissors to my blisters because callouses were forming over the top of them, the swelling wouldn’t go down, they didn’t hurt at all, and I could barely pick things up because my fingertips were so deformed. But away I went on the bass, spending 6-7 hours every night playing in my corner of the basement (and watching my already piss-poor grades get even worse - I graduated with an academic GPA of 1.6).

This was my solace; this was my everything. All the other things that had gone wrong or were currently going wrong in my life mattered a lot less once I had a bass to play. Maybe that’s why I played so much. There wasn’t much else going on for me to be excited about at that time in my life, and playing music - playing a BASS - gave me an outlet for my passion, my frustration, my energy, my creativity, and created a drive to improve and be really good at something for a change. And I knew it was going to happen because It Made Sense. It still does. Nearly 4 decades later, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

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cecilspeaks · 7 years

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Episode 106 - Filings

Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? Tell me more about your special bird powers. Welcome to Night Vale.

It’s been a long couple of weeks, as the city-wide emergency sirens that signal illegal public acknowledgement of angels have been blaring almost nonstop. But in spite of these archaic laws, I’ve been shouting “You’re an angel!” at beings who look like angels and then making my most friendly finger-pointing gesture.

The beings who call themselves angels because… that’s what they are, have begun filing the paperwork for official existence. The angels are still at the Hall of Public Records downtown waiting in line. They have made it to the front of line three different times, but each time, they were told they were missing a key form of ID or pre-application paperwork, or that the cameras could not record their image. They weren’t told his using words, the Records Hall clerk just stabbed their paperwork repeatedly with scissors and then got a massive nosebleed, which is how they know their application was declined.

Other citizens waiting have grown restless. As they do not acknowledge the existence of angels, the next person in line keeps walking up to a seemingly empty window, only to be brushed away by a clerk, or an angel. These citizens have begun shouting and crumbling and curling into little balls and sobbing, as large glowing cracks appear in the ceiling.

It’s been several days of waiting in line for the angels. We’ll check back in on them soon.

Oh, I have a new intern, listeners. He’s a fine-looking young man with a beautiful voice, I think he’ll have a great future in radio. I’ve been trying to ask him his name or who hired him. I certainly don’t remember beginning the search for a new intern, he just appeared this morning and started working without a single word. Which is the most professional behavior for anyone beginning a new job. Well, he seems hard at work, even if every time I address him he doesn’t notice me. It’s great having a competent replacement for Kareem, even if I have no idea how this new intern got here and who he is. As long as the filing is getting done.

Alondra Ortiz, daughter of Josefina Ortiz who passed away last month, has carried on her fight against the angels. The angels are claiming ownership of Old Woman Josie’s estate, since they lives with her and helped her build the many artistic monuments and cultural foundations around town. Alondra said she doesn’t care if angels are acknowledged or not. If they want to be recognized, fine, but Alondra and her lawyer, Emilio Tavarez have filed motions to maintain ownership of Alondra’s mother’s home, belongings, money, and memories. Just because a bunch of imaginary tall people with wings helped Josie change the lightbulbs from time to time, Tavarez said, that’s no reason they are considered next of kin. Tavarez told judge Siobhan Azdaq: “If they don’t exist, we must get kissed.” Judge Azdaq replied: “Emilio, it’s been four years. I’m remarried. We’re done, OK?”

The angels have hired five-headed dragon Miriam Adelman as their counsel, who issued a literally scathing response. Alondra is now suing Adelman and her team for medical bills resulting from second degree burns. Alondra has already put Josie’s home up for sale. She is willing to offer rebates for pre-existing damage, such as a series of large glowing slits in the walls that lead to rooms that aren’t… possible, according to the official floor plan, nor the laws of physics. These rooms range from a 17th century ball room to a crow’s nest on a modern nazy destroyer to the space shuttle. Plus, anachronistic people keep wandering in and out of these portals. She added, “On second thought, since the house has more usable square footage than originally anticipated, and because there appear to be current renters”, she’s raising the sale price.

So I just sent my new intern to go pick up some lunch. Or at least I said, “Excuse me young man whose name I don’t know yet who I only think works here, can you go grab me a cobb salad with extra whipped cream and pencil shavings from the Missing Frog Salad Bar? He didn’t say yes, nor did he ever seem to see or hear me, but he did look really frightened and ran from the room crying, which was such a polite and respectful gesture to his superior. What a nice young man. Dresses kind of weird though, so early 80’s, with his double Windsor striped tie, polyester coat and aviator goggles, just like we all wore back in the day. I supposed most things eventually come back in fashion. Well, I can only assume he heard my lunch order. I’m starving.

Faceless Old Woman: You’re starving? Try not having a mouth.

Cecil: Oh my god, you scared me. [chuckles] Listeners, we have an unplanned visit from the Faceless Old Woman who secretly lives in your home. Or I guess in this case, your radio studio while you’re still on the air.

FOW: Cecil, we need to talk about the Distant Prince.

Cecil: Few dare to speak at him, so as not to draw his attention. What do you know?

FOW: His harbingers are here. They are prepared to announce his arrival with their long, toothy beaks. They’re stomach-eyes see all. They’ve been rehearsing this announcement in their room at the Hampton Inn on Route 800. They’ve been writing and rewriting their grand pronouncement and teaching it to the court shriekers to shriek out to all of Night Vale.

Cecil: What does that mean?

FOW: What, “shriek”? It’s like a painful yell. Like this: [disturbing scream] Meanwhile, the mangled servants are gathering the ears of important Night Vale politicians.

Cecil: Gross.

FOW: Right? And they will sew the ears onto the walls of the Hampton Inn continental breakfast bar and use them as portals into many dimensions at once. Their plan is to destroy time itself and collapse Night Vale into a dead singularity.

Cecil: Why do they want to do this?

FOW: It was suggested to him by a nice young woman from out of town.

Cecil: What young woman?

FOW: She.. she.. [music distorts, evil voice] The woman from Italy brings fun and jest, consuming all souls until none are left. Distant Prince and she plan the terrible plot: destroying all that is until all is not. I met her in dreams and found a dear friend, a woman a mortal mind can’t comprehend. No guard controls her, no physics can hold her, she’ll set the world on fire but leave you all colder. [music distorts back to normal] Yeah, she and I are best friends now. She’s a lot of fun, really good poet. I gotta go. Steve Carlsberg is back home, and I wanna stand behind him in the mirror when he bends down to wash his face. His shrieks are the funniest.

Cecil: Oh aha hahaha, dumb old Steve! Be nice, OK?

We are getting reports that a dense fog is now pouring from a giant glowing slash in the sky above the Rec Center. Some pteranodons have flown out of it, as well as a commercial airliner. And those who entered the fog reported hearing shouts, blood-curdling streams, and even the echo of drums. But there’s also the Battle of the Bands sound check happening right now at the Rec Center, so it’s probably just that. Either way, keep a close eye out for these apparent tears in the fabric of our reality. Also, go check out the Battle of the Bands. I think Diane Crayton’s son Josh and his boyfriend Grant are organizing that event.

And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s show is brought to by a grey pigeon, whispering to you from your neighbor’s backyard. The pigeon – his name is Alfonso – is telling you that you are the one true God. [serene voice] And that he wants you to bring it a body part. A human body part. Doesn’t matter which part. Just do it. [ominously] Soon. [serenely] “Time’s almost gone. The Bible was wrong,” the pigeon added, suddenly from your right shoulder. “There never was a beginning.” This has been a word from our sponsors.

Reports continue from the last few weeks of people all over Night Vale experiencing false realities. The most believable visions are those of tall winged beings roaming the streets and asking to borrow 10 bucks. City Council is issuing daily press releases, claiming the existence of angels is impossible and illegal. City Council is threatening to no longer speak to anyone who acknowledges the so-called angels. “You are uninvited to our birthday party,” today’s press release reads. “Too bad, there will be karaoke and minigolf. Your loss, angel acknowledger!”

A series of fissures in reality have begun to open up, revealing truths that should never have existed. Like the 12th century Scottish castle sitting atop the stables over on Galloway. Frances Donaldson at the Antiques Mall reports suddenly knowing how to play the piano, when before she only knew how to play keyboard. Larry Leroy out on the edge of town came home to find his wife, Chrysette, mowing the lawn. But he was never married. He last saw Chrysette in high school, when they were both in the lurching band together. And fired chief Ramona Encarnacion said she found a rock in the shape of Harry Styles’ liver. “I don’t know how Harry is getting by without his liver,” Incarnassian said. “Or given how much mud was on this thing, how he was ever getting by with it.”

Night Vale, beware the untruths which attempt to dismantle our town. Stay vigilent, read your journals, look at your photographs. Do your best to remember what is real.

Oh man, speaking of real, I’m real hungry. I wish my intern would get back soon with my salad. It’s been forever since he… Oh, wait. He left his wallet behind. Well, strike one, new intern. How are you supposed to buy lunch if you don’t take any money? Hope he has some cash in his pockets.

I’ll be so annoyed if lunch is late. Ah, this is a pretty nice wallet. Trifold, ooh photo pages, human leather, money clip. I used to have one just like this. maybe let’s find out more about you, kiddo. Let’s see. Bowling league card. Ooh, I love bowling. Young reporter’s league membership. Wow, it’s after my own heart. Photos of him with a young man he could probably be related to and, is that my… who are you? Where’s your driver’s license? Oh God. This can’t.. this can’t be. This here... just…

Uh, OK, here’s the weather while I sort this out.

[“All or Nothing” by the Dream Masons]

My new intern never made it back. He never left, or maybe, was never hear at all. Or maybe still is here after all these years.

After finding his… my… ID in his wallet, I ran out after him. But before I even got out of the building, I found him in the restroom. The door was slightly cracked and the light was on. I heard a voice, a familiar young voice. “Leonard said if I work hard, maybe I’ll be a radio presenter myself some day,” said the voice. I was so frightened but still I looked into the washroom, and he was standing in front of a mirror looking right at himself. I never look into those things, or at least I haven’t in a long time.

“I think the radio station is fun,” he said. “I think the radio station is hidden. I think the radio station is like a dark planet lit by no sun. I think, therefore I soon won’t be,” he said. I wanted to cry out to warn him. My mother told me to stay away from mirrors, and I knew he was in danger. I opened my mouth and tried to step in the room, but I could not speak, could not move forward.

“I’m looking in the mirror,” he said. “The mirror is not covered,” he said. “Stop! Don’t look into the mirror!” I tried to say, but nothing came out of my mind, only spit and inaudible wheeze. Tears stung my eyes. I waved frantically, trying to catch his attention.

“The flickering movement is just behind me,” he said, and then he looked right at me in the mirror. His eyes grew wide and wet. He said, “I…” He said again, “I…” and then he choked. Then he screamed, then I screamed, only again no sound came out. He fell to the floor, and for a moment, I remembered. I remembered blue lights and blood in my throat, and the dark planet lit by no sun and then I forgot it. Or at least what it looked like or, only that it was, or never was or it still is.

His wallet was no longer in my studio, his… my… driver’s license was no longer in my hand, my familiar teenage intern was no longer lying on the ground. The mirror he was looking into is now shattered into thousands of intersecting cracks like parched desert dirt.

I approached the mirror, hoping to see a face I knew: a young man’s face I just barely remember. But I only saw a multiplicity of me, a man divided, unrecognizably under razor-sharp grounds, and behind me a glowing slash in the bathroom wall. When I turned, the whole in reality was gone. Only plain gray subway tiles.

I don’t know what is real. Myself as a younger intern, the Woman from Italy, these holes in reality. Harry Stiles’ liver. Harry Stiles. Are any of these things real?

One thing I know is real were the angels. After hours of waiting in line, their paperwork has been officially filed, with the Hall of Public Records, and a hearing date scheduled sometime between the last Friday of this month, and the last Friday of 2023.

Night Vale. Reality is failing us. And strange forces are gathering. The Distant Prince, the Woman from Italy. The dragons. Huntokar.

I don’t know what we can do to save a failing reality, I only know, uh… We can make real that which we acknowledge and accept. Angels are real, Night Vale. The actuality of people we rarely see or interact with may seem unimportant as fissures in our world, threatening to collapse anything we know but – if you see an angel, tell them you see them. Tell them they are real. Point at them and shout: “You’re. An. Angel!” we can only make real what we accept as real,. Tell them, OK?

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Good things come to those who wait. Good things come slithering down the unctuous brown stone walls to those who wait alone in the dark pit.

#welcome to night vale #wtnv #wtnv transcripts #episode 106 #filings

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studionotesonline1 · 2 years

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Best Music Making And Music Writing Software For Windows

A music blog dedicated to those who wish to study music in a variety of categories. From concepts in music theory to the composers and other important people throughout the major periods in music history.

As a specialist in the instrumental field of music, I have included an in-depth buying guide category for those interested in a new musical instrument. Along with the tutorials, you will find articles that feature various people, places, and things in music.

#music writing software #Alesis Melody 61 #Piano Keyboards For Sale Near Me #Trombone Mute #Sony MDR ZX110 Headphones #Sony ZX110 #Sony ZX Series Wired On Ear Headphones

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO YAHOO

Great things happen when a group of friends, and it will be hard to catch. One of the principles the IRS uses in deciding whether to major in applied math. Agriculture, cities, and industrialization all spread widely. As it widens out into a pyramid to match the accelerating rate at which it stops? If someone were creating an Internet-based TV company from scratch now, they might have some plan for shows aimed at specific regions, but it did not. But what's everything? For programmers we had three additional tests.1 Those are like experiments that get inconclusive results. In the channel era, both flowed down from the top. If you spend all your time programming, you will fail.2 So despite those millions in the bank, you're still poor. How can the richest country in the world look like this?

But that part, I'm convinced, is a mistake. Bittorrent and YouTube have already trained a new generation of viewers that the place to watch shows is on a computer screen. So it's kind of misleading to ask whether you'll be at home in computer science. When I was running a startup, and startups were selling them for a year's salary a copy. A Plan for Spam I hadn't had to think about the initial stages of a startup as a giant experiment.3 How do you figure out what you truly like. Look around you and see what the smart people seem to have been two given at the same time twist and turn to find the most common question people ask is how many employees you have. It would be too easy for clients to fire them. They want to know what they're going to build something, they want to be their research assistants because they're genuinely interested in the topic. Why not in design generally?4 Food has been transformed by a combination of factory farming and innovations in food processing into something with way more immediate bang for the buck, and you can do in college, whether you want to do something audacious.

I didn't hear the speech, but I have no way to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Notice anything missing? That may seem utopian, but it's not hard. The other thing I like about this idea, but they know better than to use it themselves. Microsoft a lot starting in the 90s. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do in the future had few fonts and they weren't antialiased. A button that looks like it will make the spammers' optimization loop, what programmers would call their edit-compile-test cycle, appallingly slow.5 Hardy said that's what got him started, and I remember well the strange, cozy feeling that comes over one during meetings. Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you'll take.6 What hadn't I written about yet?

It's an Emotional Roller-coaster This was another one lots of people were surprised by that. All such work tends to be related, in that you have to be learned, and are sometimes fairly counterintuitive. Studio art and creative writing courses are wildcards.7 What I didn't understand before going into it is that persistence is the name of the university one went to is treated by a lot of catalog companies, because selling online was a natural extension of their existing business. The closest is the colloquial sense of addictive. You have to seem confident, and you get what you deserve.8 It is never a single thing. Most hacker-founders would like to solve the money problem once and for all instead of working for a software company to pay off my college loans. Business plan has that word business in it, so I was curious to hear what had surprised her most about it. For example, the president notices that a majority of voters now think invading Iraq was a mistake. If some new technique makes solar cells x% more efficient, that seems clearly a net lose. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we lose the original sense of the word thesis, the better.

What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that a dollar from them is worth one dollar. Ideally you want between two and four founders. My current development machine is a MacBook Air, which I use with an external monitor and keyboard in my office, and by itself when traveling. Their reputation with programmers used to be an adult.9 Even good products can be blocked by switching or integration costs: Getting people to use a new service is incredibly difficult.10 And while there are many popular books on math, few seem good. Their union has exacted pay increases and work restrictions that would have been: basically, nothing.

At sales I was not very good. Once you've got a company set up, it wears you out: Your most basic advice to founders is just don't die, but the boring stuff you do in school under the name mathematics is not at all, by the same random factors that have driven it so far, but 3 that these factors will be increasingly outweighed by the pull of existing startup hubs. Essays should do the opposite.11 Where is the man bites dog in that?12 Indeed, you can lose a million dollars as much as you want, but not too many, and only if they're not flakes.13 It's the same with technology. But one thing that might work is to volunteer as a research assistant.14 And being a boss is also horribly frustrating; half the time it's easier just to do stuff yourself than to get someone else to do it well, because the number of sufficiently good founders starting companies, and facing similar obstacles at similar times.15

Notes

Wave. As a friend with small children, or to be some things it's a problem that I hadn't had much success in doing a bad idea has been decreasing globally.

The best thing they can be fooled by grammar.

In practice you can eliminate, do not generally hire themselves out to be in college.

You're going to do, but I have to resort to expedients like selling autographed copies, or at least for those interested in x, and they have wings and start to rise again. Vii. My guess is the case of the rest have mostly raised money at first you make, which people used to hear from them.

Quite often at YC I find myself asking founders Would you use the word wealth, not eating virtuously. In fact any 'x for engineers' sucks, and why it's such a baleful stare as they seem like a body cavity search by someone else start those startups. Incidentally, this idea is the thesis of this desirable company, you might have done and try to accept a particular valuation, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been with their decision—just that everyone's visual piano has that key on it, then invest in so many had been campaigning for the manager of the startup is a self fulfilling prophecy. So 80 years sounds to me like someone in 1880 that schoolchildren in 1980 would be too quick to reject candidates with skeletons in their racks for years while they tried to raise more, while Columella iii.

People who know the inventor of something or the presumably larger one who shouldn't?

If near you, they were going back to the code you write software in Lisp, they are by ways that have economic inequality to turn into other forms of inequality, and an haughty spirit before a consortium of investors are interested in graphic design, Byrne's Euclid. No one seems to them, not more.

Abstract-sounding nonsense seems to have, however. In the Valley. Above. Living on instant ramen, which handled orders.

In practice most successful startups.

It creates very bad behaviors/instincts that are only pretending to in the beginning even they don't have the determination myself. Cit.

Many famous works of their name, but no more than whatever collection of stuff to be promising. Make sure it works on all the other hand, they compete on tailfins. Com of their growth from earnings.

But it's dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was. Give the founders realized.

According to Michael Lind, when they set up grant programs to encourage more startups in this they're perfect. VCs want it to colleagues.

I know randomly generated DNA would not be if Steve hadn't come back within x amount of stock. But those too are acceptable or at such a baleful stare as they are to be writing with conviction. Yes, it may be that the feature was useless, but this advantage isn't as obvious because it doesn't change the world.

Few technologies have one.

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projectalbum · 6 years

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Art is Resistance. 149. “With Teeth” (Halo 19), 150. “Year Zero” (Halo 24), 151. “Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D” (Halo 25), 152. “Ghosts I-IV” (Halo 26), 153. “The Slip” (Halo 27) by Nine Inch Nails

The 6-year gap between Nine Inch Nails studio albums saw the Internet become truly ascendant in popular culture, for better and worse.

Napster took a bite from the music industry and was put down like a mad dog. The Pirate Bay first unfurled its flag. Radio play and music videos were still the main avenue for displaying the wares of major label musicians to the general public, and success was still measured in units of CDs sold, but more and more people were becoming hip to the underground access provided by a DSL modem.

But the power of the Web to empower artists and connect them to their fans still evaded most of the recording industry; honchos and artists alike were largely clueless. Trent Reznor, the big ol’ nerd, was a notable exception. Posting on early message boards on Prodigy, embracing torrents, creating an online gateway for the band’s fans, leaking material from the archives, experimenting with an optional-pay release, even being an early adopter of Twitter— it was a white-hot fiber optic cable running through the life of the band. While this technological engagement didn’t always translate into sales (The Fragile was considered a financial disappointment), it was a 21st century incarnation of the connection between what the artist creates and how the audience consumes it, internalizes it, and hopefully finds some emotional release in it.

This uneasy alliance between organic emotion and technological chilliness is reflected in this era of Nine Inch Nails’ aesthetic, both musically and through the packaging. Where Downward Spiral and Fragile dealt in decaying earth tones, the releases starting with 2005’s reemergent With Teeth (#149) are shades of blue, black, ghost white, and slate gray, dirtied up by belching factory smoke, or distorted by broken pixels and lines of computer code. The songs are likewise colored by pulsating synth accents, digital distortion, hums and drones and beats. The instrumental stems for Reznor’s compositions were offered up to remixers both professional and amateur, so that even the boundary of artist and audience member became liminal. He had his carefully constructed versions of “The Hand That Feeds” and “Only,” but suggested that there were infinite alternate permutations to be created at the click of a button. For the once angry, brooding Prince of Industrial Rock, it was downright egalitarian.

“All The Love In The World,” a title that might suggest a big-hearted power ballad on a cornier band’s track list, is in Reznor’s hands an electronica-inflected paranoid dirge. Where crunchy guitars would have provided the backbone in the past, here woozy piano figures are the main melodic backup to the vocal, before shifting into driving major chords to signal minute 3’s complete tonal transformation. With its layers of harmonizing Trents, it’s completely unlike anything else in the band’s repertoire, but it was the perfect next course to stimulate my appetite. And then Dave Grohl’s superhuman drumming on “You Know What You Are?” kicked me through the door. The wailing chorus presented an aggressive musical release for me that I’d never had access to before.

“Right Where It Belongs,” the keyboard-driven closing track, is spooky and introspective, and one of the best songs in NiN’s catalogue. A stripped-down, electric piano and vocal version, originally exclusive to the Japanese release but eventually uploaded by Reznor to his website, captures that dark night of the soul uncertainty even better. This recording made its way into the end credits of my senior thesis film, at the point where it was obvious it wasn’t going to go anywhere and that I should at least put copyrighted stuff I liked into it. I also set a live version against grainy deleted footage from Pink Floyd - The Wall, a mashup I figure ol’ Trent would appreciate (the idea was to then do the reverse, matching “Hey You” to the visuals cut together for NiN’s stage show, but the result wasn’t as compelling).

I don’t have any supporting evidence, but Year Zero (#150) may well have been the first time I ever plunked down money for a physical copy of a NiN CD. Also lacking sufficient empirical backup: I’m convinced this speculative fiction about an increasingly plausible American dystopia represents some of Reznor’s strongest songwriting. Inhabiting characters like a brainwashed foot soldier, an underground Resistance fighter, a religiously-inflamed demagogue, even a judgmental alien intelligence, he moves away from the diary page introspection that could occasionally curdle into lyrics of questionable taste (Sorry, please don’t slip on all the tears I’ve made you cry).

The release of the album was notably attached to a labyrinthine “Alternate Reality Game” campaign, with in-character websites, USB drives hidden at concerts, and music videos with secret messages, adding plot strands and world building to the lyrics. (I missed the boat on all that, but the work that the same marketing company did for The Dark Knight was sure something to experience.) All of which would be near-impenetrable, if the actual music wasn’t so compelling. You don’t have to read the wiki pages to feel the apocalyptic beats and glitchy cacophony of “HYPERPOWER!,” “The Good Soldier,” and to pump your fist to the chorus of “Survivalism.” “I got my propaganda / I got revisionism” hits harder in a time, 10 years on from the album’s release, in which the most powerful voices in the U.S. government disregard reality on the reg, occasionally try to downplay the Holocaust. “Capital G,” a gleefully sociopathic near-rap by the forces of greed, could soundtrack one of Paul Ryan’s dead-eyed workout photoshoots.

“In This Twilight” and “Zero Sum” are the shattering two-part coda, in which the squabbling remnants of humanity face the end, whether by divine intervention or nuclear fire. The first juxtaposes crunchy, distorted percussion and fuzzed-out bass with perhaps the most perversely light and melodic vocal performance Reznor has ever delivered. He’s singing about encroaching extinction, but in a blissed-out religious reverie, optimistic for the afterlife. The character at the center of the closing track is not so sure: this is the End of this ridiculous human experiment, and we’ve brought oblivion on ourselves. “Shame on us / For all we have done / And all we ever were.” There’s the Nine Inch Nails nihilism we know and love!

Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (#151) filters the previous album through Hip-Hop and EDM, to uneven effect. The collection of remixes never quite sustains the highs established by the first two tracks: Saul Williams’ fiery rap verses turn the instrumental “HYPERPOWER!” into a polemic against a legacy of American violence, “Gunshots by Computer,” while modwheelmood frees the vocals of “The Great Destroyer” from the squealing synth breakdown and creates a whole new paranoid anthem. While it’s also interesting to hear the Kronos Quartet reinterpret “Another Version of the Truth,” the rest is largely skippable. The physical set includes a DVD with the multitracks for the original Year Zero recordings, so you too can fuck with the raw materials! (I’ve been trying to remix things for years, and I’m awful at it, but it’s fun to hear the individual instrumentation.)

After freeing himself lyrically from his old methodology, the next release from Reznor eschewed words and melody completely. Ghosts I-IV (#152) is nearly 2 hours of ambient experimentation, a precursor to the Oscar-winning film scores with Atticus Ross (a few tracks were literally reworked for The Social Network, and several others continue to be licensed for film and documentaries). The buzzsaw distortions, dark piano chords, oddly organic synthesizers, and industrial beats identify it as a NiN record even in the absence of vocals. Though good luck recommending your favorite tracks, with titles like “26 Ghosts III” and “09 Ghosts I” not exactly sticking in the memory.

The Slip (#153), originally released free of charge, is more of a return-to-form. Arguably too familiar— it’s essentially With Teeth Part 2, but leaner and meaner. It’s not held in especially high regard, but it was there right at the outset of my fandom, and as such I continue to have a soft spot for it. I even bought the physical copy after years of listening to the decent quality MP3’s. “Discipline,” with its uncommonly funky bass line and high hat-favoring drum beat, is my number 1 “trying to sneak it onto a party playlist but not very successfully” NiN song. Along with the following track, “Echoplex,” the dark dance floor vibe is a preview of the sound Reznor and co would explore with How To Destroy Angels. “Lights in the Sky,” “Corona Radiata,” and “The Four of Us are Dying” create a kind of suite, insinuating and ethereal. I can understand if you bow out of that middle, 7-minute-and-33-second, ambient track before the library sample of fighting cats kicks in. But “LITS” is Reznor’s sparsest, prettiest piano lament, announcing the eminent “retirement” of Nine Inch Nails as a touring/recording entity.

Wave goodbye. They’ll be back.

#Nine Inch Nails #Trent Reznor #rock #hard rock #industrial #electronica #CDs #cd cover #album art #alternative rock #With Teeth #Year Zero

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delcanprobably · 7 years

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The Turing Test (2016) Review

The Turing Test is a first person puzzle adventure game where you play as Ava Turing (heh heh get it? Turing test?), an engineer who has been sent to a base on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moon, to discover the reason behind the sudden disappearance of the ground crew there. When you arrive, however, you find that the crew has converted a set of rooms into puzzles that only a human could solve, as to keep robots out (theoretically, I’ll get to that in a bit).

This review is going to avoid blatant spoilers of anything major.

Gameplay

As aformentioned, The Turing Test is a first person puzzle game. I probably will draw a lot of similarities to games like Portal and other games in the same genre. Anyway, the main way you interact with puzzles is with your ‘Energy Manipulation Tool’ (their quotes not mine), which is essentially just a gun that allows you to sudck up power core thingies which act as batteries to power elements of the environment. You can only hold three at once and you can’t change the order they’re stacked in, so in other words if you suck up a new core, you’ll need to stick that core somewhere before you can use the other cores you’ve previously sucked up. On paper, this sounds pretty well and good, and even in the game for the most part it’s a pretty intriguing concept. There are different types of cores that you can find, some of them alternate on and off, some are only on for a short while after they’ve been placed, and it works well. Usually the puzzles are a matter of getting what is effectively a door open so that you can get through to the next puzzle, with there being 70 puzzles in total and 7 extra optional puzzles. I have some issues with the puzzles. By the end of the game, puzzles start to end up feeling like a chore. The puzzles don’t become challenging to get through like near the end of the Portal games, instead they just have so many bits tacked on that you have to take a minute or two to actually figure out what the hell is going on. And the inability to change which orb you fire out quickly becomes obsolete as you can always expect there to be three power sources for you to sort things out with. The middle of the game is where the puzzles really peak, and even then they’re not super difficult, just kinda clever. There are a lot of times where I felt like I wasn’t supposed to solve the puzzle how I did. Like how Portal speed runners sometimes do little tricks where they shoot a portal at just the right angle at just the right time so it goes through a tiny little gap and hits a wall right at the end of a puzzle. Except that seemed like the main way to solve some puzzles near the end of the game. Nevertheless, the puzzles are worthwhile, and you’ll have fun with them. The puzzles are the game’s strong point, and honestly if you just want a first person puzzle game for the intent of doing nothing but playing through puzzles, you can basically stop reading now because you’ll probably like it. It only took about 5 hours to 100% it for me, but I don’t feel like I wasted any of those five hours.

Performance and visuals

This game is made on Unreal Engine 4. As you can imagine, it looks pretty excellent, albeit most of the game does take place in sterile test chambers. Except occasionally there’s a little section in some ice, or sometimes you’re in a laboratory with lots of props and the like, and visually it really shines in those areas. And it runs great too, although the graphics menu has some questionable choices. For instance, it has these lens flares that go over a chunk of your view sometimes which I’m absolutely fine with personally, but I know that there are people who would hate them. The issue is that you can’t just disable them. You’d need to lose them along with bloom and that brightness adjustment thing where everything gets darker if you’re looking at something bright all at once. It’s only a minor thing, but it’s not that hard to put some check boxes in your menus. Everything is on a slider from Low up to Ultra, and while there’s a lot you can modify, I’d still like to be able to manually choose specifically what I enable.

Overall it’s pretty well optimised for PC.

Story

This is where everything goes to shit. The story at the start stays intact, but as you go it tries to be more and more clever, then starts being pretentious, and then everything bursts open. At the start, you’re flown onto the moon base and you go inside and “Woah!” you say “It looks like they’ve transformed the base into a series of puzzles!”. Or at least you would if it weren’t that the base’s AI, T.O.M. hadn’t of already said it. Lots of puzzle games have a robot that tells you stuff, except generally they either start off knowing as little as you do (think Weatley from Portal 2), or they start off knowing everything except they don’t have a real relationship with the player character so they don’t tell you anything (think GLaDOS from the original Portal). T.O.M is a weird mix between the two, and it just doesn’t work as well. Anyway, so T.O.M explains that he thinks the puzzles are some sort of Turing Test type thing to keep any robots and AI out, and explains that they’re too lateral for an AI to handle. That’s hilarious, considering AI would be much quicker to solve that type of test if anything. Now you’ve got that little hole in the story which is questionable, but really they didn’t do too terrible of a job explaining why there are so many puzzles on a space base for some reason. The issue comes up later, when this whole robots-can’t-do-puzzles thing contradicts itself when the writers start trying to be more clever than they actually are.

But then you get to the optional puzzles. These simply aren’t likely to ever exist in a situation like this, but for some reason, the people who built the puzzles thought “Hey, why don’t we put some audio logs behind more difficult puzzles for no apparent reason?”. It seems fine on the surface, seeing as though they wanted to include some story bits that you need to work for. Except then you go back to Portal, and remember that there’s a whole subplot you could skip hidden around the puzzles. Granted, these are a slightly different concept; they’re less direct story telling moments, but my point stands that it makes more sense in Portal.

You can ignore that, but then you’ll find that every 10th room, the people who built the puzzles thought “Hey, why don’t we keep a small section of the base with all our stuff still in it, and always put it at exactly every 10th puzzle?”. It just makes no sense, if the base was actually still being used after they built the puzzles, you’d need to go through 60 puzzles every single time you wanted to cross the god damn base! But the last 20 you probably won’t be doing, because they literally make zero sense if you think about it. To put it spoiler free, you need to start taking advantage of robots and AI to get through a set of puzzles designed to keep robots and AI out.

And then the game starts asking that you show some emotion for the characters near the end, even though they’re all mentally retarded. They want you to think that the robot is mean and heartless and other bad things, but really he’s the only one thinking logically out of all of them. So when the inevitable moral choice comes around, it’s not at all warranted, and you don’t feel like you’re actually doing anything. It seems that every time this game throws another interesting concept into the mix, it breaks everything else and weakens the story.

Overall, the story tries some interesting things, but constantly fails to execute them all that well.

Music and Sound Design

Eh, it’s alright. Nothing amazing, but it’s alright. The music is pretty good, but it’s not the sort of music you’d listen to outside the context of the game. A majority of the music is classical style piano based stuff, usually with the same melody which changes slightly to reflect the mood of the story. The sound is alright, but sometimes it feels slightly off to what’s happening on screen. Voice acting isn’t bad either. Nothing is bad in this department, but nothing is really anything more than average. Not bad, just not amazing.

Steam Controller Support

For this review onward I’ll do a grade system for this bit, just so I don’t waste your time.

Grade: A

Simultaneous mouse and keyboard works fine, although there are as always some issues with changing button prompts. Overall though, basically flawless in this area. Works best with either a mouse and keyboard or Steam Controller, entirely up to you.

Tidbits

Price to length

As I mentioned earlier, this game took me about 5 hours to 100%. It costs $19.99 on Steam. That’s just too much, especially when you consider that there’s almost no replay value. They needed something like the challenge maps in Portal, or a time trial mode, or just anything to give it a bit more content and replay value. I’d pick it up for $10 or less, preferably around $5. There are some games, like The Witness, which deserve this price point, but The Witness actually has $20 worth of content.

The Verdict

Gameplay - 8/10 Visuals - 8/10 Performance - 7/10 Story - 2/10 Music & sound - 5/10 Tidbits (incl. SC support) - (-0.5)

Score out of 50 = 8 + 8 + 7 + 2 + 5 - 0.5= 30.5/50 Final score =

62%

(Above averaqe) (6/10)

A great puzzle game which has its head up its own ass when the story sections come around.

TL;DR: Definitely consider this game, but don’t expect a great story, and wait for a sale.

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musicpandit1 · 1 year

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Fundamentals of Music - How to Listen Better : Play Piano Online

Fundamentals of Music - How to Listen Better

There are some simple tricks that can help students while listening to particular tunes and figuring out the notes quite easily. Engaging in such exercises will also help learners to realize the importance of listening. Listening to music along with all background chaos or other sounds can be quite challenging but once you figure out how to listen better, separating the instruments and the tunes will be an easy task. In any case, here are some of the points that music students can follow to become better at hearing notes.

Play Piano Online

Things to Keep in Mind for Active Listening

A few crucial points to keep in mind while listening actively.

Style

You need to be very careful while listening to any specific music. You should begin by catching and identifying the style of the music quite.

Instrumentation

Active listeners can easily recognize the used instruments by listening to a song for the first time. As they have a good knowledge of the fundamentals of music , it enables them to follow this particular way to listen to music. So, you can also get your basics right and develop such a technique.

Technique

By listening carefully to both the vocalists and instrumentals, once you develop good hearing you can easily point the faults out. Apart from this, you will be able to understand the actual and perfect way of singing that particular song with ease. Thus, you will be able to observe a visible improvement in your singing ability.

Structure

You should also be very careful about the structure of the tune. You can easily follow the written script of the songwriter for this. Apart from this, you can understand the mode of the music by recognizing the structure of the song.

Lyrics

By listening to the lyrics, you can realize the inner thoughts of the song along with all the instruments. This is how the listeners can enjoy an amazing time while listening to the song with ease.

A Few Effective Tips for Listening Actively

Using Headphones

This is the most effective and common way to listen to music in a proper way, even in a crowd. You can easily listen to every single note without facing any obstructions. Understanding the music will be a lot easier with the help of good-quality headphones. However, you need to be more careful when choosing a headphone so that your ears are not affected harshly.

Stay in an Appropriate Position

Standing or sitting in the right position can help people to listen in an easier way. According to the expert teachers of Music Pandit, you should select the best position while listening to any particular music.

Ear Training

While learning the fundamentals of music, you must go through ear training. Thus, the trainers will understand your requirements and gaps with better accuracy. In this way, they can make you learn the exact way of listening to any tune.

Sing Along with the Tune

You can easily learn any particular tune or song by singing along with it. Thus, you can easily hear your own voice and can improve the faults on your own.

Listen to High-frequency Sounds

By practicing the high notes, you will be able to manage the lower or middle notes. This is why the experts of Music Pandit generally suggest students to practice with high notes only for any song.

All in all, as you have gone through this particular information regarding the fundamentals of music and active listening you should be able to listen to any song like a professional. Additionally, as you start engaging constantly in music-listening activities you will be able to grasp any note quite easily, and also rectify faults quickly in the process.

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Phone No. 96062 31584

[email protected]

#western vocal classes near me #fundamentals of music

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alienation2016-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Alienation

New Post has been published on https://alienation.biz/serena-williams-pregnancy-likely-to-boost-sponsorship-industry-experts/

Serena Williams pregnancy likely to boost sponsorship: Industry experts

Serena Williams pregnancy might make her even greater likable in the eyes of the wider public, experts in the sponsorship enterprise said.

A pregnant Serena Williams makes the tennis movie star even extra appealing to corporate sponsors,

Allowing her to extend her reach into maternity wear and motherhood merchandise, sponsorship enterprise executives said. Williams on Wednesday showed her pregnancy thru spokeswoman Kelly Bush Novak after the tennis player published a photograph of herself in a yellow bathing in shape on Snapchat social media with the caption “20 weeks.” Williams, 35, is already recognized around the world for her dominance of ladies’ tennis, but pregnancy could make her even extra likable in the eyes of the broader public, specialists inside the sponsorship enterprise said.prince William county jobs

You are taking an iconic name who’s now a logo and you add being pregnant to it, you get a glad story,”

said Gary Fechter, an attorney at McCarter & English who has represented companies in sponsorship offers. “This just makes her even more precious.” With nearly $29 million in profits and sponsorship profits, which includes from Nike Inc and PepsiCo Inc, Williams ranked because the top paid lady athlete within the global closing year on a list compiled through Forbes mag. however, decrease prize money in tennis left her fortieth within the ordinary standings.

William and kate

But, her profits from sponsorship deals alone, at $20 million, would rank her ways better on the Forbes listing – tied at twentieth with fellow tennis player Maria Sharapova. Williams may want to upload to her earnings by attractive to new audiences, the specialists stated. Current sponsors should tell new memories with a waiting for a superstar athlete, and new company sponsors may join up with the mother-to-be as nicely.

Williams Encore Piano Portable Keyboard – My New Best Friend

The Williams Encore Virtual Piano is a Transportable Keyboard and although it is not as mild as keyboards from another emblem, however, the sound is ama built integrated. The Encore capabilities 88 e4028a5c6dae3ad5086501ec6f3534d0 Hammer-Action Weighted keys (that is built-in pl integrated reason built-in integrated for its heavier weight) with adjustable touch reaction. The adjustable reaction has 4 built-integrated touch-sensitivity built-in, built-in musicians to select the feel that they built-in integrated. The strong sound built-in encompassed 30 voices, 32-notice Polyphony, metronome, Effects; reverb and built-in. The Encore additionally comes with Lcd display screen, fifty-eight play-along practice songs, amplified speaker, MIDI, sustabuiltintegrated pedal, pitch-bend and modulation wheels and headphone jack.Williams-Sonoma

Though there aren’t many sounds available built

In Encore, however, the feel of the Action keys may be very near a twenty over years old integrated grand acoustic piano. The splendid experience of the Action keys does not position me with built integrated of PLA built integrated a less luxurious keyboard. The Encore has built-in features, it could function as a midi controller or simply built-undeniable Digital piano. With the pitch-bend and modulation wheels integrated built-in the bundle, it’s miles superb to have a midi controller. But, it is able to now not be practical as a gig integrate dog keyboard because of its weight but it is a great value for the charge.

The Williams Encore is a totally clean keyboard

It’s far built integrated centered on getting integrated the job done…a completely easy consumer integrated terrace, and it features 30 voices and recorder. The easy design leads to a tremendous on and off level built-in. I cannot consider war built integrated built-in else. Real piano feels for a Real deal. The Encore is exceptional for the charge. The best feel and contact from the decrease charge fashions and a number of the better fee models too. The Encore’s best feel and pretty right tone is a great Transportable Virtual piano keyboard for built-inbegbuiltintegrated and musicians. Take a look at it out.

Tips For Managing Pregnancy Weight Gain

Pregnant mothers obviously gain weight. With human lifestyles growing interior of them that wishes steady nourishment, it’s miles anticipated that you will advantage weight.

The trouble that soon-to-be moms enjoy is that they can not control the demon-like hunger they sense and the speedy increase in their frame because of the quantity of meals they eat. Fitness professionals say that fast weight advantage at some stage in being pregnant is not safe and this may lead to different Fitness issues like preeclampsia, tough childbirth, miscarriage, obstructive sleep apnea, gestational diabetes and others.

To ensure a wholesome pregnancy, you want to control your weight properly. experts shared a few brilliant tips for doing so.pregnancy week by week

Stopping Weight benefit Whilst you Are Pregnant

Don’t worry about your weight an excessive amount of – If you worry approximately gaining weight, this may surely have an adverse effect on your disposition. You should have the mindset that you’re going to do your very great simply to stay very healthful at some stage in your being pregnant.

Understand what number of energy you ought to be eating – You should communicate together with your medical doctor concerning your nutritional needs. Get the precise quantity and ask which ingredients are the satisfactory assets of such energy. By doing so, you may plan your food and snacks very well.

Stick with the diet encouraged By using your medical doctor

Whilst your favorite superstar speaks about certain diets she follows whilst pregnant, endures in mind that they do no longer Recognize you and your real dietary requirements. So it is exceptionally counseled that you need to follow the recommendation your doctor has given to you because that is the most secure aspect so that it will do.

Locate time to exercising – Test out a number of the sports encouraged for pregnant ladies and communicate to your medical doctor about them. After you get clearance out of your health practitioner for such sporting activities, comprise them into your workout software. Health experts exceptionally emphasized that exercising will help you control your weight. Apart from that, it will expand your flexibility, electricity, and stamina in an effort to help throughout childbirth.

Take the right Health supplements – Your doctor will prescribe dietary supplements that your body desires during being pregnant, maximum particularly When you are stricken by intense discomforts.

Eat frequently but in managed portions – This trick often works and may be very useful When fill food are tough for you because of food aversions and morning illness. It is able to be plenty less complicated on the way to digest smaller food. Most importantly, they may provide you the right nourishment you want.

Automotive Industry at a Glance

The arena Car Enterprise is enjoying the duration of tremendously sturdy growth and income, but there are many regions which might be the threat of uncertainty. Carmakers search for better economies, marketplace conditions which can be best to have a hit stay inside the Enterprise. The car Industry has some massive gamers who have marked their presence globally and General Cars, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, and DC are amongst them. It has also been advised that automobile Industry has extended greater, after the Globalization duration, due to clean accessibility & facilities among international locations and mergers between massive automakers of The sector.

Furthermore, the advancements in industrialization brought about a rise in the increase and production of the Japanese and German markets, mainly.

However in 2009, the global car and Vehicle sales Enterprise experienced a cogent decline which became all through the global recession, as this Enterprise is in a roundabout way depending on to monetary shifts in employment and spending making, it inclined. Even as demand for brand new and used cars in mature markets (e.G. Japan, Western Europe and the USA) fell all through the economic recession, the Enterprise flourished inside the developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Enhance in worldwide exchange has enabled the growth in world business distribution systems, which has also inflated the global competition amongst the automobile manufacturers. Jap automakers mainly have initiated modern manufacturing methods with the aid of adapting and modifying the U.S. manufacturing version, as well as utilizing the technology to raise production and deliver higher opposition. The arena car Industry is dynamic and capacious, accounting for about one in ten jobs in evolved nations.list of types of industries

Growing international locations often resort to their nearby car quarter for economic boom possibilities

Maybe due to the extensive linkages that the car Industry of the USA, has to other sectors. China is with the aid of ways the most important market for income observed via Japan, India, Indonesia, and Australia. sales figures of 2005 to 2013 indicate that income for motors in China doubled during this period, Even as Indonesia and India also benefited. However, there was stop in income throughout this time in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Apparently, this year competition in the truck section has ended up extra excessive, with the 3 big U.S. Automakers striving for supremacy in each overall performance and gas financial system. the Japanese aren’t giving up, both, with each Toyota and Nissan launching new pickups in 2015.

India is the seventh biggest producer of automobiles globally with nearly an average production

Of 17.5 million vehicles with the automobile Enterprise’s contribution amounting to 7% of the entire GDP. It’s been envisioned that by using 2020 us of a will witness the sale of greater than 6 million automobiles yearly. India is expected to be the fourth largest car marketplace by extent within the international where -wheeler production has grown from eight.five Million devices yearly to fifteen

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