The Soundtrack of Life

Do you have the Soundtrack of life playing in your head?

For as long as I can remember I have had what I like to call the Soundtrack of Life. The Soundtrack of Life is basically just some evolving music constantly playing in my head throughout the day. I am not sure if this little phenomenon of mine is because I am a musician and composer, or if it is just because I am weird, but it is just always there in some form or another adding music to whatever I may be doing throughout the day.

Now, The Soundtrack is not really a continuous track of music or anything like that. I am able to sleep at night. If anything The Soundtrack exists sort of like a movie sound track, where most of the time the music or sounds are ambient and you don’t notice them. It is only in their absence that you notice something is missing.
Occasionally, if I am sitting around bored or I am really excited then the volume level for the soundtrack picks up and I will consciously work on the music and build things in my head. Most often though The Soundtrack just sort of exists, playing along, sometimes getting my attention when an interesting melody pops up, but more often then not just sitting in the background. Sometimes a repetitive sound within the environment that I am working in will create some melody or beat that catches my attention and will bring the soundtrack up. If you are lucky you might find me grooving for what seems like no reason at all. My girlfriend has on occasion noticed me doing this. I think in some for or another though everyone has been caught grooving to the beat in their head. The immediate image that comes to my mind with this is in the movie “Groove” where a character is in the laundry mat starts grooving to the beat of her jeans repetitively thumping inside the dryer. Haven’t we all had a moment like that?

I first noticed The Soundtrack playing probably around high school, but I never really had a term for it until I had two experiences that really sort of made me aware of it.

The first instance that made me think about The Soundtrack occurred while I was reading the sci-fi series “Otherland”. In this story is a character named Dredd. Dredd is a psychotic masochist hit man of some sorts, who loves his job and loves composing music while doing his job. Now since this is a Sci-fi book all of the characters had the neurological implants that you so commonly see in sci-fi allowing them to plug into the internet and so forth, so instead of just thinking about music Dredd was actually making the music. I distinctly remember a part in one of the books where Dredd was talking online to his boss. Apparently Dredd was only half-paying attention to the discussion and the boss said something like; “Are you listening to that damned music in your head?! Turn it off!”

For some reason that little passage just really stuck with me. I think I have had several moments in my life where I have spaced off when people talk to me, just like that one. In fact I am sure everyone has had a moment like that.

The second instance that alerted me to The Soundtrack of life was from “Family Guy”. I don’t remember the exact episode but Peter was granted a wish of some sort and he chose to have a soundtrack play whenever he moves. I think his soundtrack was more along the lines of a musical or 1950’s TV show or something, but I immediately thought that segment was hilarious, if only for the fact that it rung so true. I think it was in that “Family Guy” episode that I was able to finally put a term to the music in my head.

As comical as the “Family Guy” can be it put the perfect label on the music in my head: “The Soundtrack of Life”. It is too bad everyone doesn’t have a soundtrack to just take them away sometimes.


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I Am Sick and Tired of Being the "Go To" Guy

I am what as known as the "Go To Guy" in my family. I don't know how I came to have this terrible honor. Maybe it is because I am a fairly nice guy. Maybe it is because I am neat, methodical, reliable person. Maybe I have a sign stuck on my back that says "Go To Guy". In any case I am sick and tired of it!!!!!!!!!!

Every single time something goes wrong in my parent's house, or with my girlfriend, I am the one first called to fix it. I am the tech guy, who either magically broke the machine or somehow knows how to fix it despite my college degree being in political science. Add to the fact that common sense seems to excape everyone except me. No one takes the time to sit down and think through a situation. What do they do? They freak out and call me. This is not just a few people, but almost everyone I know. Friends, Parents, Brother, Girlfriend. Enough!!!!!!

This past weekend for example my parents wanted to install some air conditioners. Who do they call to help? Oh yeah, me.
At first I had no problem since it was my room, but then i was recruited for do my brother's room, then my parent's room. All the meanwhile my brother is sitting downstairs watching the damn Cubs game. The list goes on from here with minor favors people ask me to do.

Then my girlfriend comes into the equation and she really appears to be rather helpless in some situations, mainly do to her own will. She will probably read this and be pissed, but I think she has a condition I like to call "Learned Helplessness". Rather then take the time and think through a situation she immediately calls me. For example, she was trying to burn songs to her iPod. Instead of taking two minutes to search the help file for iTunes she calls me to fix it. What do I do? Open the help file for iTunes, type in the question and copy and paste the text to her. Seriously, she couldn't have done that herself? Other instances follow this as well.

)6/17/06: Updating this post today I have another log to throw onto the fire of my frustration. As I said before I am always the person asked to help out with things. I will usually say yes too. Today I moved some of my stereo equipment out of my apartment because there has been some vandalism in the area. When I get back I ask my parents if they could help me unload some of my stuff. I have a total of 6 boxes in my car. Instead of help me the say they are too busy painting the porch. WTF!!!!!!! I spent two afternoons of my time to install some air conditioners at their house and they could not take five minutes to carry two boxes each into the house with me? I mean seriously. The paint is not going to miss them for five minutes to help me bring in some boxes.

A lot of this stuff is getting to the point of the last straw. I continually bend over backwards to help everyone I know out and no one can have the decency to repay me the favor of helping me out when I ask for some help.

Sign off in a fit of fury.

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Net Album and Studio Recordings in the Works

I know live performances have been nearly non-existant this past year. Unfortunatly due to grad school and my location in the ho-hum convervative suburbs of Chicago I have not had the fortune or time to really invest in booking shows. I might get a small something in the next month or so, if I can find the time to rip a demo.

I am currently (finally after a year) in the process of recording tracks for a Dynamic Interplay net-album. I will also do a couple of studio live recordings to give people a taste of some of the new music as well as use for some demos.

You can expect the time frame on these of course to range from next week to next year for their release.

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Personality Test

I love taking personality tests. Usually I know what the results are going to be. I am a super neat introvert with a creative mind. I can't remeber what my letters are for the Meyers & Briggs test, but it is something like that. Here is another test.

Advanced Global Personality Test Results
Extraversion |||||||||| 36%
Stability |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Orderliness |||||||||||||||||| 80%
Accommodation |||||||||||| 50%
Interdependence |||| 16%
Intellectual |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Mystical |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Artistic |||||||||||||||||||| 90%
Religious |||| 16%
Hedonism || 10%
Materialism |||||| 23%
Narcissism |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Adventurousness |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Work ethic |||||||||||| 50%
Self absorbed |||||||||||||||| 70%
Conflict seeking |||||||||||||||| 63%
Need to dominate |||||||||||| 43%
Romantic || 10%
Avoidant |||||||||||||| 56%
Anti-authority |||||||||||| 43%
Wealth |||||| 30%
Dependency |||| 16%
Change averse |||||||||||| 50%
Cautiousness |||||||||||| 50%
Individuality |||||||||||||||| 63%
Sexuality |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Peter pan complex |||||||||||||||| 70%
Physical security |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Physical Fitness |||||||||||| 50%
Histrionic |||||| 30%
Paranoia |||||| 23%
Vanity |||||||||||||||| 63%
Hypersensitivity |||| 16%
Female cliche |||||| 23%
Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com


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Band Rehearsal Starts Again

Rehearsal for the community orchestra started up again. Despite my techno awesomeness the geek in me plays the clarinet. I am pretty damn good too. I have been playing the clarinet since I was about nine and always signed up to play in the school or university band at school. Unfortunately this year I was unable to do so because NIU cut one of the bands from their lineup and the other fell right when I had a class.

For the summers I play in my local community band, which is great fun. It is quite hectic too though. We have to perform about nine concerts in a twelve week period and there are literally thirty or more songs we play across this span. That is a lot of music to learn. Last night was my first rehearsal for the summer and our first concert is already on June 13th.

Thankfully my skills did not fade too much over the year, but my chops sure did. My mouth was dead tired after only thirty minutes of playing. The calluses on my lower lip and right thumb have also worn away and I quickly developed a cut on my lip and a raw thumb too. It is sort of funny in band how you can tell who plays what almost by their calluses. The brass players are always walking around slathering chapstick on their lips. The percussion with their gloves and hand blisters and us clarinets with are rock hard thumbs and creased lower lips. I suppose the flutes have it easiest.

Anyways band is one of those love hate things throughout the summer for me. It is beautiful outside and after a day at work the last thing you want to do is go to rehearsal for two hours, but once you get there is usually makes your day.

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One Week With the Macbook

Technically I was supposed to type this last night, but I was too tired from band rehearsal to bother. So one week has pasted since I have had my Macbook, and I gotta say it still pretty much rocks. I have had a program freeze up on me once, so shame on you Apple.

As is probably natural with any electronic a few bugs seep out here and there. I noticed that sometimes when I return from sleep mode some of the GUI or graphics of my windows don't quite display right. I will get an extra black bar around my iChat window for example. It is odd, but most likely just a software "driver" that will hopefully be updated in the future. Overall I am really loving it and I am also loving my new .Mac account. Sure it is pricey, but I am willing to pay for that to have everything centralized and easy these days.

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Garageband: First Impressions

Well I sat down last night to try out Apple's Garageband as a recording platform. Now I did not directly record into it because I prefer recording to minidisk as a medium, but I bounced my MD audio in. First off, Garageband has a great interface and can get you up and running right away. Unfortunately my likes of the program stopped there.

Perhaps the one thing that annoyed me the most was the export feature. You cannot export a song directly to wave, mp3 or any other format. You have to export the track to iTunes and then to mp3. Very round-a-bout and annoying. It seems as well that true to its name Garageband is geared for guitar players. There are a gazillion preset effects chains designed for vocalists and guitar players. Cool and all, but not really good for straight up recording.

The effects section was also a turn off. While overall there are some really nice effects that come with Garageband the few that I readily use either were not available or were short handed. Take the compressor for example. I am used to adjusting my thresholds, gains and ratios. In Garageband however, the compressor is a single slider that has a value of 0-100.

Beyond that there seems to be no DC offset or normalization plugins available. You would think for a recording software designed for life instruments it would feature some plugins such as DC offset and normalization.

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