Frustration Galore! Science, Politics and Music

So here we are...

In the early stages of 2010 and I am incredibly worn out from the sheer number of articles by the so called media and their coverage of what they refer to as "scientific evidences" debunking myths held by the politically and morally conservatives.

For example; Liberal Senior Study


"While the surveys did not provide data for the same individuals at different stages, they represented snapshots of the changing attitudes of respondents in different age cohorts over time".

The part I put in bold represents why the study in my opinion is not scientific. The basic problem is ignoring the cultural shift towards liberalism in America by the bombardment of liberal ideologies in the media and education system.

You cannot say people become more liberal without using the same survey with same person surveyed at different times. You also cannot correct the assumptions without interjecting subjectivity or bias. Hence whether you are conservative or liberal, it is nearly impossible to have a "study" that does not reflect your bias.

Using a fallacious argument of my own experience, the journey from liberal extremism to conservative was one of exploring outside my own bias looking for truth on my own rather than having truth handed to me.

From that journey, I found that there is a general lack of maturity regardless of education, intellect and upbringing. I cannot help to think that there is some subliminal psychological defense mechanism designed in to protect and justify what amount to as basic selfishness.

On the politics front, I'm seeing politics get uglier and uglier. I made a video in 2008 to help educate people about the Hope and Change that was being offered. Many people ate up the rhetoric and now are paying the price for their anti-Bush bias that clouded better judgment. It is clear to me that the media is either stupid or complicit in ushering in a new breed of politician that has been indoctrinated in the philosophies of Karl Marx. There are several indicators people should look at but because even though socialism and communism are justifiably stigmatized, many people are unaware or uneducated enough to see the transformation taking place in this country.

Several things have been causing most of the frustration, one of them is the idea the Republican Party, is on cahoots with big industry because of their preference for a more capitalistic view on the economy and government. According to the official records, since 2000, the democrats have received more money from corporate America every year with it reaching a 4:1 ration in 2008. I have a spreadsheet I have made showing that the promises made by the current Administration were never intended to be fulfilled. The Democrat Party is now the richest and most powerful in History. They planned to shove socialized health care down the people throat for their own good. They planned to take over any corporation that does not play according to the "New Socialism Party" of Government first, people last. I will save most of what I want to say for the movie I am working on.

On the Music front, I haven't been able to finish a song yet. I have been helping my good friend Joe Stark work on his album and teach him how to use Pro Tools. I did shoot some video and recorded the drums into Pro Tools but there was this clicking and popping that I have not yet isolated. By reverting back to 8.0.1, it has been reduced but it still exists. After 2 or 3 weeks of working on a section of the video where it's seems to be song worthy, a couple of un-fixable screw-ups made me finally kill the Session and delete it.

Having a bout with some depression is not helping my outlook even though I know that Romans 8:28 and Philippians 4:13 are true... If I could only overcome chemical imbalance with intellectual balance...

Jesus IS Lord!

Summer is over part 1

Welcome to my freak show!

I always feel a little sad after taking a week of vacation and sit at my desk sorting through email backlogs and voicemail.

My vacation was spent at Millersylvania State Park just south of Tumwater WA. The family and I tent camped for 4 nights and left Thursday morning after being pummeled in record heat. 105 with no fans or AC is hostile.

I spent most of the time topless and shoeless to help stay cool. When I was younger I could take my shirt off and never think about it, but now I feel like I am horrifying people with my grotesqueness and have to do a quick double check to make sure I haven't triggered mass vomiting. Think of Shrek with hair...

Did I say it was hot?

I went through guitar withdrawal and computer withdrawal and it was really to hot to do anything other than swim and sit in a chair drinking water.

Thursday, After we got home, my oldest daughter was complaining about a headache and said she was hot. So she got an icepack on her head and I put large fan on high to cool her off. My wife took your temperature and it was 101 DF. By 9Pm it was 102 DF, and by 12am she was throwing up, passing out and in alot of pain. So I told my wife to get her to the ER ASAP. I finally get a call about 7:30am the next morning that she went through a battery of tests after having a blood sugar reading of 184 or 187. The ER Doctor said was was showing symptoms of what is known as Sudden Onset Juvenile Diabetes. Yikes!

Monday we are taking her in for more tests hopefully it was heat stroke or heat exhaustion and not SOJD Type 1. The dietary restrictions and Insulin injections are pretty tough for teenagers to adjust to, especially when they have ADHD.

I have 3 decent songs in the queue that need vocals and one that is completely different for what I normally like.

I need more vacation!

Mid Pre Summer Update

Quite a few things have happened since the last blog input.

Remember the deep ache from yard work? It turns out that it wasn't my arm but rather neck problems. They called it cervical spondilosis which is a spinal degeneration disease much like Osteoporosis of the spine.

I have had nerve root blocks and physical therapy with minimal results. My MRI was discouraging and it show that I have been lucky up to this point. Sometime this month I will probably go through a review to see if and when I am to have 3 of my vertebrae fused.

For my birthday I accumulated enough money to purchase a faster and more capable PC for running Pro Tools on. I built my own Quad Core machine using the Intel Q6600 and the Asus P5q Pro Mainboard. It ran for a little more than 30 days and just died. After about 4 days of trying to get the machine stable and dealing with Asus technical support I had to buy a new hard drive and another pair of Corsair Dominator Ram. ChaChing! Ouch... Repairs are costly still of hot rodded Machines.


I also bought Digidesign Structure LE and downloaded a huge number of patches (audio samples) for composing. I have so many songs that are unfinished and much of that has to do with a strong dislike of my own voice. Some songs are started but I can't seem to the timing or somethings right enough to motivate me to move forward.

Hopefully I can finish something soon...

More later ;)

Frustrated and Tired

How exactly does one go about blogging on being frustrated and tired. Last week I was removing 3 tree stumps to make way for a landscaping project for my wife. She had made several attempts to remove them herself with no success. So with 7ft crow bar and shovel I began to work. Everything went well for the most part with the exception of nearly having a heart attack. However the next day and for 6 days since my shoulder, neck and upper fore arm are constantly aching with a deep ache that nearly immobilizes me at times regardless of Ibuprofin or Alleve. Sitting at work using a "Spaceball" is like trying to spoon feed yourself with a broken arm.

The next part of the equation is our large cat who insists on being in our room all night. He has a nice wicker basket to sleep in that he loves but also likes to clean himself at all hours of the night. The basket squeaks a lot when gets in and out so I am woken from my sleep multiple times from either the cat or the aching caused from the stump removal.

Tuesday my genius friend came over and we chatted about music. I auditioned a few songs for him and he noticed timing issues with my songs which were originally done on 1 inch analog tape and transferred to Pro Tools. Now I am trying to fix the timing problems across 7 drum tracks. After 3 days of spending hours trying to fix things I'm ready to pull my hair out. My timing varies from 119bpm in the intro, changes to 130bpm during the chorus, back to 199 and then to 124.5 at the refrain. Trying to use elastic audio to move things around to align with the grid is tough because all the timing variations move downstream to latter parts of the song.

My family doesn't understand why it is taking so long or even why it matters.

Joe did start a new song for his Starlander project which is really cool and as usual does in 5 minutes things I slave over and still never get right.

I need a refresh!

Being Artsy or not....

Being Artsy is both a curse and a blessing. For some reason which I cannot firmly grasp, I create something artsy one day and it seems acceptable and the next day not as much. It is like flaws pop up from nowhere. After spending decades designing on a computer orthogonal structural parts for an aircraft manufacturer, my sketching skills have dwindled greatly. After typing endless technical papers for design and engineering, my literary arts has all but vanished and no matter how hard I try, writing music for the masses escapes me.

My sense of timing and order of things is not part of what is acceptable to a majority of the world population. I feel like an Enigma among Enigmas. I seek a perfection I cannot create nor sense. My intellect is strange and unusual. I cannot think within the box and most people have difficulty understanding what I am trying to convey with words. I feel mentally disabled and somewhat retarded.

For most of my life I have known I was different as if I had a cloud around me, and even animals sense that there is something not quite right with me in that comforting way. Of coarse growing up meant that there is always an awkward feeling socially.

According to most research, only about 3% of the population has ADHD and the number of ADHD with Left handedness is even less. Our Brain are approximately 4% smaller in "control regions" but larger in other areas. Can normal people sense us or are we totally blind to our behavior?

Also according to most research, we are miserable people and should be avoided. While we tend to be artsy and have gobs of energy, we do not conform to schedules, speed limits, relationships or anything that requires linear logic and organization.

I wonder how many girlfriends I had that I just plain wore out with hyperactive drama and excessive testosterone. I try super hard not to let my condition get out of hand where I talk at light speed and change subjects every 25 seconds. Medication has slowed me down a lot but still not to the point where I'm normal by any means.

I like to think of myself as being artsy but sometimes wonder If I fall under the category of painting elephants and monkeys. I would like to think I am smart but pretty much know my IQ is low enough where cheating is required to finish let alone pass.

The one thing I do know is that God has intervened on my behalf and gave me talents that He uses at His will. I cannot fully grasp what that means. One might argue that there is nothing supernatural happening and that everything falls under providence but yet, our very existence is supernatural. God Created everything, breathed life into mankind which was formed from the dust. How does God give talents without supernatural intervention?

It's weird but I feel like a Leper with demons on some days hoping I don't get run off a cliff...

Memory Lapse!

Due to some unseen Mental Condition I keep forgetting I have a blog. My Friend Ann reminded me that there was a blog I was contributing to.

Since my last update my Pro Tools interface has returned back after having been repaired under warranty. It was gone for far too long not having made any real success in my alternative methods.

The night before last I finished the basic tracks for a song that is similar to older Metallica recordings. I have acoustic guitars in the intro, heavy distorted guitars for the main verses and chorus sections. The drums and bass are virtual instrument in which I wrote the parts in the midi window and tweaked the volumes and velocities to give it some human variation i.e. make it sloppy.

Nearly every song I work on is constructed on the compositions of Bach and Mendelssohn, where the chord progression are diminished in a minor key of E. It gives the music that dark and ominous feeling that pulls more serious emotions from the listener. One of the issues I mulled over for a while was whether my music was acceptable to God because of the use of Instruments and the obvious religious overtones in the lyrics. After studying the bible, it seemed to me that there is a distinction between what God accepts has a lot to do with when He asks for specifics.

When we worship God, there are specific guidelines about how we are supposed to do things and when those things are supposed to happen. Worship, according to the scripture is specific homage towards God as an individual child, gathering together on the first day of the week, giving our contributions according to how we have prospered with the right attitude and motivations, songs with our voices and prayer. Commonly referred to as the 5 Elements of Worship. I believe (based on scripture) that there is more than just the 5 elements but that is another discussion.

Is it a sin to make instrumental music outside of the context of worship? Certainly, in the old testament it was commanded and we have Kind David's example that it couldn't possibly be sin otherwise God would be contradicting His own Commandments. As we have seen that attitude impacts to a certain degree the acceptance or rejection, we have to be careful not to be overconfident in whether our sacrifices are truly acceptable. Cain is a good example of being over confident. Nadab and Abihu were perfect examples of taking something innocuous and making it sin for introducing profane fire/incense at the time and place not commanded by God.

There are a few things we can use to determine whether everything we do is worship. One commentators mentioned that we take showers without clothes but you can’t worship without clothes with other Christians. Another commentator used the intimate relations between a married couple as another example of something you can do, just not while coming together with other Christians on the first day of the week.

One of the views I’ve tried to maintain is that my music is an expression, telling people about how God impacts me daily in the world and not in the context of worship. The Apostle Paul used analogies to help people understand who he was as a person and his struggles being a man. He taught people by using common threads to draw people across the gap that exists between the saved and unsaved. One of the main reasons Jesus came to earth was to become an advocate through common experiences. He was tempted as we are but yet gives us hope that through Him all this fleshly stuff can be overcome through Faith in God. He understands us.

There are appropriate subject matter and words people need to think about when writing lyrics for music. First off, if your going to write music about doctrine, it better be scripturally correct. Even songs in many of the songbooks do not pass that test. One of the cool thing I see in the bible that we often overlook is instruments in the old testament. Is the talent to build or play an instrument something that is given by God? In the Old Testament, those who played the instruments were Levites specifically. When I was really young I was drawn to music in ways my parents were not, and this musical thing that lives in me was the one things that led to me isolating myself from bad influences and allowing me to develop a relationship with James McCarty. James McCarty is a Christian who plays guitar and taught me the Gospel over a number of years.

It was hard at first to come to grasp with all the Pentecostal congregations having rock bands at worship and not want to be apart of that. But when I read the bible and understood bible authority that specific commands create an exclusionary situation it was easier because it was no longer my decision.

God is the original creator of art and music, it is part of His personality that we see in nature. Birds and children ignorant of the wiles of the devil natural make music with their voices and instruments like pots and pans. We are created in Gods image which means we have natural tendencies to be like God.

To design and to create.

Our God is an Awesome God!

Two Steps Fwd 3 steps back

I thought I was making decent progress in writing new songs a fragment here and and phrase there. Learning new editing features and really liking the new Pro Tools 7.4 version. Then with a click and total silence the Digidesign 003R was DOA. The first thing I do is look at my warranty information and called Guitar Center. The Salesman in the Pro Audio Department tells me to bring it on down.

So I pack the 003R up and head down to the Store where I purchased it only to be met with the traffic congestion of South Center Malls Grand Re-Opening. After 20 minutes of look for a parking place I found one a block away and had to hand carry a fairly large box. Once inside of Guitar Center, the salesman in the Pro Audio Department says "We don't do THAT kind of Warranty" and gives me a 1-800 number to call.

My Warranty is an extended one through Guitar Center which is called the Performance Guarantee which it turns out to be handled by a large 3rd Party Corporation that handles Warranty Administration for hundreds of companies. This one happens to ave recently been bought out which has led to some confusion in account numbers and paper work fiascoes.

SO after calling the 1-800 number and three days, I finally get semi correct shipping information that results in 2 days of phone tag with 3 different companies. The big old 003R box finally leaves the shipping company on a 7 days UPS ground Delivery to Boston to a Company contracted to do the repairs just as I'm leaving on vacation.

I get back from vacation and on my first day back to work I have a voice mail not on the primary contact phone that I needed to call. I don't know whether the message was left on the day I left on vacation or 2 weeks later on the day I got back to work. So I call the Operation Mgr and ask what the phone call was about. I then at this point discover that my broken Digidesign 003R has been shipped to Digidesign in California and the Technician is supposed to cal in a few days. I'm still waiting.

In the mean time I'm chewing my fingers off with ideas on songs with no way of getting it done. Then I get this harebrained idea to get my old M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 soundcard up and going and I run into Vista Driver issues that mess all the audio routing up. After 6 hours of tweaking and twiddling around I get it kinda working but the new driver interface and audio routing is messed up. It's taking the analog inputs and routing the audio into both the Spdif inputs and then sends both the analog inputs and Spdif to the mixer so I get a doubling about 11 milliseconds apart. Yuck!

Needless to say, the analog to digital converters of the M-audio are not nearly as good as the 003R, so the guitars sounds like junk. I did figure out how to get Fxpansions BFD Lite 1.5 to work with Samplitude 8.2 without having the install disc which was shipped in the 003R box.

But at this point my wife is wondering where I'm at because of all the time spent trying to get my computing problems resolved to have at least some sanity.

I can't do anything right.