Who ever wants to build this for me, I will pay handsomely.
It needs to have velocity and aftertouch on the lower keyboard.
The neck keyboard should be very flat, like buttons, but more than just a printed plastic film. The neck wouldn't have velocity, but still needs to have aftertouch. The pitchbend bar is raised for the option to put a thumb under it or palm down. It should be pretty stiff.
Any extra standard midi controller functions that I forgot can go on the back of the body.
I was thinking that there could be either different styles or just a removable blank matte cover plate that you could customize.
Kinda like some cell phones.
My style ideas are:
Euro-Future, Rusted Cyber-Blood
Gloom Sexy. London Garage
57 Cherry, Mahogany Pearl
Rhyme & Bass, Blue Soul
Black Tie, Video Killed the Radio Star
There should be a contest for who can come up with the coolest designs based on these names.
Okay, I've been pretty preoccupied with the acquisition of new synth gear so I haven't posted in a while.
btw, the difference between reacting and responding is important in these sessions.
Reaction is an unconscious reflex and responding is a calculated choice.
Week 4 was about being one with your pain and discomfort.
The idea is that pain and discomfort are not inherently bad, but we react with judgement towards our pain and discomfort.
Our P&D are merely messengers.
Our reaction is to sedate and control our P&D.
If we shoot the messenger we might be spared of unpleasant news but it is probably news that we need to hear.
If we have a physical injury, getting mad at it might have some negative affects on your recovery. I haven't done any research on the impact of stress on the human body but my doctor tells me that it's bad.
Week 4 focused more in terms of physical discomfort and week 5 was more about emotional discomfort; shame, disappointment, impatience, etc.
Week 5 was about changing our reaction to P&D to responding to it the way we would respond to some one else that was hurting.
I don't know about you but when some one I care about is hurting I try to be compassionate, but when it is myself I tend to beat myself up about it.
So this week a lot of things from my past popped up. Things that I was embarrassed about. When I would recall these things I would usually get upset and try to think about something else.
The problem is that past traumas effect our present life, decisions we make and how we react to people.
So this time I received these resurgent memories and talked myself down as if I were talking to a friend that was dealing with their own issue.
In this case I was counseling my younger self. Yes, that's weird, but people are weird.
As a result I was finally able to put some old ghosts to rest and they won't have any influence on my present relationships or my self image.
The whole thing is very weird, it's like re-experiencing something familiar in a strange foreign way.
I'm getting back into music... synthesizers specifically.
I'm getting rid of all my old avant-garde junk and hopefully just getting a couple a versatile and modern pieces that sound great.
Here's one that I'm looking at.
The Access Virus, it's a virtual analog beast.
I've always loved the crisp euro sound.
All my favorite Progressive House programmers use this thing.
Here's another one that I actually just bid on and lost.
This is the Waldorf Mircrowave XTK.
It is based on wavetable synthesis,
something I've wanted since I was 18,
about seven-teen years ago.
I couldn't find a good demo of the sounds on You-tube, so here's it's little brother, the MW2.
I've always really like FM synthisis,
but hated that the Yamaha stuff never had resonate filters.
So now they have this cute little groove box,
it's like a DX7 with knobs,
built in effects, and A FILTER!!!
It features a rhythm section with step sequencing. All in all a pretty cool little toy.
I have the Korg Electribe series and some soft synth stuff like Reason and Absynth so I guess I'll be in pretty good shape.
My friend Jeff plays guitar and drums really well, he has some really nice gear and knows about three people with Pro-tools studios with a bagillion plug-ins. One guy has a V-drum. Who knows, we might make some cool junk.
I never really mourned the time when my Electro Harmonix Micro Synth was stolen.
I am sad. Helios Creed put a wanted ad out for one of these things in a Sub-pop newsletter. I was intrigued. I saw one for sale locally, I only intended to check it out, see what it was about. When I played it I knew that it was made for me. It made noises so offensive that the devil him self would blush to describe it out loud. I had to own it.
Also, my Univox Super Fuzz was stolen in the same incident.
This video does not do it justice.
When you think about the face-melting lead sounds on tracks like American Woman...
that is what it did.
I only got to play it once...
it was like getting hit by a truck going 200 mph carrying velvet cups of butter.
But for some reason the dirty thief did not take my Digitech Whammy Pedal,
Electro Harmonix Big Muff &
Electric Mistress & Small Stone,
Boss CE-3 & DM-2,
Mutron Multi-Phase,
MXR Phase 100 & Blue Box,
E-bow, or my Echo-plex.
Or my absolute most favorite pedal in the world,
the amazing ACE TONE FUZZ MASTER 2.
So, I guess it could have been worse.
It feels bad to have someone take something from you.
Like a helpless victim... no one to grant me justice... never mind justice I just want my stuff back.
If it's deep you might not see it but you will probably feel it.
Whether you feel it or not, if it is festering, it is going to cause you some problems.
So, in week three I'm having a bunch of unresolved feelings that were buried deep in my mid-brain that are starting to rise to the surface.
Here's the thing...
There are many different kinds of love, the greeks had five different words for love that meant different things. Then there are love languages, are people loving the right way and blah blah blah. THe saddest thing is that there are a great number of people out there that are so out of touch with love that they don't even understand what the word means, they say that 'you can't define it', that 'no one can really know what love is.' There is a real reason why some people don't know anything about love, they have been loved in some sense of the word but never been genuinely loved, truly and unconditionally.
Most of us probably did not get the love that we needed from our parents because people cannot give what they don't have. Our parents probably did not receive the kind of love that they needed as children, and so on.
I wouldn't say that I had a crappy childhood, but do know that I didn't get what I needed.
I'm not going to judge my folks about it, they just didn't have it to give. They did the best they could. But, I think that for my whole life I've been depressed. Most people from the old neighborhood would probably have described me as a hyper-spaz clown, but those behaviors were just my way of sedating and controlling... boredom... the empty, meaningless monotony of life. Now, when I was a kid I would have never been able to articulate that. I wasn't aware of it because I didn't know that there was any other way to be, I couldn't see inside people's heads to know how other people experience emotional health.
One of the things that I look forward to each day is coming home to see my daughter. I like just watching her play and walk around and spout irrational statements. I don't think that I got that from my dad. My mom told me that he never changed my diaper. That makes me sad.
It is hard for me to think about a father not having that kind of expressed affection for their own child. Ravi Zacharias said that for some people despair is a moment and that for other people despair is a way of life with moments of emotional peace. I wonder if my father was depressed.
This morning I had a really hard time. I was trying to get my girl ready for school and I was just empty. I had no love to give. I tagged out with my wife and went out on my deck and drank coffee. I know that there is depression on my mother's side of the family, but my dad is from west Texas, they don't need shrinks.
Well, that's about it so far. I'm grieving unresolved emotions from my childhood. I'm getting the splinter out and it gets uglier before it gets better.
This week was about acknowledging my reflections in the world.
Apparently the brain is like a computer. You can store memories that are time stamped and have all kinds of useful context information assigned to each memory.
But in addition to this metaphorical RAM, there is also a battery that stores energy. This metaphorical energy is emotion memory. There is no time context or any useful point of reference assigned to stored emotional memories.
That's a bad thing.
If you have ever seen someone overreact it is probably because they experienced a situation
where there were similarities to past experience, and emotional experience. The current situation involved something that 'triggered' the emotional memory which released the intense feelings into the current situation. The result is a 'reaction' that is greater than the situation warranted.
It is always better to choose your 'response' to an emotionally charged situation than automatically 'react'
Here's the solution.
Train your mind to exist in the present, stop thinking in terms of the future or the past.
(In my last blog I talked about how my thoughts tend to dwell on what is coming up or analyzing what has already past, consequently my whole life I have conditioned my thoughts to never be in the present moment).
This gives your mind a point of reference in the present moment.
When something reminds you of a past experience you may take note of it and move on.
If you let the past experience dictate how you feel about the current experience then that is called 'projection'.
That's a bad thing.
Here's an example.
- your dad was a dick, you have strong negative feelings about him in your emotional memory
- your dad is a symbol of authority
- God is a symbol of authority, you place your strong negative feelings on any symbol of authority
- You conclude that God is a dick
Here's an interesting projection.
What does it mean?
What if every time I look at my grandpa I feel like I did the first time I saw Planet of the Apes?
Now whether that is true or not is not the point. You want to arrive at your conclusions based on reality not a defense mechanism such as projection.
This past week I was successfully able to identify several times where someone reminded me of something from my past that was emotional, I recognized my impulse to project those feelings onto the person in front of me, and then I was able to acknowledge (not dismiss) the emotional memory and continue with my interaction.
Who ever wants to build this for me, I will pay handsomely.
