As Promised

Like I said - second post.

I have some things to cover in this one that are actually important. First, an update on my jam session with emotional yet not so technically proficient guitar player, Django!

Things went quite well this time, I think a lot better than they did last time. I'm not even sure if it could be called a jam session - basically we tried to get down parts to a song for all the time he was over. We actually succeeded to a degree as well. I was convinced I didn't want to do something in normal time, and I had been working on this crazy 5/4 / 6/4 intro thing that I wanted to work with. We started on that, and didn't really get very far with it - so then we started working on an intro hook in that pattern - alternating between 5/4 and 6/4 every bar, essentially amounting to 11/8. Then we took a chorus pattern in 6/4, and then started working on a bridge in 5/4. Basically, we had to go back over some stuff, and we don't have anything solidly finished, but we have a lot of components for what promises to be a sweet song that's a hybrid of prog-metal, mathcore, and some form of death something. I'm loving the math-core influence.

I also have a jam to go with Julien, the 'Metallica' kid. I dunno how that will go - I wrote lyrics to a song of his, would like to see how that goes - and maybe we'll get something accomplished.

As for the other things I wanted to rant about - I wanted to say some things about my posting of a VSnares album. I know that I have held that I will not post albums by my essential artists - and yet in two days, I've posted two of them. I think the MSI album speaks for itself - it was an accompaniement to the review - but why the Snares? Mostly because I realize that there's not enough exposure to Aaron and his wonderful music - I fell into the world of breakcore purely by mistake, but Venetian Snares makes tracks so innovative and wonderful I can't help but want to share them. I was originally just going to post one track from that album, because I found it amazing, but then I wanted to post another, and another, and now, I have uploaded my favorite Venetian Snares album for everyone to enjoy. I've also stumbled upon something amazing... BrEaKcOrE-AdDiCts. Holy crap. This site is astounding - almost every artist there has an MP3 download section, and over the course of just today I've exposed myself to tons of new artists. Expect to see some breakcore tracks posted in the next little while.

That's all for now, I suppose. For those of you who haven't immersed yourselves in the world of odd time signatures, I suggest you check out Dream Theater, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Venetian Snares... and that's all I can think of for now. Rush is pretty good for it too. Just do a Google for "Mathcore", and you'll do fine.

Apparently a cure for boredom

As promised, a new album is going up today - as well as perhaps a follow up post on some musical musings later on in the day. For now, I'll try to be concise.

Right now, I've got a jam with that fellow I spoke of some time ago in about fifteen minutes. We might have vocals for this mix, so that will certainly be something interesting - I've never garage-banded with a vocalist before. I'll post an update on how all that goes.

As for the album promised: I present to you, Winnipeg Is A Frozen Shithole by Venetian Snares. I try to avoid uploading stuff by the Funk man, but I consistently realize this album is too good to not expose people to.

As I said, I'll post thoughts about music, jam progress, and new track discoveries later - for now, enjoy the breakcore. Megaupload link is here.

Soon to be thwarted ambitions

Track of the day: On The Breath of Poseidon (Live) by Symphony X. This is from their album Live At The Edge of Forever. As far as live albums go, in a two disc, it's pretty good. For those of you who haven't heard of Symphony X, they're basically a more neo-classical, mythology based version of Dream Theater. While DT's lyrics are rooted somewhat in commonplace existence and ideology, Symphony X is sort of the same thing, only also about legends and dragons and existentialist jibber-jab. It's astounding that throughout all my time keeping an eye on Progessive music, I'd heard of them but never really given a listen - There's no overwhelming rush to listen to them, as they're basically just another voice of Dream Theater-esque kind of thing - maybe I've become too accustomed to the amazing musicianship in DT. They are good though, and I'm hoping to give more of their discography a listen in hopes that I can like more progressive stuff than the 'mainstream' would push at me. As for the track - I understand that this song was originally a bridge piece without much consequence - as is the case with live shows (often, anyway), it has mutated herein into someting beautiful, and I'm a big fan of it - there's a ripping guitar solo that demonstrates pretty good talent at the latter half of the song. As far as 'tracks of the day' have gone, it's not the most stand-out-ish piece, but I wanted to try something different, and here it is. Megaupload link (as so far unvisited, I'm thinking) is here.

For something a little different, I thought I'd relate a scope of my musical life at the moment. Normally, self-indulgence isn't important, (unless it is Mindless), but I had a jam session today I'd like to reflect upon.

Basically, I feel it went well - I seemed to get along a lot better with the guitar player this time than usual (His name is Django - an interesting monocre, eh?), at least as a person. Musically, I feel our directions are quite a bit different - and he's certainly the least talented of any of the guitar players I've jammed with so far, but for the fact that he decently knows how to actually jam. He can just pick a key and play in it, and I'll lay a back-beat kind of thing. Sadly, however, everything we played was standard metal fair, maybe with kind of a punk twist. It sounded familiar, though I had never heard it before.

As with everyone I jam, with, we got in talks of starting a band. Right now, focus is on finding a vocalist, bass player, and rhythm/lead guitarist. I can't imagine it would be overly difficult - but I'll see what happens, I guess. I usually don't put much stock in projects like this after my first band fiascos, especially when the subjects involved are unmotivated teenagers - myself included.

Basically, I am finding it hard to develop a progressive direction of music internally. I can play to Portnoy decently, so I have a feel to his drums - and the same with Peart - but right now my own, internal style is too... bland Metal. I want to develop a progressive edge, and it's hard to develop that right now. I need to work on it. It's hard when the only riffs I get sound like Metallica though.

I'm thinking that when decent album comes out, I'll write a couple reviews and send them to some papers, see if I can get published. I mean, I write about music all the time for free, I may as well see if I can get paid for doing it - there aren't a lot of things I like doing better.

Now, at the risk of making this a faux-Livejournal entry, I'll end things here. Tomorrow, we have album and track of the week. Be excited!