Sunday Music
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on February 7, 2010 at 10:18 pm
It’s short. I wanted to do more, and had intended to stay up late to do so, but I’m getting a migraine. I can barely see what I’m typing. Woo.
Here: http://auraveda.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/2_7_2010.mp3
Edit 2/8 morning:
Headache gone now, though I still don’t feel quite right. I think for next weekend’s music project I’ll continue work on the above. At the core of it is a nice idea that I want to work on more. First step will be to strip off the crappy EWI line I tacked on at the last second (while I was starting to get a headache) – the sound doesn’t fit the piece and the melody is just a crappy bit of noodling. Hmm, perhaps some nice, clean guitar would sound good on this, also a really aggressive drum ‘n bass style drum beat.
Not this crude matter.
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on February 6, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Weird day today. Went to sleep last night at about 1AMish, woke up this morning about 20 minutes before 6AM and couldn’t fall back to sleep. That’s really odd, ever since Christmas I’d been having a terrible time getting up in the morning even on work days, some days I couldn’t pry myself out of bed until close to 7:30. Got in a good long T’ai Chi session this morning, close to an hour. That was nice, haven’t managed to practice in the morning since Christmas, I usually can’t find the time until the evening. Though in the future when practicing in the morning I think I’ll try to do it before I have my coffee, T’ai Chi + caffeine was a weird mix, like I was trying to speed up and slow down at the same time.
Spent most of the day catching up on housework, dishes, laundry, changed the sheets, etc. Didn’t get any music done today so I’ll have to really focus on it tomorrow. Had beer + pizza for lunch. Oddly enough I really wasn’t enjoying the beer. It didn’t taste bad or make me feel bad or anything like that, I only got through about half of it and then I just didn’t want any more. I’d really been enjoying my fine frothy beverages quite a bit the last few weeks. Perhaps I’ve just had enough for now. I was having the same reaction to food all last summer. I’d eat maybe half my lunch and then just didn’t want any more. Didn’t feel ill or anything, just didn’t care to eat any more. I think I’m just done with drinking for a while (naturally, since I just bought a case of Lienie’s).
I started re-watching James Burke’s “The Day the Universe Changed” this afternoon during housework breaks and got through the first 3 episodes. I always forget how interesting that show is until I re-watch it again. Roughly speaking it’s about how our knowledge changes how we perceive the world around us, and how that has historically affected our actions. A history of why things are the way they are essentially. I wish they (the TV networks) still made science and history programs like this that prodded one to actually think and pay attention. I adore Mythbusters, but it’s sad that it’s one of the brainier shows on TV. Ideally Mythbusters would be the fun, but not very serious show on the “brain” channels, not one of the more science focused ones.
This evening I had the oddest compulsion to jog, so to avoid the ice outside I ran in circles in the apartment for 35 minutes. Usually I’d get tired or winded long before that, very strange. Something about the rhythm of it was calming, I didn’t want to stop and I didn’t need to stop. I wonder if I’ll be sore tomorrow? After that I did some weight training for a while (swinging around the kettle-bell with wrist weights strapped on, I definitely need to get a heavier one), messed around on the computer for a bit, then did another half hour of T’ai Chi.
Apparently I’ve traded bodies with bizarro-universe Dawn since today I:
a. Didn’t want to sleep much
b. Didn’t want any beer
c. Enjoyed jogging
I’ve been practicing T’ai Chi a lot over the last month (it’s a rather nice respite from thinking, worrying, and being sad …and I’m Sick To Death of feeling like that…), perhaps I’m just more in tune with what my body needs. Last weekend I figured out better how to really settle my weight into my legs better, improving my balance a bit and planting me more firmly on the ground. I’m not sure how to describe what I’m doing different (that’s the problem with this art, or any other internal style I imagine, half of it is in one’s head so it’s sometimes hard to describe). I feel like I’m sitting back more, but I’m still standing upright, not leaning back. That allows my legs to relax more, yet more firmly plant me in place. Figuring this out has allowed me to see other areas where I’m still tensing up and I’ve been able to focus more on relaxing and correct some things. Funny that my practice sessions have been so fruitful lately, but class sucked so much this week. Oh well, just an off day.
I’ll be curious to see if today’s body oddness continues on going forward, if that will be the new “normal” – or if today was an aberration and I’ll be back to beer, sloth, and sleep tomorrow.
T’ai Chi Tuesday
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on February 2, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Today in T’ai Chi class we learned a Badwan Jin exercise that’s supposed to help us rid ourselves of anger. That should be useful to me. You hold your hands in this slightly elaborate configuration in front of your face, stand in a very wide horse-riding stance, turn to the right, bend over, roll over to the left, straighten up the upper body, bend over and roll back to the right, repeat a bunch of times.
The T’ai Chi position we learned tonight was Cloud Hands. It’s a sequence of double ward-offs, with weight shifts from side to side, but all the travelling is to the left. Mike was excited to teach us this one as it is his favorite. Our homework for the week, apart from practicing, is to find 5 or 10 minutes we can spend outside just standing and watching the clouds roll by. The idea is that the hands in Cloud Hands float up and down in a cloud-like way in the direction changes, so we’re just supposed to watch the clouds and consider their nature.
I’m somewhat fatigued and my mood is a bit “off” today so I don’t think I got as much out of class tonight as I could have. Usually class would kick my shitty mood to the curb and charge me up full of delicious chi, but the “off” nature is somewhat tenacious this week. Not too surprising I suppose since I’ve been pondering and old, very deep set issue. My balance was off as well and I was having some difficulty doing things that I know well how to do. Apparently I was standing rather incorrectly in Single Whip position. Enough so, that Mike practically ended up giving me a bear hug and nearly knocked me over trying to contort me back into standing correctly. My hips were twisted to the right and I was hunched over a bit and my body seemed somewhat resistant to doing it right. Odd since I know how to do it right, I’ve been doing it right, I even really like that position. Oh well, everyone has bad days in their practice, I just need to keep at it.
Brutal Imagery
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on February 1, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Happened to see this video on Youtube this evening. Hadn’t seen it in a very very long time.
My reaction to the video years ago was probably something like “Gosh, Paul sure is cute.” My reaction now is a bit more complex. He remains cute, but the happy, beautiful family scenes are a bit painful to watch. Seventeen years later and I’m finally thinking about the issue instead of ignoring it. I don’t seem to have much choice, it keeps popping up with irritating regularity in my life lately. I shouldn’t be bitter or angry about it the way things are, anger doesn’t change anything and only makes me miserable and eats away at me. But it is often difficult to bend my emotions to practical logic.
A person of greater faith than myself might try to reassure me that things like this happen for a reason, that by being born we accept the difficulties and challenges of life as the price for the opportunity to live and to grow our souls, that this is all part of the experience I need to have, the Universe does not present us with challenges that we cannot overcome, or that it’s all part of God’s plan. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to convince myself of that line of thinking, I hope I do, I’ll be a lot happier if I do. But at the moment I am angry that the choice that most people are freely given may have been taken away from me.
Sunday Noise: Waiting
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on January 31, 2010 at 7:49 pm
MP3: Waiting
I made some music, or possibly some noise this weekend, depending on your tastes. I’m going to try to do something like this every week until I get back in practice, back in the habit again. My main goal this week was to do something and finish it – so mission accomplished. And I did definitely want to give up on it at some point late last evening, but I slogged on through.
My original idea was to do a percussion only piece. I figured it might be easier to focus on it if I stripped away harmony and melody and just left myself with rhythm to play with. I started out by recording a bunch of noises to use as the percussion since I really don’t have much in the way of percussion instruments, and I’ve decided that I’m not going to use any pre-packed loops anymore. In the right hands anything can be a weapon or a percussion instrument, and my percussion track includes finger snapping, tongue clicking, banging on my chest, slapping my shoes together, tapping a ceramic pot, shaking a can of nails, and much more. After I constructed a rhythm track with my found percussion I started to get the idea for some layers to put on top of that so I abandoned my original percussion only idea and recorded the other tracks. Instruments include my voice, Rickenbacker 4003 bass, mandolin, keyboard, and my Akai EWI. Every track was fed through my Vox Tonelab ST and altered in some fashion. The thing that sounds like a lead electric guitar is actually my EWI. Everything sounds the same when you put enough distortion on it.
The counting track was originally in there for my reference and I was going to remove it when I was done, but I liked it, so I left it. It’s interesting to hear my voice. “That doesn’t sound like me!”
Structurally it’s just repeating groups of 4 measures in 4/4 (hence the count to 16). The tone center is D minor and I don’t really stray from that at all. Each time around I add something else to the backing track making it thicker and thicker. The melody, such as it is, is a few improvisations on my EWI layer on top of each other. No real compositional development, just a fancy bit of noodling really. But as I said earlier, mission accomplished, since the mission was to do something. My only concern overall really is that I think it probably gets a bit too thick and it’s difficult to hear all the parts. Also, the heavy distortion on the lead pretty much blows away all the background tracks, they’re there, but difficult to discern when a few distorted EWI lines get going at the same time.
T’ai Chi Tuesday
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on January 26, 2010 at 8:47 pm
The new position we learned in T’ai Chi class today was “Diagonal Flying” aka “Punch Terry in the Throat”. Sadly, no actual flying was involved, instead one turns to the left slightly, catches the ball, turns and takes a great big step to the front right – about 120 degrees, (similar to “Embrace Tiger – Return to Mountain”) and then straightens the body turning the waist to the front foot, squashing the ball as the left hand falls down into the same position it would be in for preparation stance and the right hand raises up and projects forward, in the Tiger’s Mouth position, palm up, at the center line. The martial application of this is that you would turn and be throwing your force into jabbing your opponent in the throat with your open hand. Terry demonstrated this all to us by letting each of us grab his neck – this was the quickest way to show the correct hand position, the hand is a bit flatter than you might otherwise think and the thumb and fingers at a 90 degree angle.
One of the other students happened to bring his acoustic guitar along to class, so our teacher Mike (who also plays guitar) borrowed the guitar and sat and serenaded us with pretty guitar playing while Terry and Phil, the assistant teachers, taught the new position.
Earlier in the class we talked a bit more about meditation and learned two new Badwan Jin exercises. “Sun and Moon” and another one whose name I’ve forgotten already. For Sun and Moon one hand is the Sun, the other the moon. You hold one hand above your head, the other by the Dan Tien, you swirl them around in opposite directions a couple times, and the hands rotate at arms length and trade places – the sun sets and the moon rises. This is repeated 8 times, and is essentially a very elegant Chinese version of patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time since it involves coordinating different motions of each hand.
The other Badwan Jin exercise (which may be called Gazing?) has you loosely swing your arms back and land them on the sides of your butt (“slap yourself in the ass!”) and then slowly turning the eyeballs, head, and upper body slowly from side to side, gazing at whatever crosses your vision. Don’t look up or down, just side to side. This has a meditative quality about it, you’re not supposed to think or judge and consider the things you’re seeing, simply see them. If thoughts pop into your mind simply let them go. This is also supposed to help one’s vision since as you look around your eyes slowly and deliberately change focus as you look at different things.
Mike also talked a little more about meditation and showed us a hand position and way of quietly sitting that is supposed to help one regain energy if they’ve gotten themselves into a state where they’re just hemorrhaging Chi – not enough sleep, ill, hungover, that kind of thing. This was just a cursory overview, we’re going to learn much more about meditation later I guess.
We also reviewed Repulse Monkey a fair amount. I definitely understand how to do it now, but I still need a lot of practice to coordinate the movements. It’s difficult to keep the feet parallel as one takes the steps back.
———
My mood mysteriously rebounded quite a bit today, no idea why. It fell quite a bit though as I drove home from class this evening as I pondered some things, though I’m probably feeling a tad bit better than I have for the last 2 weeks.
I’ve decided that for music I need to start giving myself assignments. It looks like I may be battling my mood for a long time (hopefully not, but that’s what it looks like is the trend), and so I can’t simply wait to be in the mood to do something creative. When I design a new website at work it doesn’t matter one bit what my mood is because I need to get the site designed. Sometimes it’s a good design, sometimes bad, but it always gets done. So I think I need to do that with music. From now until I no longer need to do this my goal is to produce one thing a week. One short (but complete) recording or one compositional etude in sheet music form. Due date is Sunday evening. Ok, go!
The title would go here, if I had one.
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on January 25, 2010 at 10:52 pm
On the continuing saga of the Windows 7 update program reinstallation:
- I got iTunes reinstalled and my iPod information moved over to the Windows 7 install. It was fairly painless.
- Got Finale to register finally.
- Sony ACID Pro is being a bitch. I have it installed, but it fails at registration – the registration included in the program apparently no longer matches up with the web form on their site (the one in the program seems to be missing a field, that’s what it seems like from the error I’m getting) so now I’m going to have to call someone so that I can use the software that I purchased years ago because *gasp* I upgraded to a different operating system. I wonder at what point all these old programs will become unusable because the company just stops supporting the registration process, and none of the programs will run unless they received confirmation from on high that it’s ok to do so. I guess I’ll try again tomorrow and then give them a call if it fails again.
- Tomorrow I think I’ll also try to get FL Studio up and running. Wednesday I’ll see if I can get the Adobe products to cooperate.
I’ve been in a truly terrible mood lately and I’m having difficulty snapping myself out of it. Every day I seem to find fewer reasons to get out of bed in the morning. The only things that seem to really help are strenuous physical exercise and listening to The Flaming Lips, and I’ve been listening to them so much that I’m almost getting sick of them.
Productive Day
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on January 24, 2010 at 9:26 pm
I had a productive day today.
- I hauled the remainder of the Ex’s clothes down into the basement, 6 garbage bags worth. These were all the clothes that were still hanging in the closet. I used the garbage bags like garment bags, and laid the clothes flat on boxes in the storage area, so hopefully they’ll be reasonably well protected and won’t get too wrinkled and dirty. Then again, who the fuck cares? I don’t think he does. He’s been without these clothes for 7 months now, and I’d be surprised if more than half of them even fit him. Whatever, I’m being respectful because they’re not my things. All that’s left up here of his now (besides the furniture) is a couple boxes worth of books and papers, and a set of plastic shelves that he had by his computer.
- I cooked some yummy brown rice with spices, carrots, mushrooms, and onion in it. I then cooked some turkey cutlets, chopped up the turkey and added it to the rice. The result is a yummy, nutritious casserole. My only critique is that I cooked the turkey too long, it’s a little dry and tough. I’m not used to cooking meat again yet, so I’m tending to err on the side of making damn sure it’s done so I don’t make myself sick. Still very edible and tasty, just not the optimal texture. I’ve got a lot of it, but it should freeze well if I get sick of eating it over the next few days.
- Played some WoW, got my little Dwarf Paladin up to 78. Almost there! I’ll probably hit 80 with her just in time for the new expansion to come out (the new level cap is going to be 85). That’s ok, now that I’m not raiding it’s not taking up too much of my time, and I find it pleasantly distracting. It seems to work better at taking my mind off things than alcohol does, so yay, I guess. Still debating whether I want to try Star Trek Online, it’s coming out soon. I haven’t been particularly impressed with any of Bethesda’s other MMO’s, and the reviews I’ve read so far make it sound pretty blah… but it’s Star Trek. I’ll likely end up skipping it I think.
- Hauled out a bunch of garbage and recycling. The garbage wasn’t quite full, but it had chicken and turkey wrappers in it and was starting to stink up the joint.
- I Got a few more programs added to my Windows 7 installation. The major thing left to move over is my music programs – Acid Pro, Cool Edit 2000, and FL Studio. Tried installing Finale, but it rejected the serial # for some reason. Either I need to go uninstall it off the XP partition, or I need to give the publisher a call and see what’s up. I really like Windows 7 so far. It’s shiny, and I can actually use all my memory, and make full use of my processor.
- It’s in the 40s here today so I turned the heat off for a bit and opened the windows to get a little fresh air.
- Practiced T’ai Chi. I’m a bit befuddled by “Repulse Monkey”. I wish I would have had time to go to the Thursday practice session this last week, but I wasn’t particularly functional Thursday evening if I recall correctly. Very tired. Eh, I’m sure we’ll review it a bunch this week, I’m probably not the only person a bit confused on how to coordinate the arms and legs. Looking at the list of position names we should be learning “Diagonal Flying” this week. Oh boy! I’ve always wanted to learn how to fly. I thought that only the highest level martial artists could fly.
- I baked some truly excellent cookies today. Oatmeal with blueberries and pecans. Turned out considerably better than expected. YUM! It was basically just the recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies that one finds on the inside of the lid to Quaker oatmeal, except I substituted the cup of raisins with a cup of fresh blueberries, and then added a half cup of chopped pecans. The original recipe doesn’t have any nuts. I also put in a little more vanilla than it calls for.
- Got in a good weight training workout. I’m pleasantly worn out now.
I still wish there was more time in the day though! I didn’t get any music done and I still have tons and tons more housework to do. *Sigh* I’m letting other things take priority, then I get dissapointed. I need to put the music first, because I know I’ll feed bad if I don’t. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day, I can work on it tomorrow. I keep saying that, but one of these days I’m going to run out of tomorrows.
Committed
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on January 23, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Last night I dreamed that I had a nervous breakdown and was committed to some sort of mental health facility. Oddly enough it wasn’t a nightmare. I don’t remember much about the breakdown itself, just the place I ended up. The sun was shining. The weather was warm. I got to spend a lot of my day sitting outside in the sun. I had some plants that I took care of. Every day I’d talk to a nice man about how I was feeling and he’d tell me I was a good person. I didn’t have work to worry about, or relationships, or bills, or friends, or cleaning, or cooking, or shopping, or laundry, or if I’ll ever have a family, or what the hell I’m going to do with my future. I ate, I slept, I gardened, I talked, I read. That was nice. Another inmate/patient was a guy I work with, which was funny, because in reality he’s kind of a bastard who doesn’t seem particularly rattled by anything. In the dream the catalyst for my breakdown was pretty much the same circumstances I’m under now. Relationship failed, weird shit going down at work, massively lonely, directionless. I woke up this morning feeling oddly refreshed, for a couple hours anyway. I’m certain that most mental health facilities aren’t really that pleasant, it was a dream after all.
T’ai Chi Tuesday
Posted by Auraveda in Uncategorized on January 19, 2010 at 8:14 pm
In T’ai Chi class this evening we learned the 2nd Badwan Jinn* exercise called “Drawing the Bow”. It’s an isometric exercise that mimics the movement of drawing a bow to pit muscle groups against one another. It’s not T’ai Chi, you tense your muscles and have the wrists bent at sharp angles, more of a hard style thing, supposedly older than T’ai Chi. Good for the muscles though.
The new T’ai Chi position we learned was “Repulse Monkey”. In Repulse Monkey you back up while doing push and pull motions with your hands with each step and shifting the weight back and forth. The martial application of this would be to grab someone’s arm, twist them around, pull them to you, and then punch them in the armpit, essentially. Ouch.
I’ve been feeling really anti-social lately, very much so today, and I really did not want to go to class tonight. I went of course, because I paid for it, it’s bad for the learning process to miss a class, and in the grand scheme of things I do want to go to class, it doesn’t matter what my mood is today. Or, as Gurney Halleck said “Not in the mood?! Mood’s a thing for cattle and love play… not fighting.” Also, I knew that regardless of my mood beforehand that I would enjoy class, and I did.
*shrug* Not sure what’s bugging me now, if anything. It shall pass.
*I have no clue if that’s the correct spelling.