The Jimi Hendrix Waltz
May. 13th, 2004 02:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jere7myContinuing the Loud Noises At Night theme:
Our apartment building is a long rectangle, oriented perpendicular to Miller Avenue. The driveway runs along the back, below our bedrooms, and terminates in a cramped fist of a parking lot, the back edge of which is a low bluff overlooking West Park. Last night at 3AM I heard a car roar along the driveway, then scream to a halt in the parking lot. I don't know quite how braking distances relate to speed, but the squeal of tires lasted over two seconds, which to me implies some velocity. As the driveway is a narrow strip of asphalt between a building and a fence, the bicycles, people with pets, &c. that frequently travel it have nowhere to leap to when they see a car hurtling toward them at 40 mph. And as the parking lot lacks room to maneuver at the best of times, and is only about 2.5 car lengths wide anyway, reckless speeding will inevitably lead to smashed taillights, if not a spectacular leap into West Park.
I collared the yahoo in question—a beefy student, drunk—before he got into his apartment, and asked him if that had been his tires squealing in the parking lot. "Probably," he said. "Is that not okay?" No, I said. No, it's not.
Damn kids. Get off my lawn.
As my current Music: field suggests, I bought The Magnetic Fields' new album i today—only $11 at Schoolkids' Records In Exile. Each of the 14 songs begins with the letter I, and for reasons unknown they are arranged in alphabetical order. I'm nearing the end of my second listen, and so far I like it; it's heartfelt, sad, clever without being masturbatory, aurally rich. I agree with Neil Gaiman: It's Only Time is stunningly lovely, though Infinitely Late At Night may be my favorite.
K woke me up about two hours early today, saying she'd accidentally overwritten her last three days of work (some sort of file-naming and -moving snafu), and could I maybe recover it? Happily, Norton was able to Unerase a version she'd saved last night, and then a text recovery found most of the paragraphs she'd written that morning, but it was dicey.
She and I had one of those pointless arguments later this afternoon. I walked into town, listening to my iPod, hoping to find i and enjoy the summery weather and ruminate, as I sometimes will when I've been depressed. But I encountered K downtown before my rumination was quite ruminated, and didn't feel I could tell her that I wanted to keep on by myself and not walk home with her. It would have been fine if I had, but I didn't, and so I became sullen and resentful, while she became less and less pleased to have run into me. It sorted itself out, but it was unpleasant at the time.
I played some guitar on the lawn swing after supper tonight (O invigorating spring! O oscillating swing!), then fiddled around a bit more with GarageBand. It's remarkably easy to produce an infinite number of soulless rhythmic dance tracks, and only somewhat harder to record multiple tracks of a real live instrument. In this case, I laid down a rhythm track for Two Rivers (a gorgeous waltz by Larry Unger), then listened to it on my headphones while I played the melody, then added a simple bass line to the first two tracks. It sounded pretty good for a first attempt; Kendra asked, "Is that all you?"
But the niftiest thing is the virtual amp system: I can record a melody on my steel-string Martin, then turn on the Arena Rock amp and instantly sound like Jimi Hendrix cranking out Two Rivers. Practically, it means my single guitar can sound like many different guitars, so if I want to distinguish the rhythm from the melody I can—and I did, though by means less blatant than the crunchy distortion of Arena Rock. I'll need a better mic at some point, or perhaps a soundhole pickup that I can plug into my iMac.
Our apartment building is a long rectangle, oriented perpendicular to Miller Avenue. The driveway runs along the back, below our bedrooms, and terminates in a cramped fist of a parking lot, the back edge of which is a low bluff overlooking West Park. Last night at 3AM I heard a car roar along the driveway, then scream to a halt in the parking lot. I don't know quite how braking distances relate to speed, but the squeal of tires lasted over two seconds, which to me implies some velocity. As the driveway is a narrow strip of asphalt between a building and a fence, the bicycles, people with pets, &c. that frequently travel it have nowhere to leap to when they see a car hurtling toward them at 40 mph. And as the parking lot lacks room to maneuver at the best of times, and is only about 2.5 car lengths wide anyway, reckless speeding will inevitably lead to smashed taillights, if not a spectacular leap into West Park.
I collared the yahoo in question—a beefy student, drunk—before he got into his apartment, and asked him if that had been his tires squealing in the parking lot. "Probably," he said. "Is that not okay?" No, I said. No, it's not.
Damn kids. Get off my lawn.
As my current Music: field suggests, I bought The Magnetic Fields' new album i today—only $11 at Schoolkids' Records In Exile. Each of the 14 songs begins with the letter I, and for reasons unknown they are arranged in alphabetical order. I'm nearing the end of my second listen, and so far I like it; it's heartfelt, sad, clever without being masturbatory, aurally rich. I agree with Neil Gaiman: It's Only Time is stunningly lovely, though Infinitely Late At Night may be my favorite.
K woke me up about two hours early today, saying she'd accidentally overwritten her last three days of work (some sort of file-naming and -moving snafu), and could I maybe recover it? Happily, Norton was able to Unerase a version she'd saved last night, and then a text recovery found most of the paragraphs she'd written that morning, but it was dicey.
She and I had one of those pointless arguments later this afternoon. I walked into town, listening to my iPod, hoping to find i and enjoy the summery weather and ruminate, as I sometimes will when I've been depressed. But I encountered K downtown before my rumination was quite ruminated, and didn't feel I could tell her that I wanted to keep on by myself and not walk home with her. It would have been fine if I had, but I didn't, and so I became sullen and resentful, while she became less and less pleased to have run into me. It sorted itself out, but it was unpleasant at the time.
I played some guitar on the lawn swing after supper tonight (O invigorating spring! O oscillating swing!), then fiddled around a bit more with GarageBand. It's remarkably easy to produce an infinite number of soulless rhythmic dance tracks, and only somewhat harder to record multiple tracks of a real live instrument. In this case, I laid down a rhythm track for Two Rivers (a gorgeous waltz by Larry Unger), then listened to it on my headphones while I played the melody, then added a simple bass line to the first two tracks. It sounded pretty good for a first attempt; Kendra asked, "Is that all you?"
But the niftiest thing is the virtual amp system: I can record a melody on my steel-string Martin, then turn on the Arena Rock amp and instantly sound like Jimi Hendrix cranking out Two Rivers. Practically, it means my single guitar can sound like many different guitars, so if I want to distinguish the rhythm from the melody I can—and I did, though by means less blatant than the crunchy distortion of Arena Rock. I'll need a better mic at some point, or perhaps a soundhole pickup that I can plug into my iMac.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-13 10:34 pm (UTC)Have determined to wait on i until after I see them in concert (9! short! days!) but eeee, "I wish I had an evil twin"? Re alphabetical order, Stephin Merritt wanted to do alphabetical order on 69 Love Songs but it really Didn't Work from a good track order perspective, so he's probably very pleased to have gotten to do it for this one. Why he wants to do this in general I don't know.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-14 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-14 05:34 pm (UTC)