Layers Of Earth » Music

In 512 Megabytes of Loving Memory

zhen — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:26:13 +0000

I know it’s just an old computer. But understand that to me, my computer is my gateway to the world, a palette for creativity and something of a constant companion. This old girl, “Bulldog” was her name, was built for me by a friend nearly 10 years ago. She was a 1.3 Gigahertz Athlon (sorry, Beat) with a half gig of memory. By today’s standards, an outdated beast with old IDE drives and barely 100 gigs of storage. At the end, she was relegated to being nothing more than a internet station, covered in dust from a previous stint at our old metal polishing shop where her primary job was to run Quickbooks.

But to me, old Bulldog represents more than a tool or a machine. She was an important part of my life.

Back when my friend Tim built her for me in 2001, she was a pretty killer box. Understand that at that point in my life, I was just learning how to deal with the reality of being legally blind. I was at a real difficult point emotionally and this computer was really going to be my way out. On this computer, I learned how to use text to speech readers and magnifiers so I could keep up in the digital world. On this computer, I re-learned how to make art in Photoshop. I spent hours figuring out how to make a website again. On her, I discovered that if I played with some of the gauge settings and config settings enough I could fly my beloved Flight Simulator again.

All of this was great, but the thing this machine was built to do was to make music. It was on this computer that I learned that I could manage my way through the complicated interface of Sonar, a recording program that I mastered well enough to create a very therapeutic CD of original music I composed and recorded in my garage.

You see, while this old bucket of transistors and chips may be nothing more than a dusty old relic today, to me it was a conduit to a life reclaimed.

Over the past couple of weeks, she was acting strangely, almost like a virus, but even a complete wiping of her hard drive couldn’t save her. Ultimately, those years in the polishing shop had coated her motherboard with a layer of zinc dust that corroded her badly. So I gutted her today and put her serviceable parts into another old machine I had laying around. I saved her video card and her sound card as they can be useful in a pinch. But the old chassis, motherboard and chipset will be curbed tomorrow permanently.

So there you have it my friends – a tear for an old bucket of bolts named Bulldog. She will be missed…

Dust Re-Spawned

zhen — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:29:47 +0000

Screenshot of the new PixelBomb.org website and the accompanying player.

Last year when I released my Dust of the American Pixel concept album on CD, it was really a labor of love. But to be honest, by the time it came to built out the accompanying web site I was really burnt out on everything related to the project. My lackluster approach consisted of getting a domain and putting up a simple web page that had the primary elements all crammed into it; a link to buy the CD, a link to the video and a bit about the puzzle that is part of the project. I sold my 150 copies and pretty much let the thing fade.

Then, out of the Facebook universe a few weeks ago I reconnected with an old friend who now lives overseas. She’s an artist and we were catching up and I realized that I had nothing online that really conveyed the entirety of the Dust project. It would be cumbersome for me to just send her a physical CD, and frankly, I don’t know how relevant CDs are in terms of a media form anymore. So I challenged myself to come up with a format, a site, that had within it all of the artwork, lyrics and liner notes that one would typically find in a CD or a LP, and the results were pretty satisfying.

The relaunched pixelbomb.org website is really a self-contained version of Dust of the American Pixel. It’’s all there, lyrics, artwork, b-sides and everything else that embodies the work. And now, after a year of release I’ve also decided that it is time for me to release myself from the constraints of capitalized art: It’s all free. Every track is available for straight mp3 download. Of course, if you really WANT a physical CD you can still purchase one, but really everything is there for the taking, free of charge.

To me, Dust is a living project especially because of the puzzle. I will continue to produce supporting media for it, videos and animations and web sites for the puzzle. For me, it’s a great platform to mess around with new media forms. For instance, I am going to delve into Adobe AfterEffects because I have it, so in order to learn it I will do something for Dust. It can then be attached to the new website and thus the organic creation process lives on and on.

If you are curious, check it all out at http://www.PixelBomb.org .

The next challenge is for me to take this format and apply it to my first CD. It won’t have nearly the amount of content, but I want to preserve it online in a similar fashion.

Be well…

NEW SONG: The Little Drummer Boy

zhen — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:43:06 +0000

The Little Drummer Boy by F-105 Thunderchief (listen)

I don’t know what to say about this particular song other than it was fun to make. Totally absurd. I had no rules, so it morphed through surf-punk to industrial to GWAR-like moments of whatthefuckareyoudoing. I spent more time coaxing my fingers to play a metal guitar solo than anything else, and while it’s nothing special, this acoustic hack pulled it off in one take, no punches. It was the only time I played it correctly in 4 hours of trying. The vocals are unlike anything I have ever done before. I mean ever; not even in the shower. Oh, and the “Pa rum a tum tums” – just a basic pitch-shifter.

I think it’s funny as hell. I really wanted to animate something to it. Maybe next year. Meantime, enjoy, have a great holiday season, a Merry Christmas, A Happy Chanukah belated, a Fantastic Festivus, A Killer Kwanzaa and a healthy New Year.

-g

PS – Oh, this is getting put there into the ether as “F-105 Thunderchief” – I’m a geek, I know. But that’s the name I like for it