My parents finally got the CPU of my desktop upgraded. Yays. P4 2.40 GHz (ha!), 512 MB DDR1 RAM.
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Just as I wrote the above line, this just came in. My dadi died.
Mom just said it. 'Dadi ki death ho gayi.' She seemed in a hurry, and somewhat shaky. I couldn't, or didn't, ask why. My thoughts, at that moment, were vaguely pacifist - something like 'good for her', or more probably, 'Finally.' It wasn't words, so I can't say it; it was essence, I can just describe it. She had a ripe long life, and things were fast getting hard for her. Physical and mental illness and filial apathy were the main elements in her life, from what I could point out.
The last two-three years, she distanced herself mentally, living in a different world only thinly connected with the one we percieved. She heard what others couldn't hear, spoke to people we couldn't see. Her family - three sons apart from my dad - had a stance of indifference and inefficiency in her life. My family, as we went out of our way many times to care for her, was better, but we had our own limitations too. The credit goes to Mom, mostly. She was the one with the concern, doing everything she could while simultaneously keeping up the front in the survival battle.
I wouldn't lie. People may call me indifferent or stone hearted or something, but I don't cry when I hear of deaths, I'm not even sad - just uncharacteristically thoughtful for a while. I shuddered when I heard it, but it had to happen, and, if anything, Dadi is liberated; freed and raised to the next level.
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...and just 80 GB of disk space. Wow. My music collect has expanded to 40 GB, given all the CDs I've been acquiring of late, which means that I can only keep my music on my external HDD.
Anyway, this PC is decent, and it handles Reason just as well as the laptop did, and Ableton just a tiny bit better. Fine by me - of late, I've started prefering Reason a lot more than Ableton. Far lesser mud (aka less CPU intensive), and far better UI. I so hate going through racks in Ableton, and Reason is so much more straightforward with everything. It must have it's pitfalls, I suppose, but it's the best thing for now. Perhaps a keyboard controller could change things, but I only see Reason becoming better with it. I remember I hated the Reason sequencer (Arrangement view and piano roll) when I started using it, being more accustomed to the Ableton one, but now even that feels better, although needs somewhat more fine tuning.
The sole reason (Reason? Yeah, right.) why Ableton is not uninstalled from the PC by now is because it has the Session view and the ability to go DJ with all the clips you make. I wish I could just do all the work in Reason, and then control the playback (for live settings) in Ableton. Hard, unless I decide to bite the bullet and use Ableton as the sequencer and Reason as just an instrument rack, or unless I find another way...and thus, this is up for discussion at Freq20.com. I posted a while back. Waiting to see what happens with fingers crossed and projects in a limbo.
Holidays - the best time to work - are on, and work is the last thing on my mind. Somehow, the urge to just pick up the classical, or the electric, or the composition pad and lay down some practice is just not there. So I've begun to relegate an hour and a half to classical guitar everyday, so as not to lack practice when I finally get inspiration. As I read somewhere - success is when preperation meets opportunity. Lame. =/
What I'm more interested in, these days, is creating electronic music. I'm teaching myself Ableton Live and Reason, two really nice softwares. Ableton I love in particular, it's so great to lay down improvised riffs and beats while the music plays on, like a DJ, or more so like a band where you take on the role of any musician, while the rest play on. I had fun making dance-type beats and analog synth basslines, goofing around with syncopation, basking in this new (electronic) definition of sound. It's a lifetime experience in itself.
Reason is another unique software. Doesn't use too much memory, and a GREAT interface. I love the ReWire bit, and how you can simply route signals by actually swapping the wires around, just like real rack mounted effects which I'll be damned if I could afford.
I also saw this advert for Propellerhead's (I always have trouble spelling their name >.>) Record. It's a very interesting ad, and a tempting software too...but I think I'd rather get to a recording level playing for now.
Things of note
-It propagates the use of software based guitar and bass modellers while recording a band. I wonder if any but them best PC/Mac has the capacity to run latency-free guitar and bass through it, while recording drums, vocals and keyboards through their respective effects (reverb, compression and so on)? It sure would need a top of the line laptop...
- 1:32 "So we won't be needing this anymore. -half stack disappears-" and the bass guy is like, "*shrug*, if you say so!". Lol!
-2:14. The singer.
-2:25. The SINGER.
-2:50 The...singer. :p
Back to electronica; strangely enough, the uploaded works of YouTubers puts me off from searching there for music to let me understand the possibilities of these softwares. However, it seems to me that the trailer videos of software are good places to check out some neat electronic music (and that's my opinion. I'm sure hardcore electronica fans won't agree with me on this. If you are one of them - recommend me some music/artists you think I may like, many thanks to you.).
Anyway, for one, there's this. Reason 4.0's trailer.
The bass (dunno if I can call it that) and the distorted guitar in the intro was the slickest sound ever, to my ears...so gritty!
So I searched for the Reason 3 trailer, in hope of something similarly brilliant. Not as powerfull or moving as the Reason 4 video, but I wasn't disappointed.
The electronic bass again, this time with an army of frenetic effect modulations, and a nice driving guitar bit later. And I absolutely smiled (rare occurence. Sad, I know.) from 1:32 onward - great involvement with the video! And a nice resolution in the music after that...sweet.
Sadly, I can't do it. Unless I slug it out with this craptastic laptop (Intel Celeron 1.73 GHz with 512 MB of RAM, now you know my misery.). I dream of owning a fully maxed out MacBook Pro (among other - studio - things) some day, in which I'll do all my recordings, sequencing and live performance. I can hardly afford a sub-decent laptop, let alone pro-quality MIDI controller, interface and mics. Pop goes the electronica dream.
And speaking of 'pop', and then Dad will urge me to take up commercial stuff and learn KEYBOARD to accompany/record for other artists so I can earn a living. Really?! Keyboard is just a subset of electronic, and how the heck can one think of doing it if you can't even afford a laptop?
/rant
- - -
Think objectively, boy. Think objectively.
You have,
-a Yamaha C70
-a 7 string electric guitar, shitty processor (Digitech's discontinued RP300A), shitty amp (the ever-stupid Marshall MG10)
-a player who is semi decent at classical, demi-semi decent at touchstyle electric, a newbie at electronic music and otherwise a dab hand at PCs
-the shittiest computer possible
concert and sir's qualities, by dad - an experimental art - the importance of letting people learn for themselves - lute - limitations of the guitar
I recently went for a concert, chiefly because my teacher was to perform there. It was not, however, a traditional performance, but a concert of experimental art. The first two parts, which were all I could see of a total of five, were simple but different in the premise - classical music fused with visual, in this case video.
The musicians were situated in the center of the stage. Two projector screens on stands were on their left and right, onto which came the visual element.
The first was an extremely energetic Indian classical performance on the sitar, sarod (I think) and tabla, accompanied by similarly frenetic visuals, all full of life and movement, like rain. It seemed to convey a starting, and the process of creation, interaction and destruction (that's what I scribbled while watching) on different levels, from minute to human-life-size, and also incorporated a realistically shown journey through video, superimposed with abstractly depicted progress (symbolized, IMO, by EQ-visualisation-style lines which moved with the vibrant pulse of the music).
The second was my teacher, performing solo guitar - western classical. A much more slow paced setup, around five pieces, and the visuals take a more realistic animated turn. Claymation and modern 2D animation is what I recall as of now. Unimpressive; throughout the performance, I sat with eager ears, listening for compositional ideas and phrases which would excite, but in vain. Nothing lacking on sir's part, however - the general 'slow and soothing' pieces have somehow lost their appeal for me.
I found the performance overall to be what was promised - an experiment. I feel it to be a medium which can still be developed and matured further, and requiring a higher amount of integration between the two elements. Dad, by and large, felt it to be a field with a weak conceptual foundation, but that's besides the point.
Disagreements will remain, but that's not the point either.
He said that my teacher had on him an expression of utmost calm, innocence, and simplicity, which contributed to him getting more audience attention (in his opinion).
I had never really noticed this. The fact that I had met him just twice till then is bunk, not even worth mentioning - this was the first time Dad saw him at all.
But I digress. Dad spoke to me at length and described how these qualities can be the best I can learn from him. I couldn't agree more, so you could say all is good. But...
Why couldn't he let me find it out for myself?
Whatever happened to independence, the joy of learning, the process of discovery? Would it really be that bad if I had found it out myself, given a few months? In his saying, I lost out an avenue of achievement. And the achievement itself lost worth for me. Would one set out to discover what has already been propounded and solidified? Unless one wants to prove it wrong, and has been sufficiently challenged to do it, I doubt the person's inner fire will burn for the task.
Anything that has been done, loses it's novelty for me instantly. That, perhaps, could be my personal shortcoming, and maybe the reason why I don't like most of the music I hear, most of the paintings I see, most of the literature I read - there always seems to be something missing, something not quite there.
---
I was looking around at the lute for a long time. First I confused it for a Baroque/Renaissance guitar. I like those things - they're small and portable. Anyway, I was transcribing a well-known piano piece for solo guitar, and that old nagging of the guitar's general limitations came to mind.
After good sound quality, I like the following things in an instrument. The guitar comes the closest to them, I guess, but not quite.
-Portability - It's more portable than it's more polyphonic cousin, the piano, but still, its quite big to carry around. A violin is more portable! >.>
-Polyphony - Here comes the envy I have held for the pianists - and more so the organists - ever since I started music. The ability of a single person and a single instrument to sound like a whole ensemble is something I never really knew much about before joining classical guitar - which I did while ignorantly thinking that it'd better my contemporary technique, and eventually moving to it full time - but have acquired a taste for it ever since, to the extent that if I play, I must play
polyphonically. The concept of ensemble playing, with each person playing something that sounds incomplete without the others, is conceptually illogical to me. I suppose they must have their reasons. But the two instruments I play - classical guitar and touchstyle electric - had to have this capability, and have it well.
Unfortunately, they do not fulfill the second criterion. We are woefully limited in our range with the six strings. A seventh adds just a little, an eighth perhaps could be a significant advantage. To top it all, I don't even know the limit, nor do guitarists across the world - I sure don't want it to evolve beyond a guitar, like a Megatar or a Warr guitar. Perhaps 6-8 strings combined with a special tuning could be the silver bullet. One that gets the low strings really low, and the high strings as they are - high.
Anyway, so I thought that the lute was a viable evolution of the guitar (first I thought it was the touchstyle electric guitar, but nah, that hardly compares). Smaller size, more strings, guitar-like basis for sound (though the right hand technique, as I found out, was completely different), and I recall Narcisco Yepes getting a 10 string classical guitar made for transcribing lute pieces without losing the bass. I saw a video of Paul O'Dette among others. And the result - the lute just doesn't sound as full in the treble as a guitar!
Disappointing. And thus...I go back to the guitar.
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