Watching Studio In Session. I've passed by this show so many times. I don't know why. I wish more people would watch this to see what a real band with real musicians is like. Not some dude on a laptop with loops and a sequencer. People who practice and are tight when they play together. It's not something you can get from a program. It's personal, communal.
I appreciate that there is something to be said for a well programmed techno dance tune but it's not about music. Listen to the radio and you can pretty well substitute lyrics song to song and they will fit. When you are in a band, you're not confined to the box. Maybe it's a symptom of the genre but 99% of dance tunes don't stray far from a very generic formula. There might be a few variations but you can almost anticipate how each song will progress.
With a band, you're not bound to that. Just the fact that you're dealing with a group of people makes the possibilities so much more vast. Everybody hears things in different ways. When you get a bunch of people with different ideas together, some real magic can happen.....if they can get along on anything. Sometimes the conflict foments creativity.
I know some people find organic music boring. Is it the music or is it the listener? Are you really listening? Are you bored because you're not hearing what you expect to hear in the format that you want to hear it? sometimes you just need to listen a little deeper. A good song can take time to develop. Sometimes there's some background to give. Some time needed for the story to build up.
A band is the ultimate human interaction that is not sexual. It's people feeding off of each other's vibe and paying it back. That can be a very sweet thing.
A sequencer plays everything back perfect but it only plays things back one way. Sure there are programs like Ableton's Live! that allow you to do some very limited improvisation but it's not like you're playing every note. You're triggering sequences or loops. You can't make one trigger more expressive than another really. Not like you can with any manual instrument. And let's face it, one "DJ" on stage setting off triggers isn't really a performance. It's Aural masturbation.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Friday, May 18, 2012
Lesson Learned
I got an email from my ISP the other day saying that one of my computers was being used to do a denial of service attack. Apparently somebody managed to hack into one of my computers and use it to attack someone else's server or whatever. The strange thing about it was that they were using an old virus. Really old. Something that had been dealt with may service packs ago in XP. I'm on Windows 7 x 64 now.
Strange. It kind of made sense. I suspected that my laptop had been hit by a virus I couldn't figure out why my laptop drive was 95% full. So I had to do some serious work just to get my laptop useable again. That was before I got the email from Telus. It took me a good day just to get the hundreds of gigs of gibberish off of that hard drive. It was painful.
So the next logical thing to do was to scan for viruses. I did and found nothing. Shortly after that was when I got the email from Telus. They gave me a whack of links to try and clean my computers from any infection. I scanned both of my computers with every tool they suggested and found nothing. Seriously. Not a single thing.
I figured I was good. I emailed Telus back and told them that the problem had been dealt with. A few days go by and I get another email from Telus telling me that my IP was suspected of doing another denial of service attack! What? So I go through another day of scanning and updating and nothing. I changed all my passwords for everything. I change the settings on my router and hope that that settles it. Maybe someone was using my wirless to do the DOS attack.
I walk into my bedroom and look over at my old laptop. Man I had to get rid of that thing. I set it up to see if I could find a way to make it useful. At the least for the kids to surf on. I tried Damn Small Linux, Lubuntu, Windows 2000 and finally settled back with Windows XP. I took the thing into the living room and opened it up. Lo and behold it was running. I had no idea. That thing had been on probably a good month or so. I didn't even realize it. No wonder neither my desktop nor my new laptop scanned positive for viruses. They were clean! And, the issue with my new laptop? It seems my old laptop was being used to attack my new laptop. HUH? That's just weird. I used DBan to flatten the hard drive and finally pitched that thing into the recycle depot.
Strange. It kind of made sense. I suspected that my laptop had been hit by a virus I couldn't figure out why my laptop drive was 95% full. So I had to do some serious work just to get my laptop useable again. That was before I got the email from Telus. It took me a good day just to get the hundreds of gigs of gibberish off of that hard drive. It was painful.
So the next logical thing to do was to scan for viruses. I did and found nothing. Shortly after that was when I got the email from Telus. They gave me a whack of links to try and clean my computers from any infection. I scanned both of my computers with every tool they suggested and found nothing. Seriously. Not a single thing.
I figured I was good. I emailed Telus back and told them that the problem had been dealt with. A few days go by and I get another email from Telus telling me that my IP was suspected of doing another denial of service attack! What? So I go through another day of scanning and updating and nothing. I changed all my passwords for everything. I change the settings on my router and hope that that settles it. Maybe someone was using my wirless to do the DOS attack.
I walk into my bedroom and look over at my old laptop. Man I had to get rid of that thing. I set it up to see if I could find a way to make it useful. At the least for the kids to surf on. I tried Damn Small Linux, Lubuntu, Windows 2000 and finally settled back with Windows XP. I took the thing into the living room and opened it up. Lo and behold it was running. I had no idea. That thing had been on probably a good month or so. I didn't even realize it. No wonder neither my desktop nor my new laptop scanned positive for viruses. They were clean! And, the issue with my new laptop? It seems my old laptop was being used to attack my new laptop. HUH? That's just weird. I used DBan to flatten the hard drive and finally pitched that thing into the recycle depot.
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