RSS Feed

‘life’ Category

  1. I’m A Happy Take Take the Trash Out

    April 2, 2009 by jjosh

    (first image that shows up when you type "happy take trash head toe" in google images)

    I was using these MIDI machines they had in the college music lab — you could play a piano/synth that was hooked up to a computer and it would transcribe it into musical notation — and showing Jack how great it was. I then went further and demonstrated how you could type in lyrics and they would appear below the music. I was just typing nonsense to show how it worked, and for some reason I typed "I’m a happy take take the trash out with my head. Head of a toe head." No idea why, they were just the first words that popped into my head and anyway, I was just trying to show Jack a feature of the software.

    Jack started laughing like to bust a gut. He thought that phrase was so damn funny, we printed it out and somehow that night recorded this track. Now I don’t know if you know about bouncing tracks on 4-track, but you can do this thing where you record 3 tracks of stuff and then mix it down onto 1 track. You can then record 2 additional tracks with that one and mix THAT down to another track. In this way you can pile track on top of track on top of track. The only issue is that the first stuff you record will get pretty buried in the mix.

    Jack and I came up with this idea to record the main phrase as this singer who was in a club and the crowd slowly gets it and starts to sing along until everyone’s doing it at the end. When we recorded the voices of the club’s crowd, we decided that each one would be someone we admired who was at the club. For one take, Jack did Bowie and I did Tom Waits. He did Lou Reed and I did Black Francis. He did Screamin Jay Hawkins. I can’t remember the others, but there are a bunch in there. We also added the sounds of glasses and other ambient stuff to really make it feel like a club. It makes me laugh every time I hear it.

    This is the kind of stuff we did when we were bored.

    I’m A Happy Take Take – Live from Jack & James’s

    [audio:Toe_Head.mp3]

    Category life, music | Tags: | 5 Comments

  2. college gets good

    April 1, 2009 by jjosh

    My friend Sandy had given me an acoustic guitar that he found in the trash somewhere and I was trying to learn how to play. Then this strange thing happened where my Aunt Helen ended up with an electric guitar and amp at her house because someone owed her money and they gave her the guitar as collateral. I found out about it somehow and asked if I could borrow it and she said sure but that I would have to give it back if this person ever paid her. I took the guitar and worked harder I had this idea to write a song for every chord I learned — not an original idea (see: every punk band ever), but fun.

    "Winter of 1849" is a 2 chord song and Jack and I recorded it on 4-track (surprise) in his freshman dorm room late one night. We added all these other misc sounds to it (trying for Tom Waits and failing), and other random voice sounds and mixed it into this short weird stew. Jack does the "Oh Yeah"’s. We drank a lot of beer that night and ate a lot of chocolate chip cookies (not recommended). Once I got back to my own dorm room I threw up and then this girl I knew came over and stayed the night. This was the point where college started to get good.

    JJG – Winter of 1849

    [audio:winter_of_1849.mp3]

    Category life, music | Tags: | 4 Comments

  3. Mellow Warpath

    March 30, 2009 by jjosh

    At one point I started multi-tracking the piano, adding layers of piano on top of other layers of piano. Since I didn’t have a click track to play along with or anything, the rhythms were all really chaotic, but I liked that, thought it gave it a good random quality. This is my favorite of the multi-tracked piano pieces: Mellow Warpath. I like this one a lot, it starts off sweet, locks in around :20 and then kind of goes nuts until the end. I also like the very end, with the last notes coming from an underlying piano track that you kind of didn’t know was there.

    Jjosh Multi-Piano – Mellow Warpath

    [audio:Mellow_Warpath.mp3]

    FACT: I can’t remember anything about how to play this thing, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of where to start. I like that too.

    Category life, music | Tags: | 2 Comments

  4. looking into the past

    March 30, 2009 by jjosh

     

    One of the only good things to come from my eye scenario is that I finally hooked a tape player up to the computer to digitize all the stuff I recorded to cassette during college. I’d had this box of tapes laying around forever, so it’s great to finally get this stuff recorded and mp3’d. Also, since most of doing the task was just listening, it was the perfect project for my eye. I figured this week I would post some of the recordings — not sure how many, most of them are so cringe-inducingly cheezy that I’m not really sure why I digitized them.

    This first one is recorded in a piano practice room when I was going to college. My pal JW lent me his 4-track and I recorded a bunch of piano songs that I had been working on; digitizing this tape made me realize how much time I must have spent that Freshman year in the piano room. Freshman year wasn’t a good time, and I guess I channeled that stuff into the piano. The weird thing is, I would record these tracks and not re-do them if I made mistakes, so you’ll hear little wobbles in there and parts that aren’t quite 100%, but so be it. I think at the time I was mainly influenced by Windham Hill New Age music.

    At the end of Freshman year I had to turn in a cassette of a bunch of tracks for some kind of class project, so my friend PH and I named them with the cheeziest names we could think of as a joke.

    So please enjoy "Losing You and Finding Myself".

    Jjosh Practice Room Session – Losing You and Finding Myself

    [audio:Losing_You.mp3]

    Category life, music | Tags: | 7 Comments

  5. how I felt last Friday

    March 15, 2009 by jjosh

     the whole fight is amazing, but how I felt last Friday can be found at 6:00 in…

    Category life | Tags: | 2 Comments

  6. aie yi eye

    March 10, 2009 by jjosh

    Unfortunatley I am still experiencing (bio)technical difficulties in my left eye…look up “corneal ulcer” for a hint of the fun I’m having. Regular posting will resume once this is sorted out, hopefully no more than a week or so…

    Category life | Tags: | 1 Comment

  7. that’s why the fox is a tramp

    February 16, 2009 by jjosh

    It’s no secret that animal habitats are being encroached upon and causing all sorts of weird "coyotes buying ice cream cones" type of behavioral adjustments. I feel like this was big news in the enviro movements of the 80’s, right? There’s that Miyzaki film about the Racoons (remind me to tell you the story of Cakeface sometime) in Japan, that Disney film about the animals losing their homes to buildings, etc.

    But I had no clue there’s an entire GENRE of youtube clips all about foxes bouncing on people’s trampolines! The clips are fun and weird. How do the foxes know that this is what’s supposed to happen on a trampoline? It must feel great. They must like to have a good time.

    Fun and weird.

    Go to youtube and search for "fox" and "trampoline" and you’ll find tons of these vids.

    [via]

    Category life | Tags: | 3 Comments

  8. storytime Friday

    February 5, 2009 by jjosh

    I know I’m supposed to be writing internet style short short fiction, or stories in the form of text messages or ichat or something, but for some reason I wrote a regular ole short story recently…no clue if it’s any good, but if you’re curious, here’s a link…maybe print it out and read on the bus to work or something…

    The Rhythm of Ping Pong

    Category life | Tags: | 2 Comments

  9. so it begins, next stop skynet

    January 28, 2009 by jjosh

    So they’ve developed autonomous robots to work in warehouses getting the products to be shipped out. There are so many great things about this. Below there’s a sort of corporate-style vid extolling the virtues of the system…I’ve set it to jump in 4:16 ‘cuz the beginning is boring, and there are so many great bits later on:

    The fact that the robots are autonomous, so they’re making decisions as to how best work things out.

    The way the guy is giving his interview with robots zipping along behind him.

    They way he talks about people wanting to "work WITH" the robots, like they’re already getting personified.

    The fact that it’s a great benefit that we’ve reduced the walking people had to do (finally!).

    The fact that everyone goes on about the "efficiency" of the system without mentioning that people will lose their jobs to robots. It’s a blast.

    .

    [via]

    Category life | Tags: | 1 Comment

  10. viewing the street

    January 26, 2009 by jjosh

    the google maps street view is a pretty good time…I’ve used it to check parking signs to see what day I need to move my car, look at apartment buildings, scout locations where we’re going to shoot…

    but the best thing about the street view is that it also captures moments like this…

    [via]

    Category life | Tags: | 3 Comments

  11. the border between cool and lame

    January 19, 2009 by jjosh

    For Christmas I got a bunch of 33 & 1/3’s, (also, Gamera does a good job of explaining them here) but without a doubt the most interesting one was on Celine Dion’s "Let’s Talk About Love". Not so much a critique of the actual album (although it is that), it’s more a critical examination of taste, and what it means to like something or dislike something. How our tastes develop (along economic lines, social lines, cultural lines), what is meant by the social currency of cool — all this interesting snooty critical theory stuff with Celine Dion as the springboard. It’s pretty great.

    One of the more interesting lines of thought in the book was our fear of liking things that are overly sentimental, or tacky. He posits a theory that part of our dislike of these things is that they make us feel too much, they threaten to pull too much emotion out of us, and that we resist this so that we can still feel we have a hold on our emotions, that we are in control of our feelings. But maybe this isn’t the best thing for us, maybe it would be good for us if we could feel things strongly, really let ourselves go and feel the emotion that certain works of art are trying so desperately to make us feel.

    The great thing was that I was reading a lot of this book in LA at our hotel pool — a pool that was too close to the freeway so they blasted middle-of-the-road rock to drown out the traffic noise. I’m reading this stuff about maybe giving in to the emotion and I’m listening to "Livin on a Prayer" and "Blinded by the Light" and so on. I tried to feel what it felt like to give in to these songs and it was interesting as anything. Reminded me of going to church and saying to myself "just for fun I’m going to feel what it would feel like to really BELIEVE. How does it feel? Just give in…" There’s something to it, it’s valuable somehow.

    So recently whenever I see or hear something that makes me cringe a little, I try to let go of that feeling and just embrace whatever it is that’s making me cringe. This seems to be particularly effective when dealing with new pop culture stuff that’s right on the border of cool/lame. I love seeing things where I can’t tell if it’s great or if it’s weak. This guy Juiceboxxx is right there. I def appreciate the energy, and I can tell part of it is a goof, and part of it is super serious, but I just can’t make up my mind about it. I know I don’t need to have it on my ipod, but I like watching the video (it’s also a great video). Plus he’s 21, and from Milwaukee, and it seems like so much of his vibe is about being for the kids and I love that. What do you think?

    Category books, life, music | Tags: | 8 Comments

  12. patches

    January 15, 2009 by jjosh

    Sorry I haven’t been posting as of late, but I’m in LA for work and also I 

    have

    conjunctivitus

    (otherwise known as "pinkeye"!!!) which is surreal and not much fun. I will tell you this though: if you go on an airplane wearing an eye patch, people will hold doors open for you. Eye hurts, can’t look at screen any more. Talk soon.

    Category life | Tags: | No Comments

  13. how am I living

    January 8, 2009 by jjosh

    There is nothing like the satisfaction of setting a goal and then achieving it.

    [flv:/video/living_box.flv 480 320]

    Category life | Tags: | 3 Comments

  14. bananner

    January 7, 2009 by jjosh

    This month’s banner is from the Christmas card that Maxine gave me…there’s something I love about the surreal look to those characters, like they’re right out of a dream…

    Category life | Tags: | 1 Comment

  15. why can’t Bud get no love

    January 6, 2009 by jjosh

     

    by Lucy Knisley, in a roundabout way via

    Category life | Tags: | 1 Comment

Older Entries
Newer Entries