Carbon111

Some Recent DSLR Shots...

2012-01-23T16:00:00.000-08:00

Circumstances...

2011-04-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the silence everybody...

It's just hard to "step back" from everything sometimes.

As some of you know, my dad's health has been extremely poor recently - he had a fall early December and suffered a terrible brain injury. For now I'm managing all his affairs. :(

My own health is decent enough but I have chronic pain from a number of conditions and am now battling bursitis and tendinitis in my shoulder.

...it's just a bit much at times.

...things at work are nuts now too as I'm doing someone else's job now in addition to my own as they broke their leg.

In the meantime I haven't been able to do any promotion for Stealing The Sun because of circumstances. It's on the back burner for now but I hope to get to it later this year...STS is the best thing I've ever done and I think it deserves a chance.

Stealing The Sun - finally here!

2010-11-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a long road from March 2009 when I started this project but Stealing The Sun is finally released. Cheers!

Stealing The Sun is the album I've been wanting to make for the last ten years. Filled with a wide spectrum of synth textures and embellished by my voice, it's an exploration of epiphany and change viewed through the lens of modern electronic pop.

Diverse elements like the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, Native American traditions and Greek mythology combine into something strange, personally engaging, and hopefully "greater than the sum of its parts"

The CD and Digital Album is currently available through Bandcamp.com though CD Baby, iTunes and Amazon will soon follow.

The above streams don't really do it justice as they are only 128k mp3s - higher quality MP3s as well as FLAC downloads are available in addition to the CDs: http://carbon111.bandcamp.com/. Please note all CD purchases get a free instant download in the medium of their choice so you can enjoy the album while waiting for the CD to hit your mailbox.

Stealing The Sun is packaged in a four panel digipack. All the artwork is by yours truly.

A complete set of lyrics is available here: Stealing The Sun

For seven people who buy the CD, I've got a little surprise in store - I'm doing a random drawing from the first batch of CD sales for some swag, including a shoulder bag, a clock and five t-shirts:

For the gear-interested, the instrumentation is as follows:

Silver Thread - Ensoniq Fizmo and Waldorf Q provide backing pads, Korg Oasys is bass and string sounds while Digidesign's Boom provides percussion.

Breathing Machinery - Korg Oasys does Piano and Wave Sequencing, Weird Pads are NI's Absynth and, except for some clickety bits from Digidesign's "Boom", all the Drum Sounds and Rhythm Beds were done in NI's Absynth as well.

Subterranean Bathers - Ensoniq VFX is the voxy pad, Korg Oasys is piano, drums and everything else.

The Initiation - Lead Drones are from the SCI Prophet 600, Piano is Nord Stage, Pads are provided by Nord Wave, and Metallic Stabs and Drums are Korg Oasys.

Luna - The Nord Stage is on "distorted lead", Nord Wave on "grungy Santur" and Oasys on drums and "ambiance".

Walden - Waldorf Microwave XT is synth lead, Nord Stage is all pianos, Absynth4 and Alchemy provide ambient beds and Korg Electribe ES-1 is drums.

Stealing The Sun - All pianos and synth sounds are Nord Stage, drums are Korg Electribe ES-1.

The Big Room - Sync lead is Nord Wave, Grungy synth organ is Nord Stage, Pads are Korg Oasys and Drums are Digidesign's Boom.

Strangeness - Drums are provided by Korg Electribe ES-1, everything else is Waldorf Q.

No Time - All sounds provided by the Korg Oasys.

Final cover art for Stealing the Sun...

2010-09-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

...Dealing with prepress issues now but the album should be out before too long. I'll let everyone know (as soon as I do) when it will be available as CDs and as downloads.

I Feel Fine

2010-09-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

Working on a new song. This is a rough mix.

Most of the noise is Serge Modular with the exception of one Alchemy patch and the drums, which are Digi's "Boom" thru a bit reducer.

I'm going to diversify the drums more between chorus and verse while fixing their stereo image, add some hand percussion and stick a bridge in (that I've already recorded). A couple more Serge lines and two vocal tracks and I'll be done...probably.

http://carbon111.com/music/i_feel_fine.mp3

Song for a lost friend...

2010-09-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

Some days are better than others...
Loss is such a hard thing to deal with as there is nothing to "get over". The Lost remain lost. The empty spot in your life remains... :(

http://www.carbon111.com/music/you_were_so_loved.mp3

Parents

2010-08-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

My respect and awe for those of you who are parents is profound.

Married at a late age with health concerns and a problematic gene pool, it was never really a realistic choice for me.

My music and my art take what little "extra" time I do have and are, for all intents, my "children". Pale shadows in comparison to real children...but it's all I have to offer other than myself.

What an amazing journey on a beautiful yet uncertain road.

Welcome to Walden

2010-08-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

Finished another song this afternoon: Walden. A little ditty about a certain naturalist's take on epiphany. :)

A little stranger than I was originally intending...

Synths used:
Waldorf Microwave XT, Nord Stage, Absynth4, Alchemy and Korg Electribe ES-1

Lost soul running over the ice so wide
Hearing the voice

"You will come to us"
"You will come to us"

Tiny log cabin by water so bright
Blinded by nature

"You will come to us"
"You will come to us"

Walk in the forest, day and night
Life in the woods

"You will come to us"
"You will come to us"

Transcendental in your daily life
It's only Walden

"You will come to us"
"You will come to us"
"You will come to us"
"You will come to us"...

Stealing the Sun - nearly finished now

2010-07-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

My work-in-progress, "Stealing the Sun" is nearly ready. I'll add tracks to this set as they get mastered in preparation for CD production:

Stealing the Sun - preview by Carbon111

In the meantime unfinished tracks will be removed from this blog. I'll replace them later as they get polished and prepped for the CD and Digital Download release.

Goodbye my little pal.

2010-07-09T17:11:00.000-07:00

In Memoriam Taliesin 1998 - 2010
...my constant studio companion.

Finally, A Burger Worth Dying For.

2010-06-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

Due to the high mortality rates, the famous Kanoobang™ burger chain has decided to change their marketing slogan to "A burger worth dying for" a spokesperson said today.

This has come just three weeks after the media furor over the leaked revelation that Kanoobang™ burgers were made entirely with fossil beef, strip-mined from ancient bovine deposits in environmentally sensitive Wyoming and Oregon watersheds.

Environmentalists are still picketing Kanoobang locations in many states. The FDA and EPA have taken no stance as of yet.

Kanoobang™ sales have soared.

My new general-purpose PC

2010-05-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

In addition to my music DAW and Softsynth PC, I have an all-purpose PC I use for Photoshop, Gaming, web browsing, DVD burning and what-have-you. The old machine I was using was getting pretty long-in-the-tooth so it was that time again...time to piece together a new computer! I love doing this!!! ^_^

This was also the perfect opportunity to finally upgrade to a 64 bit OS and now that the specter of Vista was behind us, Win7 was looking pretty good.

The sheer amount of power you can get these days for $1225.00 boggles my mind - this relatively modest machine replaced a five year old pentium D machine that cost me twice as much to build and was an absolute slug by comparison.

Here's the specs:

Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz Quad-Core CPU (clocked cool and stable @ 3.6 GHz)
Intel DP55WG LGA 1156 P55 ATX Intel Motherboard
ZALMAN 120mm 2 Ball Low-noise Copper CPU Cooler
Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB Solid State Drive (OS/boot)
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM SATA II Hard Drive (apps, storage)
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM SATA II Hard Drive (backup)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (4 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 SDRAM
Asus DVD-RW
PNY GeForce GTS 250 - 1 Gigabyte GDDR3
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

...and I already had a nice 4U rackmount case & PS from my earlier build...though, because it was an older PS, I needed to spend about three bucks on an adapter for secondary power to the video card. The D-400-6 rack cases from IStarUSA are fantastic BTW!

The DP55WG is a basic board but with some surprising extras like SPDIF audio, onboard diagnostic LED readout and external bios reset button. I've been building my own PCs for a couple of decades now and have found that pairing an Intel board with an Intel processor and decent cooling makes for a very stable system, even in this case with the quad-core CPU clocked to 3.6 GHz.

Been using this machine for about a month now and, so far, it tears through every app I've thrown at it. DVD encoding takes minutes instead of hours now. Some of the most demanding photoshop filters take only moments and I'm getting very high frame rates (at 1920 x 1080) for Fallout 3 and TES4! Haven't had a single crash, lockup or bluescreen either - this has been absolutely rock-solid! I give Intel and G.Skill high praise for this.

The only thing I'm still not happy with is my keyboard...so I've ordered something special. I'll blog about it soon. ;)

A Lot Can Happen In A Decade...

2010-05-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

Just for fun, this is me in my studio ten years ago. Tali was one year old.

The Waldorf Micro-Q had just been released. It and the Microwave XT were the centerpiece of my studio. I was using a couple of Bose patio speakers for monitors.

Messing about with Win7's Movie app...

2010-05-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

"Silver Thread" from my forthcoming album was used as a Guinea Pig, trying out the free video software in Win7. It's basically a slideshow of a number of my CG images.

Monitor mayhem...

2010-05-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

To my profound disgust, one of my beloved ADAM P11a monitors died over the weekend. The internal amps were both distorting and crackling horribly, rendering it completely useless. I was so furious at first as this was the last thing I needed while in the midst of mixing the new album. In the end, I suppose I figure I did okay, getting almost seven years out of the ADAMs. I'll most probably get the faulty one repaired if I can find a decent tech in the area without a months-long waiting list but, in the meantime, I desperately needed new monitors.

I spent most of Saturday at my local Banjo Shack inflicting an entire CD's worth of my rough mixes on two very patient sales guys. Unfortunately, my budget was only about half of what it was when I got my ADAMs so I had to be extremely thrifty as well as critical.

I had almost settled on a pair of KRK VXT 8s but every one of the four units I tested had some weird flaw - a silent tweeter, a fluttery woofer, an intermittent high-pitched whine, etc. It has completely soured me on KRK as a brand. Shame, because the VXT 8s looked to be a perfect fit.

The M-audios I tested colored the midrange too much, the JBLs had too many "bells and whistles" adding much to the cost and little to their functionality, the Events were too colored, the Mackies weren't in stock, etc...

My final choice was a bit of a revelation for me. After hours of listening and re-listening, I finally ended up settling on a pair of Yamaha HS80M monitors. I had been prepared not to like these as Yamaha modeled their aesthetics on their famous NS10 grotboxes, white woofers and all. Sound-wise though, they were a welcome surprise with a very flat response and nicely revealing of the subtle flaws in my test mixes. At less than $400 a piece, the price was seriously too good to be true - especially considering the sound quality. Suffice to say, I left with two largish boxes on a hand truck.

So far these HS80Ms have been perfectly lovely in the studio, much better than I had hoped in fact! The HS80Ms have a slightly more "forward" or "aggressive" sound than the ADAMs but, so far, haven't been fatiguing, even during long mixing sessions. Working with them has been an absolutely painless transition so far. They're not overbright and the response seems very flat all the way down into the lower bass regions though there is a noticeable rolloff around 50hz or so. I hate to admit it but, in some ways, these are more helpful to me than the ADAMs have been. Placement of instruments in the stereo field seems more accurate and the bass extension seems more detailed, allowing me to fit "bassy" instruments together better with less overlap. The "sweet spot" is a lot wider than what I've grown used to as well. I've had a chance the last few days to remix a number of my tracks and check their translation on other systems and have been getting great results!

I should mention that despite my exuberance, the new monitors aren't perfect - nothing is. The HS80Ms' tone is a trifle agressive as I mentioned before. They're not razor-flat either...but no monitor I've ever tried has been. You just have to decide if it's good enough for you and will the mixes translate? If the answer is "no", there's plenty of other monitor choices. So far neither of these things has been an issue...but I'll be sure to say something if it becomes one. But, for now, the honeymoon ain't over yet. ;)

We'll see how these "budget" monitors hold up but, so far, I'm completely floored by the quality/price ratio on these things. I'm even starting to get used to the ugly white woofers.

Working on another song...

2010-04-11T01:45:00.000-07:00

This one is tentatively called "In the Big Room". Vocals aren't finished yet:

In the Big Room - rough mix

Tali approves:

Halou

2010-04-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

<a href="http://halou.bandcamp.com/album/halou">Professional (Feat. Robin Guthrie) by Halou</a>

Another wonderful band that's been around for more than a decade...that I've never heard of.

Beautifully dark, with coarse as well as silky timbres. I find this kind of indie stuff charming as hell and impossible to resist.

Recommended if you like Bel Canto, Massive Attack or Cocteau Twins.

Relaxing

2010-04-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone is having a relaxing weekend. I can highly recommend the application of a cold beer and a warm cat. Cheers!

Complete album, Shadow, free to listen...

2010-03-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

As some of you probably noticed, I got myself a Soundcloud account. It's made managing my online music much easier. One upshot is I can make entire albums of work available now.

Last year's instrumental chill album "Shadow" can now be listened to in its entirety:

If you like it, pick up the CD at CD Baby.

Enjoy!

Silver Thread

2010-03-15T10:10:00.001-07:00

Another busy weekend in the studio...for me anyway. I can't speak for Tali:

I've been on a bit of a roll - yet another new song is completed!

Silver thread by Carbon111

Silver Thread was composed with Ensoniq Fizmo, Waldorf Q, Korg Oasys and Digidesign's Boom softsynth. The vocals are all me again.

Past the hour when little girls should dream
The road is silent, the hills are steep
Your wings are heavy with dust and sleep
You're miles afar from places you should be

Follow my voice along this silver thread
Follow my voice along this silver thread

Incense trees grow along dim lanes
A shadow city full of candle flames
Fly on and on my Abyssinian maid
Leave Kubla Khan to history"s fate

Follow my voice along this silver thread
Follow my voice along this silver thread

My house is warm and the time is late
Dip your wing and find this path safe
Little bird flies down to a sunless sea
What draws you on to set your heart free?

Follow my voice along this silver thread
Follow my voice along this silver thread

A New Song: "The Initiation"

2010-02-28T03:43:00.000-08:00

The initiation by Carbon111

I think one of the most interesting Initiations is the "Walkabout" Rite Of Passage when one is forced to finally rely on no one else and accomplish a task that tests the limits of one's spirit. When the initiate gets home they are then full members of the society, having gone through the same trial as everyone else. A magical transformation through finding one's self in the wilderness.

My new song, The Initiation, is an echo of this.

Lead Drones are from the SCI Prophet 600, Piano is Nord Stage, Pads are provided by Nord Wave, and Metallic Stabs and Drums are Korg Oasys.

How can I say from where
Light just shines out of there
These eyes that wear no mask
There's nothing left to ask
And nothing left to hide
It's black up in the sky
The stars have all gone napping
Who can say just what's been happening?

I'm not your hero anymore
I'm just The Fool
You have to stand alone this time
Or be destroyed

As gentle as a dove
And with a serpent's love
You have to leave me here
There's nothing left to fear
Now find your own way home
All journeys made alone
Through darkness and cold air
You know I'll meet you there

I'm not your hero anymore
I'm just The Fool
You have to stand alone this time
Or be destroyed

Through darkness and cold air
You know I'll meet you there
Through darkness and cold air
You know I'll meet you there...

Life is good!

2010-02-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

No, really.

I think most of us in the "developed" world forget sometimes how good we have it, focusing on what we want rather than what we are lucky to have. Shattering cataclysms like the Haitian quake can really drive this home when you see people who had very little be reduced to people who have nothing.

Recently, a friend clued me in to Shelter Box, a nonprofit org supplying shelters and supplies to people in desperate need. Every $1000 they get buys one "Shelter Box", containing the following:

• One ten-person tent, including two fabric interior privacy partitions, outer fly-sheet and repair kit. These tents are considered ‘winter suitable’ by international relief standards.

• One 49 gallon box (The ShelterBox) initially the container for delivery of the materials listed below. Once delivered, the box takes an all kinds of uses and can be used as a water tank, food store, table, even a cot.

• Vinyl insulated sleeping mats and lightweight thermal blankets. More compact than sleeping bags, these mats and blankets have multiple uses. The blanket can also be fashioned to catch water, as a tarp, while the mat also serves as a ground ‘table’ for meals, or tent rugs.

• One pack of 180 water purification tablets or a water purification kit; and one 5 gallon flat-pack water container (Each tablet will purify a full container of water providing 1,800 gallons of clean drinking water which should be sufficient for a family of ten for up to three months).

• Two 2.1 gallon, collapsible, plastic water carriers.

• One collapsible trenching shovel

• Rope, 164 foot

• Repellant-treated mosquito netting

• Ten PVC Ponchos/ ten heavy duty plastic bags

• Tool kit in canvas bag: hachet, jack-knife, screwdriver, hammer, hoe head.

• Multi-fueled cook stove

• Eating utensils: plates and cups

• Children's activity kit-simple school supplies, stickers and coloring book.

A place to live and the means to provide some self-sufficiency amid devastation is a priceless thing.

In this day and age when people are afraid to give because so many so-called charities are skimming too much off the top for "administrative" purposes, it's refreshing to find a solid organization that takes a different tack.

Any size donation is acceptable and will help: http://www.shelterbox.org

Are web series changing the mainstream?

2009-12-21T16:20:00.000-08:00

I admit I'm a bit of a slow pony when it comes to keeping up with bleeding-edge entertainment phenomena, but a new trend of fun web-based media has piqued my interest.

I think it may have started with web-based comix like Jon Rosenberg's wonderful "Goats" which burgeoned until collected volumes were showing up in bookstores everywhere. Then the phenomena moved on to animated shorts like "Happy Tree Friends" or Dave Lovelace's unabashed "Retarded Animal Babies" both now available on DVD. Things that once only had life on the web, now are beginning to have a commercial life in the "real" world.

With recent Web-to-TV transitions like the SF extravaganza "Sanctuary" or Joss Whedon's Web-to-DVD comedy "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog", things seem to be in full bloom.

The most recent manifestation to hit my radar is "Riese, The Series".

Riese is an exciting and engaging action-driven story about a mysterious femme fatale wanderer and her faithful wolf companion. The Riese phenomenon was helped along with a fierce viral web campaign featuring a virtual scavenger hunt of sorts across the internet. The better-than-average production values are evident though it's still obviously a lower budget affair. Relatively inexpensive HD video cameras like the breakthrough "Red One" and cheaper computer-based visual effects are beginning to blur the line between "budget" and "quality". This can only be a healthy thing, putting the means of professional production in new, adventersome hands.

The thing I'm finding most interesting with this new web-spawned media is that a small creative team, usually only two or three people, have complete control over story and character - a far cry from the watered-down-by-committee/dumbed-down-to-the-lowest-common-denominator dross that comprises the majority of the network shows these days. When the creative control is in fewer hands, I think the end product really shines as a unique beacon with tons of character.

Riese is a good example of this. While still falling easily into the dystopian fantasy/action mold, there are creative touches that make this quirky enough to stay engaging and give it a touch of class that is usually "polished away" in the mainstream media. If the lack of budget shows through occasionally, well that just adds to the charm I say.

The media "Goliaths" would do well to take note of the doings of these independent "Davids" now practicing their craft on the World Wide Web.

Music In Our Homes

2009-11-29T12:36:00.000-08:00

Active on a lot of online forums, I come across a wide variety of music. Occasionally a real gem will reveal itself. Music In Our Homes by Scenic Square is one such "diamond in the rough".

Both lush and minimal, this album hosts an eclectic mix of electoacoustic and electronic instruments, fronted by a unique voice. Woven from intricate melodies, broad drones and percussive bits the fabric of this music is both rough and velvet-soft. I'm really loving this.

On the exceptional strength of these songs, I'm looking forward to more excellent music in the future from these folks.

Check the album out: Music In Our Homes

Dreams, Microphones and Financial Reality

2009-11-22T00:20:00.000-08:00

The Dream: the Telefunken ELA M 250. $14,495.00 list and a mere $11,500.00 street!

...At the asking price, I'll never be able to own one.

Fortunately for me, the B.L.U.E. Blueberry has a rather similar signature sound:

...and is less than a tenth of the cost! It's currently my favorite mic. My voice, while passable, needs all the help it can get. ;)

---

My second favorite high-value/low-budget mic is an oddball combo that sounds surprisingly like a Neumann U87. Namely, the RTT M1 (LOMO) head paired with an Oktava MK012 body.

Purchased through a place like The Sound Room, the total cost is around $500 for the pair. Considering the sound and the quality you get for the price, it's a no-brainer in my opinion:

+

---

It's amazing what you can do on a budget these days. Low-cost Chinese manufacturing paired with American assembly and quality control has even paved the way for a really good-quality ribbon mic for around $250 courtesy of Shinybox Ribbon Microphones:

If you don't mind shelling out $150 more, you can have the same mic but with your choice of Cinemag or Lundahl output transformer.

---

There are some similar low-cost "deals" from some mainstream manufacturers that show up in the big-store catalogs, but the quality just isn't there in my opinion.

As the above examples show, there are some amazing deals are out there if you dig around a little...and if you're willing to shell out a little extra than the bare minimum.

Next up, I show the viewers at home how to buy caviar and champagne for pennies on the dollar... ^_^

Goodbye Edward...

2009-11-16T12:22:00.001-08:00

I just heard about Edward Woodward's passing. A fantastic actor with a long and varied career. Sad that, more and more, all my "old friends and heroes" seem to be leaving. :(

When I think of Edward Woodward, the first thing that comes to my mind is his role as the naive yet well-meaning police officer Neil Howie from the movie "The Wicker Man". A stunning piece of acting there Ed! You'll be sorely missed.

No Time

2009-11-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

No time by Carbon111

As mentioned before, "Stealing The Sun" is coming along nicely - I just finished remixing a short song called "No Time", featuring my voice and a number of synths from the Korg Oasys.

Craft a song of Death and Sunshine
Tell a story: Love and Moonshine

Time So Long
There's No Time

Admiration for all my foes
Abject love for your crooked smile

Time So Long
There's No Time

Every breath is Hello/Goodbye
Every word just blurs Day to Night

Time So Long
There's No Time

Secret Weapon

2009-11-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

The Allen & Heath VF-1 1U rackmount filter has turned out to be an indispensable studio tool for me. In many ways its the best "vintage warmer" I've ever used. However, it's quite capable of a wide variety of tasks and shouldn't be pigeonholed as "just a processor for cold digital sources" - though it does that in spades!

The VF-1 can be an extremely subtle effect, maybe used just to add some phase movement, or it can be totally in-your-face with squelchy lowpass sweeps and scorching tube distortion. That said, I still wouldn't generally classify it as an "extreme" processor like say a Sherman filterbank, but more as a surgical sound-sculpting tool that is also capable of imparting a lot of warmth.

Multiple resonant filter responses are available simultaneously, including lowpass, highpass, bandpass and a really lovely all-pass for the aforementioned phase effects. Simultaneous combinations of multiple filter types are available via lighted enables on the front panel. Besides the filters, the VF-1 sports an LFO, a tube-based drive section and an Envelope Follower with flexible routing. This allows for a huge variety of sound-manipulation just using the VF-1 by itself!

Though it is very warm-sounding, it's not what I would call a "fat" or "beefy" filter, more like an extremely resonant multiband EQ with a really low-noise tube circuit built in - there is somehow a very pristine quality to the second-order tube harmonics and not a lot of "fuzz" if you get my drift - more like a high-end mic pre or DI box rather than a distortion pedal. You can get some very bold distortion if you push it but it's more often useful as a less blatent effect.

In many configurations the VF-1 can be almost "transparent" though it's hugely obvious by its absence if you go into bypass mode.

All-in-all an extremely useful tool and a very handy "secret weapon" for any electronic musician's arsenal! ;)

More info at Allen & Heath.com

Breathing Machinery

2009-11-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

Here's my newest song, called "Breathing Machinery":

Breathing machinery by Carbon111

Korg Oasys does Piano and Wave Sequencing, Weird Pads are NI's Absynth and, except for some clickety bits from Digidesign's "Boom", all the Drum Sounds and Rhythm Beds were done in NI's Absynth as well. Vox is me thru a BLUE Blueberry.

Looking at you
She's not seeing anyone
Moving so strangely from the plastic and glass and rum
Sugar and spice and everything nice
- is not what you came here for
Sugar and spice and everything nice
- is that what she came here for?

She's Breathing Machinery
Feeling Machinery
She's Making Memories
Feeding Machinery

Nothing's been said
But she's the one for you
Her serial number is an impossible dream-come-true
With parts off the shelf you could have built her yourself
But where is the fun in that?
Selling bits of yourself, she'd be rolling in wealth
- and there is the fun in that

She's Breathing Machinery
Feeling Machinery
She's Making Memories
Feeding Machinery...

Spark a Reaktion...

2009-11-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

I'm generally not a huge fan of softsynths, probably because I think most of them come across as "strident", "brittle" or "glassy-sounding" in terms of their overall timbre. Fortunately there are a few exceptions, one of which is Native Instrument's Reaktor which, depending on the instrument loaded, can sound absolutely lovely!

NI recently released a new Reaktor instrument, or "ensemble" in NI-speak, called Spark. This little gem passed completely under my radar as they marketed it more as a "sound library" for their Kore product line rather than on its own merits. Let me just say at the outset that, if you own Reaktor 5, Spark is well worth the fifty nine dollars they charge for a download.

Born from the Mind of NI's founder Stephan Schmitt, Spark is a fantastic-sounding synthesizer with a ton of character! The signal chain is eclectic even for a softsynth as the oscillator section is relatively simple in structure with much of the timbre shaping being done downstream. The tools available include a gutsy filter, a frequency shifter, an eight pole filter and multiple modulation and feedback paths.

The sounds I've gotten with this beast are both subtle and evocative. It's easy to create anything from an evolving/etheric pad to a gritty broken-guitar lead or a rubbery bass. Many of the timbres have an unusual organic feel, very unlike many other Reaktor Ensembles or stand-alone softsynths I've played.

Spark is well worth a look if you have Reaktor, maybe less so if you only have Kore or the free Kore Player as there's no direct access to the GUI, but it still may be attractive for some due to its great overall sound character.

Spark is a very welcome and unique tool amongst a vast ocean of mediocre, mostly-VA softsynths.

Clifford D. Simak's "CITY"

2009-09-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

Back in 1981, when I was 18, I got to meet Clifford D. Simak in Denver, Colorado at the 39th Annual World Science Fiction Convention. He was an effervescent old man with an absolutely infectious smile. I didn't really know who he was or what he had written as my tastes were narrower and a little less refined in those days.

It's a shame, because at this point it's a little late in the day to thank him.

One of the first books of his I read, a few years after meeting him, was City - a novel composed of linked short stories written between 1944 and 1951. It had a very profound effect on me with its folksy robots tending the gardens of an Earth wholly deserted by Mankind, left to the by-then-sentient Dogs and of course the industrious Ants.

The richness of his characters and depth of his stories has stayed with me through the years and the palpable warmth and humanity of his words still speak to me across time and space.

Thanks Clifford, wherever you are, I drew this for you:

The New Album...

2009-09-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

Here is the preliminary artwork for my forthcoming album of songs:

For a while the new CD was going to be called "Screaming At The Sun" but it has since evolved into "Stealing The Sun"...twisting the Northwest Indian story of Raven stealing the Moon slightly askew. ;)

I'm about three quarters of the way through production and hope to have all the music completed amd edited by the new year. Luna and Subterranean Bathers will both be present in all their uncompressed CD-quality glory as well as a Serge Modular version of "Wichita Lineman", an a-capella version of "Mother Nature's Son" and some other secret-for-now goodies.

In addition to various and sundry synthesizers, voice will feature prominantly on this release.

Further updates will be forthcoming...

Supernatural?

2009-09-03T11:49:00.000-07:00

Natural manifestations of things like electricity and magnetism must have seemed pretty supernatural to ancient peoples.

"Supernatural" is a word with a lot of baggage. So much depends on how we define these "loaded" concepts. Take "God" for example. That could mean anything dependant on how you define it. Maybe the universe itself is in some way sentient - does that qualify as "God"? Could it affect our lives in any direct way? And if it couldn't, would it still be God? Would it matter?

Or how about "Magic"? If you define it as "causing change to occur in the physical world by the power of one's will", then the creation of a webpage could be seen as magic...I use my wand (keyboard) to create incantations (blogs) and I conjure arcane spirits (HTML) to spread them, etc.

Though I am for the most part a confirmed sceptic, I have seen and experienced some pretty weird things. I think it's healthy to reserve a shadow of a doubt for phenomena that are recurring but not currently explicable with known science. However, all observations of these phenomena should be conducted using the scientific method to keep ones "wishes and daydreams" well out of it.

Ritual, Epiphany and Mythos are extremely healthy things that, if properly directed, can help us be more completely human. Being a realist doesn't automatically mean you can't partake in the Transcendent. I know I certainly do.

For me, "supernatural phenomena" is just natural phenomena that we don't understand yet.

That doesn't mean, however, that I'll ignore scientifically demonstrable proof in lieu of "faith" - that can lead down the path of zealotry or, even worse, you could find yourself amongst a bunch of people standing in long robes in the Arizona desert...waiting for the Mothership to land. But, hey, you never know. ;)

Brewing an Ale - Easier than you may think...

2009-07-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

Brewday begins with me finding my "helper" a spot where she won't be underfoot. As long as she can see what I'm up to and has a comfortable place to sit, she's happy:

Next, I lay out the ingredients I'm going to need for my recipe. Five pounds of dry malt extract, a pound of medium-kilned Crystal grain, a few ounces of hop pellets for the different timed additions and, in this particular case, some cinnamon and honey:

The grains are put in a muslin sack and steeped. They get removed when the temp hits 160:

Once things come to a boil, the malt extract and honey are added along with the first dose of hop pellets. The "wort" as it is called will now boil for an hour with further hop additions at 30 minutes and 45 minutes:

Ten minutes before the end of the boil, the wort chiller is added to the boil to sterilize it. The chiller is a big coil of copper tubing that I will run cold tap water through to cool the wort down to a temperature cool enough for the yeast to do their thing:

Once cooled, the wort is poured into the fermenter, live yeast is added, the fermenter is sealed and an airlock is added to allow C02 to escape without letting bacteria in:

In a few weeks, fermentation will be complete and this will be ready to bottle. Stay tuned. ^_^

Pen & Ink Drawings...

2009-05-08T11:42:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days I've begun to scan some of my Pen-and-Ink drawings from my vast collection in preparation for a book I want to publish.

These are all Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens on acid-free paper.

Because they're now in digital form, its easy to share these so I thought I'd put a handful up here.

Studio Revamp Halfway There...

2009-05-04T19:32:00.000-07:00

Stuck at home with what feels like a bad cold, I thought I'd take a moment to post... (no, I don't have the Swine Flu!) ;)

I had a busy (back-breaking) Sunday morning in the studio and have installed new 3-tier keyboard stands on one side of the studio, replacing the awful 2-tier "X" stands.

These are "Standtastic" stands that I only discovered a couple of weeks ago. A nice bit of industrial design! There's lots of legroom underneath, space for pedals, etc...

Kitty approves as well.

Now I need to break down the Ikea desk (on the left) and haul it down to the garage where it will become my workbench. Don't despair, as nice as it looks, it's not real wood. It will make a nice, solid surface for construction and a place to permanently set up my soldering iron.

Once that's done there'll be enough room to assemble the Quik Lok Z555 "workstation" furniture again and its pendant racks and other doo-dads. The Oasys will go here as main studio controller - where it really belongs:

Then I can move the big red Papasan chair back into the corner. I miss having a "comfy chair" in the studio...and so does kitty...obvious from this old photo:

A bunch of my brightly-colored synths ended up in this stand. Not sure if this is their "final spot" but for now, this is the "artificial fruit flavors" stand:

...and there turned out to be enough room between the stands for a rack containing the Spectral Audio Syntrack, Waldorf Microwave XT and the Yamaha VL-1m:

To the left of the rack you can just make out the 1U 8x2 line mixer that sends the output from all these synths over to the other side of the studio via a single pair of cables, obviating the need for a snake this time.

Over the next couple of weekends I'm hoping to finish up and get back to recording. Once the Oasys is in place and my main DAW and interfaces hooked up again, I've already got some ideas pushing to get out!

Subterranean Bathers

2009-04-12T02:37:00.001-07:00

Fast on the heels of Luna, my new song Subterranean Bathers is about how Lovecraftian fishpeople have secretly moved into the suburbs...or something like that. ;)

Subterranean bathers by Carbon111

"Chewing gum and twist-ties
Are binding me together
It's just a kind of glue
To help me past the weather

You're so bright and August
I'm so Spring and undivided though the Universe provided just the merest glimpse of you

We are
Subterranean Bathers
We are
The best of all neighbors
We never come up for air
You won't even know we're there
Keepers of light in the dark - I've lost my mind
...But found this spark"

The Nozzle

2009-04-12T02:26:00.000-07:00

Please do not be alarmed.

We are about to engage...the nozzle.

Please do not move while the nozzle is engaging.

Moving will disrupt calibration of...the nozzle.

Please wait while we calibrate...the nozzle.

Please do not look away from...the nozzle.

The nozzle is now calibrating.

The nozzle is still calibrating.

The nozzle has completed calibration.

Thank you.

Texture

2009-04-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Texture is a 108-page fine art photography book I just published through the online publisher Blurb. This portfolio is a large assemblage of photos of both natural and man-made objects and environs, each with an inherent and pronounced visual texture. From the eyelash of a deer to sulphur-encrusted stones, this collection really runs the gamut. :)

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/636722/

The book is available for purchase online and the first fifteen pages can be browsed through at
their site.

Luna

2009-03-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

Luna by Carbon111

Well, it's been a little while since I was in the studio actually making music...getting Shadow out took a lot of time and effort even after all the recording was done.

I was able to steal a few hours from Time himself the last couple of days and create a little tune called Luna.

The Nord Stage is on "distorted lead", Nord Wave on "grungy Santur" and Oasys on drums and "ambiance". The vox is all me and, hopefully, I'm not too rusty.

I'm heels over head for you
My days are wine and bread for you
I've turned my end-beginning round again
Cycle circle Dervish you
What will you do with what has you?
The message you are sending sounds again

All I can see is the stars in your eyes
All I can see is the moon

A Winter road for Summer souls
And every seed a part, a whole
I've turned my end-beginning round again
Plants lie waiting under snow
All the seeds prepare to grow
The message you are sending sounds again

All I can see is the stars in your eyes
All I can see is the moon

Spiral fox my forest you
The secret secret no one knew
From here the light is shining once again
Red and white your color true
Blue and black and bruised like you
From here the colors blending found again

All I can see is the stars in your eyes
All I can see is the moon...

Shadow

2009-02-16T11:33:00.000-08:00

Well it's finally done - mixed, mastered, duplicated, barcoded and shrinkwrapped!

After a couple of namechanges, a new logo and a complete rework of the front cover graphics, my electonic-instrumental-"chill" album Shadow is finally ready!

I have it available here on CD Baby. ^_^

It's been a long six years in the making and I'm really proud of this release as I've taken my time and tried to address every little detail. Many songs had to be remixed numerous times so as to fit better within the "character" of the CD and some had to be saved for another release entirely as they didn't mesh well with the other pieces, most notable amongst these were my weird Serge Modular pieces - they'll be getting their own CD later this year, probably this Fall.

Mastering Shadow turned out to be a fairly hairy business that I eventually accepted was beyond a mere "mix engineer" like myself. After many days spent mastering, re-mastering and starting from scratch again, again and again, I decided to have a professional do it. I've discovered that mastering is very different than the kind of engineering I'm used to on the "frontend" of a piece of music. I called in George Mattson for the task and he has exceeded my highest expectations.

The cover was originally a black and white image designed specifically to be well-suited for silkscreening, a technique that turned out to be too expensive this time around, so I decided to create a brand new cover image to take advantage of the full-color standard CD cover:

Here's a few of the pieces featured on Shadow:

Arrival 5:27: A contemplative tune grounded by Nord Stage E-piano. Lead synth is by Nord Wave, "rhythm" by Juno 60 and weird ambiences by NI Reaktor & NI Absynth 4.
Bicycle 7:42: The SCI Six-Track takes up rhythmic bass duties while two pianos courtesy of the Nord Stage and NI's Massive weave complimentary lines. Oasys provides the FM pad and Absynth provides some ambiance.
Crows for Marie 5:25: A "piano-ambient-thing". The piano is "Marie", my old Baldwin spinet, the background is Nord Modular percussion, Nord Modular insects, Nord Modular FM pad and a Prophet'08 triangle pad.

The Solaris at N.A.M.M.

2009-02-16T11:07:00.000-08:00

Every year in January, the National Association of Music Manufacturers has a big bash down in Anaheim. For someone like me whose joie de vivre is heavily entwined with making electronic music as well as the tools of the trade, this tradeshow is like the ultimate "Disneyland for geeks".

My friend and neighbor, John Bowen, is putting the finishing touches on what to me is the ultimate music synthesizer, The Solaris. Last year I helped demo this amazing device to all and sundry while simultaneously falling in love with its beautiful sound and deep programability. My experiences at N.A.M.M. were enhanced by the fact that I was finally able to meet some long-standing online friends in person and share some laughter and swap stories.

The Solaris has a richness of tone I'm not used to hearing from a digital instrument and the design is beautifull as well as relatively easy-to-use despite the fact that there are over 800 programmable parameters.

While working on my soon-to-be-released album, Shadow, I was graciously allowed the use of a Solaris prototype. What a wondeerful experience!

For the curious, more information is available at http://www.johnbowen.com

This year, I returned to N.A.M.M. as a spectator and shot a few pics of this beautiful instrument:

Here's what John Bowen himself has to say:

Circle Cat...

2009-01-21T14:58:00.000-08:00

My cat Tali is a Colorpoint Shorthair who loves to sleep curled up in a ball. Some friends and I were making mock "motivational posters" and I came up with these three. My cat is so full of personality, she always makes me laugh...and can be often found lurking in my music studio. ^_^

Ingmar Bergman

2009-01-07T11:11:00.000-08:00

I finally started watching the box set of Ingmar Bergman films my wife got me for the holiday. It's easy to see how Bergman's films inform so much of modern cinema. Also, the cinematography is excellent in all of these - beautifull stark black-and-white with vivid contrasts that somehow avoids becoming "film noir".

Wild Strawberries was excellent! This was one of Bergman's films I never bothered to watch because the plot always sounded terribly boring - an old man travelling to recieve an award reminisces about his life. I'm really glad I finally saw this! It was anything but boring and delved into things that were, for me, surprisingly poingant investigations into what constitutes a "good life" or even a "good person" and how in some ways you can never fully escape your upbrining.

The Seventh Seal has always been one of my favorite movies ever since I first saw it as a teen. It's wonderful to finally own a beautiful print of it...I've already watched this one twice since I recieved it! The joys of Life and a solid game of chess with Death in plague-ravaged Europe...I really love this movie! Back from the crusades, Max Von Sydow and a company of minstrals tread lightly through oblivion.

The Virgin Spring was another one I had never seen. Powerful, harrowing and heartbreaking...an interesting immersive take on revenge, medieval culture, the pagan/christian dichotomy and Faith in the face of mankind's inherent visciousness. Such a terribly "quiet" film too, you can hear every rustling leaf and drip of water. The level of tension in this one is unrelenting. Max Von Sydow is an amazing actor of many facets both subtle and powerful!

The other film in the boxed set is another one I haven't seen, a comedy called "Smiles of a Summer Night". I'm really looking forward to it.

Bergman is definately one of my favorite directors of all time, in good company with Peter Weir, Alejandro Jodorowsky and the giallo master, Mario Bava.

As a side note, I'm not solely into "Art Flicks", I've got some lighter fare in store too as our stack of recent purchases contains some fun flicks: No Such Thing, Kung Fu Hustle, Konga, Hero, House of Flying Daggars and the MST3K Anniversary Boxed Set.

^_^

Rethink...

2008-12-26T10:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I've finally come to the conclusion that I can't master my own album.

After many days spent mastering, re-mastering and starting from scratch again and again, I've decided to have a professional do this. I've discovered that mastering is very different than the engineering I'm used to on the "frontside" of a piece of music.

While in the throes of this epiphany, I stumbled on this YouTube vid that made me chuckle, especially the bit about having your work professionally mastered! It's by a band I've never heard of and whose music I probably wouldn't ordinarily seek out but everything said is very sage advice indeed! Total respect - these guys use a lot of modular synthesis and processing! Many musicians never figure half of these things out:

I can't say I disagree with a single thing said. :D

...I do wish I had had a bit more humility from the get-go and decided earlier to have the new album professionally mastered and saved myself an infinite amount of screaming-and-hair-pulling frustration!

Mastering and patience...

2008-11-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

Patience is indeed a virtue. It's a shame that it's such a scarce commodity these days.

I'm finishing off my first new album of music in about four years. The mastering of each song requires numerous (many dozens) of playthroughs as I tweak very subtle settings. My wife has surprised me by her unusual understanding and, most of all, patience. Though I'm certain some of these tunes are driving her nuts at this point, she has been supportive all the way through this arduous process. I consider myself extremely fortunate! :)

My goal is to finish up "Shadow Bridge" by the end of this next week and then start the CD duplication process.

Choosing cover art has been interesting as well. I started out with around twenty designs. At this point it looks like this one is vying for the lead right now though the logo may go through a number of permutations:

The Day After...

2008-11-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

Election day is always tough but, this time, it was like being forced to choose between Azathoth and Cthulhu.

Still, I'm glad we got the lesser of two evils as human sacrifice to the great Cthulhu would be so messy and wasteful. ;)

I think it will be interesting to see how the hearts of the very young and idealistic voters fare. It will shatter a few illusions when they realise Obama will still have to work with the lobbyists and private interests to get anything done - more business as usual. The only way that real positive change will happen is if the Obama administration moves independantly of corporate desires - and, unfortunately, that just ain't going to happen. LOL!

Bipartisanship won't help either because there is little to no difference between the parties other than some surface cosmetics and a handful of hot-button issues. Both parties are so inextricably beholden to corporate interests that real social change will reamain a fantasy for the forseeable future.

Still, I think Obama was personally more fiscally attractive as Mccain's tax plan would have really given me no relief while giving the top 5% huge cuts.

In lieu of a Flat Tax, which will unfortunately never happen, Obama's plan looks better to these jaded eyes of mine.

Neither tax-and-spend or borrow-and-spend seem to be good philosophies but I haven't seen anything else by any administration. Maybe someday we can look forward to Government addressing such overhanging worries as Deficit and Debt...one can hope but I'm too much of a realist to hold my breath.

At this point I'm very eager to see who Obama selects as the next Treasury Secretary, as well as who he picks for other Cabinet positions.

All in all an interesting change. One thing I am proud of my country for is that it's possible for a black person to be elected President - I honestly had my doubts about the voting public and I'm glad to be surprised on this count!

I hope for more pleasant surprises in the coming days.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

I love this holiday! To cement the mood, I just ordered a print of this darkly beautiful painting by the late Zdzisław Beksiński:

For more information about this artist of the fantastic, check this Wiki article: Zdzisław Beksiński

For some "Halloween Music" to go with it, you might like a darkish ambient piece of mine called Touch. Enjoy!

A Soft Apocalypse

2008-10-17T21:34:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan of many types of speculative fiction and, one of the most interesting, is science fiction that came out of the Soviet Union during the U.S./Soviet cold-war-era. Two real masters in this period were the brothers Akady and Boris Strugatsky. Science fiction was sometimes the only way writers could slip someting past the censors - the subtext is always worth closer scrutiny in these books.

My favorite book of the Strugatsky brothers, The Ugly Swans, is not their most well-known but, every time I re-read it, I walk away with a new, valid insight into human nature and how it interacts with inherited Culture within the confines of imposed Government. No, really. :)

On the surface, the story concerns what may be a new race of humans evolving beneath our very noses but shunned as if they were lepers as they are seemingly victims of a chronic malaise. For most people, these "Slimies" as they are called are out-of-sight/out-of-mind. While most adults take no notice of these "poor souls", the children however are attracted to them and begin to learn from them just how flawed all the driving factors of the adults actually are. At some point these children, who have become all too bright, have no use for the adults anymore with their passion-driven actions, their hubris and ignorance. The children hold no hate for these flawed, very human adults, only pity - for they are merely slaves to their desires, fears, hopes and lust for power, only partly tempered by their intellect.

The Ugly Swans is a strange cautionary tale of a slow, subversive change from within that may end up being an unexpected kind of cultural as well as physical evolution. It's an ambiguous change, neither malignant nor uplifting in any usual sense and the reader is left to ponder much of this out alone.

If you can dig up this beautiful novel in the back of some dusty bookshop, its well worth the effort. The style is a little odd as the authors' voices have to shine through the lens of translation but fortunately you can hear the brothers loud and clear. While Russian idiom and some of the sentance structure is a little alien, even in translation, to me these quirks are both attractive and novel at the same time. The characters are all deeply envisioned as three-dimensional people by means of a sympathetic omniscience I found refreshing. There are more interesting things at play here in the subtle ways writers of this era found to talk about freedom of speech, or the lack thereof , in an environment where all media is controlled by the government to quash subversive or dissenting voices. Even the title is redolent with multiple meanings and I always grin at its humor. You can even hear echoes of Clarke's "Childhood's End" here, though it's a very different approach viewed through the eyes of a very different culture - much more subtle and subversive is this memorable "Soft Apocalypse".

Ravens and Crows

2008-10-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

Ravens and crows are extremely fascinating creatures to me. This painting is one I executed in acrylics of this iconic bird a few months back.

I've felt a strong connection with these noisy tricksters for as long as I can remember and they have appeared in my artwork time and time again as symbols of birth, death and gnosis.

I have always loved the depiction in Northwest Indian legends of Raven as a Promethian figure stealing the Sun, Moon and Stars from the gods themselves for the benefit of mankind:

"Long ago, near the beginning of the world, Gray Eagle was the guardian of the Sun, Moon and Stars, of fresh water, and of fire. Gray Eagle hated people so much that he kept these things hidden. People lived in darkness, without fire and without fresh water.

Gray Eagle had a beautiful daughter, and Raven fell in love with her. In the beginning, Raven was a snow-white bird, and as a such, he pleased Gray Eagle's daughter. She invited him to her father's longhouse.

When Raven saw the Sun, Moon and stars, and fresh water hanging on the sides of Eagle's lodge, he knew what he should do. He watched for his chance to seize them when no one was looking. He stole all of them, and a brand of fire also, and flew out of the longhouse through the smoke hole. As soon as Raven got outside he hung the Sun up in the sky. It made so much light that he was able to fly far out to an island in the middle of the ocean. When the Sun set, he fastened the Moon up in the sky and hung the stars around in different places. By this new light he kept on flying, carrying with him the fresh water and the brand of fire he had stolen.

He flew back over the land. When he had reached the right place, he dropped all the water he had stolen. It fell to the ground and there became the source of all the fresh-water streams and lakes in the world. Then Raven flew on, holding the brand of fire in his bill. The smoke from the fire blew back over his white feathers and made them black. When his bill began to burn, he had to drop the firebrand. It struck rocks and hid itself within them. That is why, if you strike two stones together, sparks of fire will drop out.

Raven's feathers never became white again after they were blackened by the smoke from the firebrand."

Ravens are also excellent tool-makers and puzzle-solvers. They are so good at this that one man wanted to train them to collect garbage from the streets by way of a vending machine that would give them a treat for each piece of garbage collected. They have been known to use thin twigs to collect grubs from deep inside logs. In the following video a raven figures out how to bend a piece of wire into a hook to retrieve a prize. Amazing!

Here is another video showing a novel way to crack nuts that these beautiful birds worked out on their own:

Once they learn a new talent, it's passed on to the group rather quickly. I love these guys for their intelligence, adaptability and vigorous personalitys. Viva La Corvus! ^_^

Affinities

2008-10-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

• I'm happily married for many joyous years to a kindred spirit
• Hawaii's "Big Island" is the best place on earth...other than my own backyard
• I can see a machine for the first time and usually be able to tell you how it works in detail
• The SCI Prophet T8 is my "favorite synthesizer I'll never own"
• Navy Blue is cool, but not as cool as Chartreuse
• Jazz is wonderful but I can't play a note to save my life
• I've never been completely happy with any one musical piece of mine (see next item)
• I'm a perfectionist but have learned to settle for "good enough"
• My visual art is where my real epiphany lies - I have no idea where those images come from
• When I turned 40, I dyed my hair magenta and kept it that way for almost a year
• Blueberries are the best fruit ever...except maybe for mangoes
• The Marx brothers are brilliant though Simon Pegg and Nick Frost make a good team as well
• Cats are better than dogs and not just because they smell better
• I have a dinner fork that telescopes to three feet
• I have two guitars but can't play because there's never enough time to learn
• Homebrewed beer is better than anything available in the stores
• The world is a Sacred place, still filled with magic and mystery
• Most people will never realize that the world is a Sacred place, still filled with magic and mystery
• The scientific method is the only tool we have to actually know anything - including spiritual things
• After years of wanting one, I finally got a nice Weller soldering station but don't know if I'll ever find the time to build anything

Heroes

2008-09-30T20:29:00.001-07:00

Some folks think a famous sports figure with a contract with a shoe company is a hero. For others its a parent or someone who touched them personally.

For me it's someone who holds a beacon for us all. My heroes are people like Carl Sagan, Joseph Campbell and James Burke.

Carl Sagan, the astrochemist is probably most well-known as the creator of the landmark television documentary about the universe we live in, Cosmos.
One of his best books was The Demon Haunted World, a treatise on the power of Science to act as a shining light in the current shadowed climate of superstition, religious zealotry and disdain for intellect.
Instead of embracing the unknown, people embrace unknowing - the dumbing-down of textbooks by the removal of things well known to any geneticist or organic chemist so as to cater to the narrow beliefs of a religious minority as noted in my last post is only one of the symptoms. Psychics, astrology charts and horoscopes are commonly consulted. There's a tendency towards escapism instead of repairing what people are escaping from. Ignorance of every flavor and shade dressed up as knowledge surrounds us - and people are embracing this ignorance with open arms. Carl looks at the explosion of pseudoscience and "junk science" as integral components of modern culture and exposes them for the subversion of reason that they are.

Joseph Campbell is the author of Hero With a Thousand Faces and a number of television programs, most notably The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers.
Joseph was a man of real wisdom who showed through his books and lectures on spirituality and comparative religion, a person can be both Spiritual and Religious without burning any bridges, without excluding anybody and, most importantly, without giving up Reason.
By finding the common threads of spirituality in all traditions, Joseph helped me realize long ago that there are many paths to one goal and Belief isn't always about us and them. Aboriginal shaman or Roman Catholic, Buddhist or Jew, Muslim or Hindu, Shinto or Zoroastrian, we all tell the same stories and are filled with the same light. The spark of the Divine is there but it is up to us to fan it into a bright flame that may illuminate the way in these dark times.

James Burke is known for his books and television series about the interconnectedness of historical events. Connections and The Day The Universe Changed are probably his most well-known series. He shows how our growth of understanding of the universe around us changes the way we see the universe and, in effect, changes the universe itself - for example, the Sun no longer orbits the earth, does it?
James shows how events in history are connected to and influence other, sometimes seemingly unrelated, events - everything is linked in an intricate web of cause and effect. History is not isolated events happening in a rigid timeline but a cross-pollination of events large and insignificant, near and far, obvious and hidden.
One of my favorite trails of cause and effect shows how Napoleon's invasion of Egypt was very important to the development of the modern computer:
1 - Napoleons troops, while in Egypt, buy up a lot of intricately woven shawls.
2 - When they get home, this starts a fashion craze for the complex fabrics.
3 - Looms are designed in Europe to copy these designs controlled with paper cards with holes punched in them.
4 - The American engineer Herman Hollerith borrows this the idea to automate the mechanical retrieval of census data with punched paper cards.
5 - Later, these cards are used to get data in and out of ENIAC, the first electronic computer.

Men like Carl, Joseph and James slip right under most people's radar but, to me, they're unsung Heroes for all of us, holding a candle in the vast spiritual and mental darkness of pervasive ignorance, fear and superstition.

"Expelled" From The Garden?

2008-09-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

I used to really respect Ben Stein but his newest fiasco, the movie Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed is more than just embarrassing, its a thinly veiled wolf-pack of lies dressed up in pseudoscientific sheep's-clothing that we've seen once or twice before.
It's a rehash of an attempt to have the junk science of Creationism taught in schools again in the guise of Intelligent Design. The whole thing leaves me deeply saddened.

It would be nice if any of the accusations of a conspiracy of Science to "hush up" Intelligent Design in general were backed up by even the most meager of facts but unfortunately, there's not a one.

Their main point that intelligent design is under systematic attack by the Scientific Community, who won't recognize its scientific validity because of a previous commitment to atheism and materialism, is both laughable and unbelievable in the extreme.

The facts are that the arguments of intelligent design have been examined by the scientific community and found to be lacking in practical usefulness or confirmable truth. The Scientific Community declines to accept intelligent design because the purveyors of intelligent design haven't performed any research, tests or theory-building required by the Scientific method...nor do they want to, regardless of the fact they want intelligent design to be called science.

This movie also contains some of the most base and sad propaganda against scientists themselves, portraying them uniformly as atheists with an agenda, no better than Nazi eugenicists, whereas many scientists have no problem leading spiritual lives and can somehow manage to keep religion firmly separated from the empirical, testable, repeatable scientific truths of the universe we live in.

Evolution itself is portrayed as some sort of religion instead of the underlying and unifying principal of modern biology, genetics and biochemistry. Even a first year biology student could refute these so-called facts with ease and show conclusive, testable, repeatable evidence to all but the most pigheadedly ignorant that evolution is a fact and can be measured and quantified showing changes in mere generations or tracing the telltale trail of mitochondrial DNA down the human path to ancestors like Lucy and beyond.

The so-called scientists that are trotted out are the same crackpots we've seen time and time again as well as people with no or dubious accreditation.

Its a shame that some people will cling to this vapid propaganda for comfort or allow it to replace real knowledge in schools or, worse yet, drum this crap into the heads of our children at home.

The type of people creating this propaganda are attempting to weaken the Constitution in an effort to promote their brand of spirituality as science. It's not good science and it's pretty shallow spirituality.

This world is becoming a demon-haunted rest stop on the way to the reward of the Afterlife for many ignorant people instead of the joyous celebration of the wonderful mysteries of Life and the Universe we are all part of. A society that turns its back on reason in favor of ideology is ripe for a theocratic take-over, and not necessarily an overt one. I find that terrifying in the extreme.

Here's a couple of interesting videos aimed at clarifying some of the issues - the first video is especially telling:

Evolution vs. Creationism: Listen to the Scientists

Of Pandas and People: Intelligent Design in Schools

Of course some of the best resources are found with the Union of Concerned Scientists and The National Center for Science Education.

Canal 22

2008-09-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

Another fun image I've been working on for a while. This started out as a digicam image of a foggy alley I took a few years back. Through judicious use of a pressure-sensitive tablet and stylus, I've "painted it into" something quite different:

Becoming Empty

2008-09-06T01:19:00.000-07:00

To identify with and connect with The Universal, to "become empty enough to be filled" is, to me, one of the highest attainments possible in this mortal coil.

This practice requires the annihilation of the illusory self each of us has created and reinforced with our habits of thinking and living - The interior dialog, that little voice in your head, the reels of memories, the worry, the fear, the images flashing by, the melodies, the constant thinking. Anything that distracts from becoming empty, becoming silent, must be quashed.

There are myriad components of the Self: The Thinker, The Creator, The Worker, The Poet, The Grouch, The Singer, The Hedonist, etc...
You must become only The Observer, the one that watches all these others, the one who is only Being.

There are myriad paths to this goal. The key is to stop the restless brain from thinking and achieve an internal silence or emptiness. One might simply begin quieting all the internal voices by denying each thought that appears in one's head by simultaneously affirming its opposite and thereby annihilating both.

The Zen breathing exercise of Zazen or the chanting exercises of Mantra Yoga are even better methods. Other disciplines and meditations will work as well or better, depending on the proclivities of the individual. The scientific method must be implemented to find the vehicle which works best for each of us and, most importantly, has repeatable and consistent results.

The travel on this path is arduous, mined with the distraction of the Body and the Brain. The eye cannot "see" itself and is itself unnoticed in use - the Universe is like this as well, suffusing us completely but completely unnoticed and unseen. Once the distractions are quieted, ordinary temporal worries become less important and the path becomes more visible with each step. Epiphany in the form of personal identification with the Universe itself is the reward.

Mirrors

2008-09-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've noticed a tendency many people have that is interesting in the extreme. People tend to turn each other into "mirrors" without thinking - almost on a subconscious level. Mirrors in the sense that, in the back of their minds, people think others have the same set of beliefs, values and morality as themselves. When pressed or in acute conflict people will state otherwise but by their actions and words they betray their belief that other people are just like themselves and when there is evidence to the contrary it's just an aberration and the rest must surely be equivalent. The other party will surely come around to the "correct" point of view.

If the evidence to the contrary persists then the mirror shatters and the US/THEM paradigm is embraced. This tends to amplify the tendency of people in the "US" group to turn each other into mirrors. Of course all those awful people in the "THEM" group must all be "wrong" in some homogeneous manner as well. ;)

Blankets like Politics and Religion are prime fields for this behavior.

Tendencies like "mirroring" that encourage the transformation of groups of individuals into a homogeneous Mob should be subdued while those that allow individuals to celebrate each others differences (as well as similarities) should be reinforced. The cultural pressures all seem to pull us in the opposite direction and it is up to us to see something more than just our own reflections around us.

The Assumption

2008-09-04T18:41:00.000-07:00

This is a piece I've been working on for some time now. The actual print will be about 26" on the long side. The title is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Roman Catholic iconification of Mary as she was always shown in blue.

Reclaiming the Universe

2008-09-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

The subject of the existence or nonexistence of the "spirit" or Soul is a prickly one for most people, throwing them into strictly black and white camps. To my mind it all boils down to how you define Soul. Some view the Soul as a non-material "self", others as the "Ground of Being", others as "wishful thinking" powered by the fear of nonexistence...to me it is none of these things.

For a man like myself, once branded a Secular Humanist by zealots, once called a "Spiritual Atheist" by a friend, it's a tricky proposition. Just because I'm a secular humanist doesn't mean I'm not spiritual. I'm of the manifest understanding that the Universe of time/matter/space/infinity is itself sentient, though not a Deity by any means, it just is what it is...more like a Mind, if you prefer - though this Mind is as beyond ours as our mind is beyond a Praying Mantis. I believe that "religious experiences" of "Universal connection" or "Universal equivalence" or even more mundane epiphanies are junctures where we participate in this Mind, or Soul, for a frozen moment and the illusory self we cling to is momentarily overcome.

We are fractal fragments of that Mind, or Soul, our patterns reflecting those of the larger whole - the Universe itself. Another applicable analogy would be that of a hologram. Like a shattered hologram, each piece shows the original image but with less detail. This Soul we are all component parts of is in no way connected to what we mistakingly perceive as Self - the collected chemical baggage of opinions, attitudes, beliefs, memories, hopes and fears encoded in our brains during our brief series of cycles around the sun.

We are the concious, self-aware expression of the Infinite, dancing at the bottom of a gravity well, blind to who and what we are - the Universe itself - our heritage, birthright and Soul.

The growth of Mystery

2008-08-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

The more I come to know, the more I realize that I don't know.

There is more Mystery in the world for me now than when I was a child. My songs, paintings and prose have progressively gotten better in that they convey some of that Mystery. The downside is that, as time moves along, I'm maybe not quite as prolific as I was when I was younger because of the scarcity of time caused by increased responsibility. ;)

Mystery and Epiphany, artistic, musical or otherwise, go hand in hand...to continually doubt, seek and question The Known opens up massive unmined vistas for creative exploration as well as "clearing the fog" from one's vision. It's kind of like "applying the Scientific Method to Life" for spiritual, creative and inspirational purposes if you will.

Unquestioned belief and too-eager faith can really blind one to the truth, allowing you to find what you expect to find rather than what is really there. Here's the perfect example of that, the "flying horse" perception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#Truth_and_belief
This is why, when testing reality, methods like the Double-Blind are used so people's opinions, including those of people performing the tests, can't affect the results. The facts need to be allowed free reign to speak for themselves regardless of what we want.

This has me thinking of an old quote:
"I slept with Faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with Doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."

It's important to reinforce creative habits, modes of behavior and thought, hence my comment on "applying the scientific method to life". If you allow your thinking to become cyclical, you will only ever see what you expect to see and your boundaries of thought will firmly crystalize, becoming a cage.

Instead of quashing Spirituality, the practice of creative and incisive thinking frees one from the cul-de-sacs and dead ends, encouraging growth and helping one to more firmly plant one's feet on the "hallowed ground" of the path ahead.

The paths ahead beckon each of us. Tread carefully. :)