Should This Noose Unloosen
Found this track on the BIRP October 2012 playlist, and promptly downloaded the album. I like this track because of how the two vocals blend. It reminds me of Ben Gibbard (from Death Cab for Cutie) and Ethan (from the Archers – a local Victoria band). I’m excited to investigate the rest of the album.
Banff Blogs: The Wanderer
So since it’s that time of year when I try to make myself a better person, (write more blogs, drink less, go to the gym more, etc.) I’ve decided to try and do somewhat of a “series” on this blog. More of a way to get me to write, and keep up this record of my life.
Being at the Banff Centre is a great opportunity for me and something I’ve wanted for a very long time. So I feel like I should share with you (whomever you are out there who may be reading this), and since I’m sure not a lot of you know what it is I do exactly, I might as well elaborate a little bit.
To start, this is my brother’s conception of what I do: – It’s not far from the truth, but maybe less frantic.
Today I was mixing a concert from earlier this year. It was a solo singer-songwriter, playing guitar/harmonica and singing. That’s all. I had a vocal mic, instrument mic, and some audience mics, to pick up the ambient sound and make it sound like a live recording, which is our goal.
During this concert, our singer decided he wanted to be more apart of the audience. He stepped out on the tables of the venue and started playing off mic. Generally this is a disaster, since he’s off mic it makes my job almost impossible to get a good sound, especially in a setting where I can’t make mic adjustments (placing them better to accomodate his moves). Luckily for us, our hanging audience mics were places right where he decided to stand for the duration of the song.
Mixing this song has proven to be a challenge but I think it’ll produce an interesting product at the end of it! Maybe when it gets posted you’ll try and listen for that song!
Oh the nostalgia
The sounds are a little funky and it takes a while to get going, but super awesome and mellow. OoT was probably the first game I ever got immersed in. And I didn’t even finish it. I sat and watched my brother beat the last 3 temples and beat Ganon. Twas good times. Great soundtrack.
BADBADNOTGOOD – TITLE THEME / SARIA’S SONG / SONG OF STORMS – YouTube.
Best of 2012
Here are some of my favourite songs from 2012. While not necessarily released this year, this is when I discovered them. So if you’re looking for some samples of some new tunes. Enjoy.
Lemme know what you think and what you enjoyed! Add your own!
And if you’re too lazy to sit through these videos, you can go to:
http://2012.jamodyssey.com/SilenceAsSound
You’ll get bite sized snippits of some of my favourite songs of 2012.
“Lady Adelaide” – Benjamin Gibbard – Former Lives
“I Am Europe” – Chilly Gonzales – Ivory Tower
The video of this one is pretty weird, but totally worth it.
“Home” – Gabrielle Alpin - Home EP
“Make the Money” – Macklemore - The Heist
“Don’t Move” – Phantogram - Nightlife
“Electric Pow Wow” – A Tribe Called Red - A Tribe Called Red
“Reaction” – Acres of Lions - Collections
“They Are Filled” – Bison - Quill
“Write It All Down For You” – Elliott Brood - Mountain Meadows
“First Breath After A Coma” – Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place
“Call Me In the Afternoon” – Half Moon Run - Dark Eyes
“Take Me With You When You Go” – Jack White - Blunderbuss
“Seeing the Glass as Half Broken” – Mayor Mayor - If We Don’t Move They Can’t See Us
“Gettysburg” – Ratatat - Classics
Drive
Oh remixes. This guy does some cool stuff with punk/rock tunes.
Sense of Place
For as long as I’ve taken an English class, I’ve hated it. I hate writing and I hate the ambiguity of opinions and thoughts in text. This is why I’ve always been drawn to math and science, there’s a concrete yes or no answer for something. It doesn’t matter what the 9 kg mass feels as it hurtles to the ground accelerating at 9.81 m/s^2, it just matters that by the time it reaches the ground, it has “x” Newtons of force.
English classes always went on and on about a sense of place. I thought this feeling they described of belonging and fitting in in an environment was a bunch of bullshit. It wasn’t until I moved away from the friends and things I called home for the second time that I begun to realize that I don’t have a sense of place anymore.
In the past 4 years, from September 2008 to September 2012, I have lived in 10 different places. It wasn’t until my last apartment that I felt like I had a sense of place. It had taken me four years to build up the relationships and enough “stuff” to feel like this place was my home and I belonged there. As luck may have it, as soon I found my place, I had to leave it.
For me, the weird part about this now, is the thought of going back. I have already done this once when I came back from University the first, second, and however many it times it was, to where I grew up. You can find in my back log my opinions and realizations of the people you thought were your friends. You come back to your old place with this sense of excitement of being back to where you belong with the people you missed greatly. And you quickly realize that they’ve moved on without you.
And why shouldn’t they? You were the one who left. You changed the equilibrium and that’s not going to magically change back when you appear for a week at a time. So for me going back to Victoria is going to be an experience.
I was recently called out for being a pessimist and having such a negative attitude about things. I countered this belief with that justification that I am a realist and that I consider the most likely response of the average human being based on past experiences and knowledge of character.
In this example, I am not expecting much from the people I have been close with over the past four years while I am visiting for a week, because I know the realities that people are busy and that some people just don’t care. I know that the people who do care will make the effort to see me. That’s what I’ve learned after doing this so much. No matter how hard you try to see everyone, the people who want to see you will come through.
So call me what you will, but until you can prove me wrong, I’ll keep going about thinking the way I do.
And thus we come back to place. Since moving, and now considering going back, I’ve realized I have no place anymore. My home in Victoria is gone, the good relationships have stayed, many have wavered, and lots of fallen away. Banff isn’t my place yet, I don’t think it will be, it’s far too temporary. Calgary’s not either. So we’ll see where I end up and how long it takes for it to be home again.
Looking Back
2012 was full of many splendid things. I will try and cover them as briefly and coherently as possible. Looking back at 2011, I wrote:
It’s that time of year where I write you about my semester and how everything went and apologize for not writing more because things got in the way and blah blah blah.
I plan on doing very little/none of that. Nothing really that interesting is happening. I go home for Christmas on Sunday, stay for a while and come back and start school again. Yay.
I feel like I can summarize my entire semester into one sentence: “Oh you know.”
The terrible thing is that the only thing that has really changed is location. This semester has been a little different and quite a bit more exciting as I’ve been at the Banff Centre doing a Work Study in Audio Engineering and is actually pretty exciting work to be doing. When we’re not doing pretty mindless work. It’s been an amazing experience so far, but we haven’t had much time to do any traditional learning. It’s been a lot of learning by doing, which can be good, but sometimes it’s very tiring and you don’t pick up nearly as much as you could have. I still reply with “Oh you know” and few people have yet to call me on it.
In 2010, I complained about Christmas music:
Tis’ the Season! To be jolly!
But unforunately for everyone else, I am not. I’m not a huge fan of Christmas, it’s sorta become a meh holiday. But what really pisses me off is Christmas Music.
And while I still don’t like Christmas Music. I’ll be writing again my top picks of 2012, much like my top picks of 2011 that I did in January of this year. This year I’ve worked with a lot of great musicians, at Banff and beyond and it’ll all be coming around for me to share with you. Eventually.
December 2009? Geez I’ve had this blog for a long time. As a matter of fact, this will be my 500th post. I think that’s why I’ve been saving it for a while. Don’t wanna waste a milestone like this on a Calvin and Hobbes background. Looks like 2009 is when I started using Twitter more. Who woulda thought almost 7000 tweets and 300 followers later I’d still be at it.
2009 was an interesting year. I was dating and happy and living with people I liked and not doing so well and school, but still enjoying life pretty well. Granted I felt like I didn’t wanna go back to Calgary and Victoria had become home. I’m not sure how I feel about that now, but I will address that later.
So here I am. I started this blog just over 3 years ago. And 500 posts later I’ve become someone completely different. I wrote once about how you change once every four years and how much I had changed from who I was in the 9th grade, and the 12th grade. And I wonder already how much I’ve changed since I wrote that post a year ago. 2012 was a big growth year for me. I ended my 3 year long term relationship. I finished my degree. I got into a program I had dreamed of forever and moved to Banff. I don’t think I’ve had that many life events in such a short time.
What else has happened….
I got a tattoo.
I moved. Again. I lived on my own for the first time. I loved it.
I stopped writing in my blog as much. Maybe I was dealing with the break up, and figuring myself out. Maybe I was too busy. But that’s what happened.
I met someone new.
We did a road trip. And then long distance. Ups and downs.
In short, 2012 was a stressful year, a productive year, and a year of growth.
I don’t know what else there is to remind you of. If you’re reading this, you probably know what all has gone on in my life anyways. 2012 is yet to be over. And I think I’ve got lots more to say. So stay tuned for some more posts shortly. I hope.
Young vs. OldAs always, I feel I have to leave you with a piece of music to listen to while you read my dreary bullshit. Today’s choice is:
Remember Me as a Time of Day – Explosions in the Sky
And I wish that I weren’t here tonight, but this is my life
Today was the first day that I was homesick. And not homesick for Calgary or those friends or my family. But my Victoria family.
I’m quickly realizing how much the friends and relationships that I’ve made there really mean to me. With Thanksgiving coming up I’m hearing lots about everyone hanging out and all the fun they’re having. And part of me really wants to be involved. I miss having those friends around all the time to do things and talk and hang out and go to shows or go for a beer. The friends I’ve made here in Banff are good too, but it’s just not the same. We haven’t built up that repertoire yet that I have with the people in Victoria. My friends in Victoria are going to be lifelong friends, and I just haven’t found that in Banff yet. I don’t know if I will if I’m only here for three months.
That’s why it was so hard to leave that city. It was even harder to do on your own. I think it would have been easier if I had stayed for a year or so and left with everyone in April. Being the only one of my friends to have my degree finished and moving onwards with my life is tough. I don’t really have any friends to relate to since they’re all still in school.
It’s a weird position to be in. I absolutely love it here and I love what I’m doing. Even being an assistant engineer is great. I’ve been getting praise for helping the artists, my organization and memory and that feels really good to know that I’m doing a good job here. But at the same time, I’m seeing and hearing all the things I’m missing out on, and it really makes me miss my old home. And I think that it’s part of me that doesn’t want to be forgotten. I hear through people about everyone and how they know me and miss me, but it doesn’t get to me. I feel like I’m the one that usually has to reach out to anyone to get any kind of conversation or contact going. And it’s frustrating. It sucks thinking that people are close to you and find they’re not really that interested.
One thing that makes me really sad is how much I miss my old house. In such a short time, that place just felt right, and I fit there and I was happy. It makes me realize how much I missed out on in my three years in Victoria living with the same person. I never had the same kind of fun I did like when I was on my own. And it has everything to do with the people I surrounded myself with and the things we did. I don’t regret the four years I spent at UVic and the relationships I built and lost along the way, but I do wish that those three years were like the last six months.
I don’t know if this is a fleeting one day thing because of Thanksgiving or if the feelings will linger until my program is over. That is yet to be seen. I know that being here is important for me and that it’s really going to help with my career and future and everything. It just sucks.
And with that, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite songs – Hello I’m in Delaware by City and Colour, which is where the title comes from.
The Essentials
So last week, the other four workstudies and I decided to trade music. We had to fill a 16 gig USB stick with as much of our favourites as possible. Here’s my list.
Jason’s iTunes Essentials:
Alexisonfire – Screamo/Post Hardcore
Acres of Lions – Canadian Pop Punk
The Arkells – Canadian Post Rock
Band of Horses – Indie
Billy Talent – Canadian Punk
Brand New
Broken Social Scene – Canadian Indie
Childish Gambino – Rap
City And Colour – Canadian Folk
Citizen Cope
Dan Mangan – Canadian Indie
Dave Brubeck – Jazz
Dear and the Headlights – Indie
Eisley – Indie
Elbow – Indie
Elliott Brood – Indie
Explosions in the Sky
Final Fantasy
Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova
Great Lake Swimmers – Canadian Indie
Half Moon Run – Canadian Indie Rock
Hey Rosetta! – Canadian Indie
Jack White – Rock
Jaydiohead – Jayz+Radiohead
Jets Overhead – Canadian Indie Rock
Joel Plaskett Emergency – Canadian Indie
Kathleen Edwards – Canadian Indie
Macklemore – Rap
Manchester Orchestra – Rock
Matthew Good – Canadian Rock
Matthew Good Band – See above
Monsters of Folk – Indie
Nicole Byblow – Girl + Piano
Not By Choice – Pop Punk
The New Pornographers – Canadian Indie
Of Montreal – Ambient
Obhibjou – Canadian Indie Folk
Paper Lions – Canadian Indie
Plants and Animals – Rock
Pride Tiger – Rock
Propagandhi – Post Hardcore
Protest The Hero – Post Hardcore
Rise Against – Punk
Robert Janzen – The Cave Remix
Said the Whale – Canadian Indie
Sam Roberts – Canadian Rock
Secret and Whisper – Canadian Post Hardcore
Shiny Toy Guns – Canadian Indie Rock
Spill Canvas – Indie
Stars – Canadian Indie
Stars of the Lid – Ambient
Stephen Kellogg – Indie Folk
Straylight Run – Indie
Sufjan Stevens – Indie
Taking Back Sunday – Pop Punk
The Antlers – Indie
The Besnard Lakes – Indie
The Bird and the Bee – Pop
The Cinematic Orchestra – Indie
The Constantines – Canadian Rock
The Early November – Pop Punk
The Forecast – Indie Rock
The Head and the Heart – Indie
The Raconteurs – Jack White
The Rocket Summer – Pop
The Rural Alberta Advantage – Canadian Indie
Thousand Foot Krutch – Rock
Tim Hecker – Ambient
Timbre Timber – Ambient Indie
Tokyo Police Club – Canadian Indie
Visioneers – House
Watsky – Rap
We Were Promised Jetpacks – Indie
The Happiest Place on Earth
At least it is for guys like me.
I recently moved out to Banff to attend the Banff Centre of the Arts. The week preceding my move was one whirlwind after another. I received an email a week before I had to be in Banff requesting me to come be a part of the program. Within that week, I cancelled my bills, changed my address, gave notice, sold my furniture, and in the last three days before moving, I worked 36 hours as a production assistant at the Rifflandia Music Festival.
It definitely sucked leaving all the people in Victoria. Every time I had left before, it was more a temporary thing, and a return flight was always booked. With this trip however, there’s no certainty to where I’ll end up after this program. So that day and flight out was quite hard on me. Luckily I was surrounded by great people and a great girl to make it a little bit easier on myself. She went above and beyond in that last week and it made everything much easier on me.
But that’s the boring mushy stuff. Holy smokes the Banff Centre is awesome. This place fucking rules. The amount of great people here, the setting, the gear, the access to studios, microphones, musicians, and everything is super fantastic. I’m so excited to get working on projects here and becoming a better engineer. The thing I think I’m most looking forward to is being an engineer for a full-time job. Not like in the past where I got to go into the studio after classes or when I could find time, but that it’s my primary requirement that I be in the studio as much as possible. That’s a very exciting realization for me.
The new people here are awesome as well. I’m impressed how quickly and how well I get along with the other work studies. It must have something to do with the air and the environment that just makes people so friendly. We spent the last week going out nightly and just hanging out most of the time together. I’ve taken it upon myself to show these guys (2 brits and a yank) the greatest of Canadian stereotypes. We’ve done Tim Hortons, and today we’re going to go have some poutine. It’s going to be a grand ol’ Canadian time. Maybe I’ll get them to say eh and wear toque’s too!
1 000 000 000 000 Frames A Second
This is incredible. Watching the duality of light in super duper slow motion! Awesome! Science rules!
In 1964 MIT professor Harold Edgerton, pioneer of stop-action photography, famously took a photo of a bullet piercing an apple using exposures as short as a few nanoseconds. Inspired by his work, Ramesh Raskar and his team set out to create a camera that could capture not just a bullet (traveling at 850 meters per second) but light itself (nearly 300 million meters per second).
Stop a moment to take that in: photographing light as it moves. For that, they built a camera and software that can visualize pictures as if they are recorded at 1 trillion frames per second. The same photon-imaging technology can also be used to create a camera that can peer “around” corners , by exploiting specific properties of the photons when they bounce off surfaces and objects.
Among the other projects that Raskar is leading, with the MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture research group, are low-cost eye care devices, a next generation CAT-Scan machine and human-computer interaction systems.
Papers:
Andreas Velten, Thomas Willwacher, Otkrist Gupta, Ashok Veeraraghavan, Moungi G. Bawendi and Ramesh Raskar, “Recovering ThreeDimensional Shape around a Corner using Ultra-Fast Time-of-Flight Imaging.” Nature Communications, March 2012
Andreas Velten, Adrian Jarabo, Belen Masia, Di Wu, Christopher Barsi, Everett Lawson, Chinmaya Joshi, Diego Gutierrez, Moungi G. Bawendi and Ramesh Raskar, “Ultra-fast Imaging for Light in Motion” (in progress). http://femtocamera.info
“Though photographs in the near future will still be composed by people holding cameras, it will gradually become more accurate to say pictures were computed rather than ‘taken’ or ‘captured.’”Popular Photography magazine
This Man Looks Good
I want everything in this photo. And I’m one gold watch away!
*hintgradpresenthint*
A little inspiration goes a long way (31 Photos) : theCHIVE.
Beck’s New Album – Not what you think!
So Beck is putting out a new album in December, but it’s not an album of music! It’s an album of sheet music. I think this is actually a really cool way of distributing your music, similar to that of the 1800′s and what have you. And with the advent of YouTube and people doing covers of every song as it is, it will allow for the extremely creative to do their own take on the song and it make it entirely their own.
Definitely want to be getting this!
But that doesn’t mean that anyone will ever get to hear Beck actually play a lick of them: According to the press release, “If you want to hear ‘Do We? We Do,’ or ‘Don’t Act Like Your Heart Isn’t Hard,’ bringing them to life depends on you.”
via Beck’s new album isn’t really an album at all | Music | Newswire | The A.V. Club.
Pro Tip of the Fucking Day
This quote was just too good to not super-impose on a hipster filter photo.
Thanks to fuckinghomepage.com
Mad Men on Love
You mean big lightning bolts and a heart where you can’t eat and you can’t work and you just run off and get married and make babies?
The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons
You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on you to make you forget this fact.
But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.
Don Draper’s best quote – YouTube.
So I may or may not be a bit cynical about love…but, I really gotta start watching this show again.
Oh Matt Good – You So Well Spoken
Two hundred and forty four comments was enough.
Enough to learn that being a foreigner it isn’t my place to comment on US gun laws, nor the complexities of Constitutional amendments. Enough to learn that I am, in the eyes of some, a shameless opportunist that would use a tragedy to promote an agenda. Enough that, as is always the case, I should not overstep my bounds and forget that I am just an artist and therefore shouldn’t have an opinion.
Having read those 244 comments I will say this: if only poverty, human rights, and a plethora of other issues had the same stalwart advocates that firearms do, imagine what a world this would be.
Last night a man walked into a movie theatre and committed a crime. It’s not the first of its nature, be it in the United States or elsewhere, nor will it be the last. What occurred last night was tragic, but no more so than what occurred on 46 years ago at the University of Texas at Austin or in Norway last summer.
We are the sons and daughters of violence. Utterly glorified, its imagery has become to us a long familiar bedfellow. From childhood we are inundated by its presence, as if new forged Alex’s having endured the Ludovico Technique in the womb. It’s perceived majesty engrained in our DNA precisely because we possess no frame of reference as to its realities.
To us, violence is a game until something ugly disrupts the constancy of the ubiquitous white noise in which we dwell. But even then, our Technicolor landscape is only momentarily disrupted by the briefest of shivers.
It is ludicrous to believe that something designed to kill should be viewed negatively. Such things are, after all, inanimate objects. But take no comfort in their insentience, for their ghosting voices emit a longing akin to that most ancient of jars gifted the earth formed daughter of Hephaestus. And that voice will never quiet, but urge the hand ever forward until the gun and person become indistinguishable.
L’appel du vide
French – “The call of the void” is this French expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.
#GoListenTo IDGAF
The chorus of this song describes how I feel about having conversations with people sometimes. 4.0GPA? Your resume that’s so cray? Your hot boyfriend?
IDGAF.
In other news, Watsky is a super sweet rapper out of SanFran. You might know him as “Pale Kid Who Raps Fast.” Such sweet flow/rhymes. You can download his music at http://gwatsky.bandcamp.com/ Do yourself a favour and do it.
#GoListenTo Voxtrot – The Start of Something
Voxtrot The Start of Something – YouTube.
Another lovely song from the Million Dollar Deli playlist – if you haven’t gotten on it already, you should do so.
