Story Advancing

Currently hearing: The Black Rose EP by Blindside (2007)

I slept in a bit today, but I did manage to add several interesting details to my story, including more bad guys and more death. This is becoming something I might even read myself! I even did a little research, deciding on a novel antioxidant produced by a rare phytoplankton as the story's MacGuffin.

Next week I plan to start making character profiles. I asked Tara what my main character's name should be, describing him as a boring scientist my age. She suggested Brian. I think that makes sense. Maybe I'll make him slightly eccentric and name him Bryan.

New Song Ideas that Will Have to Wait

I came up with some good ideas for song creation in the last 24 hours, but I was totally thwarted by Neavey this morning. I was on my way to the basement to start recording something, but she woke up with an awful cough as soon as I got out of the shower at 6:15.

I realized when I went to bed last night that the rhythm I want to use for a lot of the album is a really fast snare-kick-snare-kick pattern, similar to what XBXRX and Melt-Banana use a lot. The jungle rhythms can be used too, but not as much as what I'd been thinking before. I also realized last night that I can start creating these songs by stomping on my tambourine as I play my guitar. I can even shout nonsense words or rhythm counts as I play. Then I can come back and recreate it all, once I have an actual song. And each song will only be a minute or two long, with little space in between.

And I don't have to use my tracker for every bit of rhythm. Not only do I have a tambourine, but I also have the percussion sounds on my keyboard, which I can play loudly and distortedly through my amps (I don't have neighbors underneath me anymore), using my fingers on the keyboard. I remembered that in the shower this morning. That might make the creation process a lot easier. The thing I haven't quite figured out yet is whether I should try to add drum loops to what I create organically, after the fact. It won't be easy, even if I use a click track, because my rhythms are going to be very sporadic, even spontaneous. A click track might only hold me back.

One thing I might do is interrupt the more organic parts of the song with rhythmic electronic parts. I could do a whole spontaneous recording, totally improvised, add all the organic percussion, and then insert drum loops with overlaid guitar and bass into certain parts of the song. So something like last week's clip, which was mostly structured ahead of time, could come between parts of a song that were created spontaneously. It could all fit together into something extraordinary. Or it could all be a big mess. But maybe a brilliant mess?

Anyway, the next step, as I was going to do this morning, is to press record and start playing, stomping and shouting, using the chords that I used for the clip last week in various creative ways. Then I can figure out what to do next. This could actually be fun. Too bad it will have to wait until next week. I hope Neavey doesn't make a habit of waking up before 6:30!

Post-Holiday Block

We came home last night from a Thanksgiving trip to St. Louis. I didn't do anything inspiring, but we did watch Horrible Bosses. It was fun, but not really funny. It was sort of a modern-day Three Stooges story, and I didn't find much there to inspire me.

I got up this morning to continue work on this new song idea, if you can call it that. I listened to a couple of XBXRX songs for inspiration, I listened to the clip I made last week, and I practiced the guitar parts I learned. I even worked on a few more guitar parts. But I was totally stumped creatively. I wasn't sure how to proceed. Luckily, poor Neavey coughed herself awake, and I had to get her up and spend some time with her, saving me from my creative black hole. I wonder if publishing that clip on this blog (and then copying the post to Facebook) was a psychological mistake.

Fortunately none of the songs on my future album will be very long, and none of them need to be a completely composed masterpiece from the very start. Maybe what I need tomorrow is just a jam session to spark some ideas. I already have a riff, a pattern, a rhythm. Maybe I should just hit "record" and start playing around on the guitar. Then I can come back fresh next week with some new ideas and start creating more rhythms to play to. Perhaps a new bass line will help, maybe for the song's verses. Maybe if I create a bass line along with a drum loop in my tracker, I can then recreate it with my guitar and make a complete verse. This is why I have this journal!

New Music Clip!

I created 15 seconds of new music this week! I did the beats and synth yesterday and the guitars this morning. Learning and recording the guitar parts wore me out, and this is all I have to show for it, but it's something. There are two guitar parts and a bass line here (the bass is my guitar pitched down an octave).

I still don't know how to count this thing, which is a little embarrassing since I composed it, but it's not the first time. If anyone remembers a song I created back in 2004 called "Can I Love Again?"--I still don't know how to count that thing! I need a music theorist or a big fan of math rock. Or maybe a drummer. [EDIT: Ok, now I'm thinking maybe this new one is 4/4, 2/4, 6/4, repeat. Which is why I said 12/4 yesterday.]

This will come somewhere in the middle of a song. The "lyrics" are just for a demo.

I let Tara hear this soon after it was finished, just to get her impression. She hasn't been reading this blog, and I haven't been telling her what I'm doing, so she had no idea. After laughing at my silly nonlyrics, her first impression was that it feels like the '80s because of the synth. I told her I was thinking of removing it, and she said I shouldn't. She liked that it combines an '80s synth with a '90s dance rhythm and emo shouting from the '00s. It's supposed to be hardcore-punk shouting, but it definitely doesn't come off that way.

I'm not sure where this will go from here, but just getting something respectable on the speakers should propel and motivate me to continue. Feels good!

Song Creation and Rock Rumination

I built a couple of long measures of experimental dance beat this morning, based on hip hop but sped way up. They're in 12/4 time, I think, but I'll put a measure of 7/4 or something in-between to break up the rhythm even more. It already sounds crazy. I added a synth sound to help me know how the lead guitar riff should go. Tomorrow will be my first morning in the basement working on guitar for this project. Yes, of course I'll take the baby monitor with me!

I'm not sure how I feel about the rhythm line so far. I'm not sure there's anything I could do that would make me feel really good about it until I add guitar. But I have to have something to play guitar to, so it's a catch-22. But there's always the option of switching out the rhythm for another one after I've recorded guitars. That's the great thing about recording in multiple channels.

I didn't realize until we were driving home from church yesterday that Blindside has a 2011 album. Their new hit is on rotation on Radio U. I must be the last Christian-who-loves-rock-music on Earth to hear about Blindside. I wouldn't have even paid attention to them if Pandora.com hadn't played me one of their older songs on Friday. Unfortunately the new hit is nothing like their old stuff, just like Skillet and all these other bands that have gone so far downhill in the last decade. It's so sad to see. Is it fame, is it growing older, is it running out of good ideas and not realizing it? Is it some combination of these? 

You would think that Internet file sharing would make these bands want to work harder to stand out and not sound like everyone else, but maybe they're mainstreaming to get the biggest possible audience rather than ostracizing the mainstream listener with experimentation and innovation. So far the only band of Christians I've found that are experimenting at all with the standard rock/punk/metal sounds is Children 18:3. And they seem to be doing quite well. Thank God for them.

Christian Punk from Sweden and Carlito's Way

My ongoing search for good, creatively aggressive rock music by Christians paid off again today. I just downloaded the first album by the Swedish band Blindside called A Thought Crushed My Mind (2000). I think it's probably post-hardcore, but I don't know a lot about those things. This is way better than everything Skillet, Thousand Foot Krutch and all those other bands of Christians are putting out these days, though some of that is pretty good. I'll have to look for Blindside's other albums and see how they've been evolving since 2000. But this is a very promising start. They have a very genuine sound compared to most of the music I've heard Christians making lately.

Check out the song I'm hearing right now, "Act":

My film this morning was Carlito's Way (1993), that is, the first two-thirds of it. It's a great story, though it seems like I've seen the bad-guy-trying-to-make-good-but-no-one-lets-him story a few times before. Maybe this was the first of its kind? Can't wait to see the rest of it. We just saw Luis Guzmán guest-star on Community last night, so it was funny to see him in one of his biggest films this morning. I have to admit I didn't even know who he was until last night.

I didn't get to read any fiction at all this week. I slept an extra hour yesterday to try to get healthy. If I'm still sick on Monday, I'd better call the doctor. I haven't had a chest cold like this in years, though I used to get them every year before I met Tara. I've been sleeping in my office for days so she can sleep, so I'm spending at least 80% of my time, waking and sleeping, in this little room. Good thing I like this room.

Story Coming Along

I didn't get a lot of time to take down notes for my novel today, since the girls woke up really early. But I've been doing some of my best thinking in the shower lately. I've added a couple of important characters, more shooting and more dying. I also altered the ending so it's not quite so depressing. Now it's a western. But I've also added a layer of mystery by deciding why the evil city folk in the book want to keep their activities secret. Now the reader will have to figure it out along with the main character. Now we have a story of western intrigue!

The one-sentence description hasn't changed since last week: A scientist goes up against a dirty cop and a crooked politician to defend a rural landowner. I'm very happy with how this is going so far. I even thought of a potential title this morning: "Ten Acres of Blood". Eh, it's a working title.

Ox Scapula Rocks

I keep feeling like today's Sunday, even though I'm working. It's really weird. I guess it's because I was sick with a cold on Sunday and stayed home so I wouldn't get people at church sick.

Man, England's Ox Scapula rocks. I found them weeks ago while searching Last.fm for "math punk" bands. I just heard this song "Taking Liberties", and it's great. Here's a live version:

This is from their EP called Hands Out. I just downloaded it here. And I found a cool review of it here. The last paragraph talks about the genre but never names the genre. I'd like to know what genre they mean! The only clue I can get from Last.fm is math punk, which is how I found them in the first place. Time to hear the rest of this thing now and put it on my Dell DJ.

I'm almost done converting all those electronica samples, so next week I will definitely begin creating some new music!

Great Punk Rock and a Classic Samurai Film

Song that rocked me today: "A Waste of Time and Space" (2008), from the album of the same name, by Michigan duo Man at Arms. Can't find a stream, but here's a video of a song from the same album. Pretty cool!

Man at Arms - "Swamp Things"

Yojimbo was so great this morning. I had always heard that A Fistful of Dollars was a total ripoff, but you can't know how total until you've seen them both. It's the same movie with swords instead of guns. And it even has one gun. I guess Sergio Leone just hoped no one would notice, or that when they did it would be way too late for anyone to care. He just wanted to make a cool movie and a little money; he had no idea what a legend he had created or that he had birthed an entire subgenre of westerns with his little ripped-off movie.

Clearly there never would have been spaghetti westerns if not for Akira Kurosawa and Yojimbo! Of course, there would be no Star Wars without Kurosawa's influence, either, and therefore possibly no summer blockbusters, so where would we be? Who could've known that one Japanese director with a fondness for samurais would have such a huge influence on Western filmmaking!

As I watched the film, I realized that the novel shaping in my head would be a lot better with more violence. I need more characters, because a few people gotta die. I really want it to be a western clashing with a story of city corruption, with the main character caught up in the middle.

Oh, here's the one sentence I gave Tara last night for what the book will be about (subject to change, of course): A scientist goes up against a dirty cop and a crooked politician to defend a rural landowner. We'll see how much that morphs as I go along.

Wrap-Up for the Week

Monday morning, in the shower, I had a small idea for a song, mostly just a guitar/percussion riff. Just one measure, really, but not 4/4 (I haven't counted it yet). I spent the next hour-and-a-half converting electronica samples from 24-bit to 16-bit, sadly, since my old tracker won't interpret 24-bit samples.

But that came after an interesting moment when I was unable to install the latest version of Audacity to my new work laptop due to lack of administrator privileges. How could I possibly record and mix my music for free without Audacity? Options ran through my head for five to ten minutes: I could quit writing music altogether and focus on writing novels; I could forget recording and just perform acoustically at coffee shops and open-mic nights; I could save money and buy equipment or my own computer. At last I remembered that I had downloaded an older version of Audacity to my previous computer. I tried that on the new one, and it worked just fine. Whew!

Tuesday morning I devoted more time to converting samples. I still have a lot more to convert. But this week I've begun to understand how drum-'n'-bass/jungle samples are created. If I take a standard hip-hop sample and play it faster, poof, it's a jungle sample. So all I have to do is create a hip-hop beat in my tracker in which all sounds are played a few steps higher/faster, and then speed up the sample in the tracker. Piece of cake and will save a lot of time vs creating a hip-hop sample, speeding up the whole sample in Audacity and then bringing it back to my tracker. We're on our way now.

On to Wednesday morning. I sat staring at a blank Word file for a few minutes before I finally started jotting down ideas for my novel. I now have a basic premise and some characters! Essentially the story will be about a younger scientist and an older professor with very different ways of doing things. No, that's not it at all. It's about a corrupt city official who will stop at nothing to acquire fame and power. No, that's not quite it. It's a boy-meets-girl story in which tragic loss make the relationship ever stronger. Ok, it's all of those things, really. Hopefully next week I'll be better able to describe it in a sentence. And I also want to add some mysterious elements, which is why I don't want to give away too much here. Not that anyone's probably going to read this anytime soon.

I'm enjoying the process so far. It's not my first time to get serious about writing a novel, but it may be my best idea for a novel so far. Maybe I'll get past the first two chapters this time, since I respect the idea of the novel a little more.

And my reading this morning was the G.I. Joe Yearbook #4 (1988), the final Yearbook. It's an interesting story in which the man posing as Cobra Commander is found out. The best part for me was the use of the Joes' two SEALs, Wet-Suit and Torpedo. Wet-Suit is probably my favorite Joe, and it was great to see them perform a covert beach landing on Cobra Island, changing from scuba gear to camo gear, complete with face paint. They don't accomplish much, but they survive, and seeing them run into the October Guard and fight alongside them was great fun. Almost as much fun as G.I. Joe Special Missions #8 from a couple months earlier, in which several of the most interesting Joes, including Wet-Suit and Beach Head, parachute into Southeast Asia on an ambush mission!

In the morning I'll probably finally see Yojimbo, on loan from Netflix, unless Tara decides to watch it with me soon. She actually remembers the character Yojimbo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! If she wants to see it, I'll watch something from my spaghetti western collection tomorrow.

Short Action Film in OKC

No time for a full-length film today, but I just watched a two-minute action film shot in (and on) an office building in Oklahoma City three years ago. Not at all professional, but pretty fun. It's called Knockout, and it was made by teenagers, probably Christians since they used a song with obvious Christian lyrics by Skillet ("Invincible").

When I lived in OKC, I wrote a script for short action film, myself. It was a spy story centered around a highway car chase from the airport to my own office. I couldn't afford any kind of camera at the time, and it's too bad, because I even did the casting and chose the cars I wanted to use (my own and a friend's). Couldn't even borrow a camera, though. I think I lost the script years ago.

Anyway, here's Knockout. I'm interested in which building they used for this.

Tough Truths

Still waiting for that Y to open, but last night I read Luke chapter 14. Still struggling my way through Luke, but this chapter could certainly be revisited for some good song lyrics.

I find it interesting that Jesus addresses the personal glory one receives when humbling oneself in order to receive glory here on Earth (v. 10). This makes total sense to a selfish human who wants to be esteemed among his peers. But then, when He addresses the man who invited them there, He encourages him to invite and serve those who can't pay him back. There's no immediate gain to be found here, but He says in verse 14 that "you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just." So there's still a selfish aspect to this kindness, but one whose rewards are far off in the future. As far as I can tell, the resurrection of all justified people is still in our future, though this is debated by a small minority of preterists.

I love the guy in verse 15 who blurts out something in an attempt to sound like Jesus! "Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!" Which of course Jesus answers with a parable. This one definitely seems to be about the invited Jews vs the broken Gentiles (like me!) who actually get to attend Christ's Supper (v. 24).

I agree with most teachers on the meaning of verse 26. It's the concept of denying oneself so that total union with Christ can be possible. I wonder, though, why Jesus used the phrase "cannot be My disciple" in verses 27 and 33. Surely His twelve closest disciples didn't hate their families! Was He just making a point, as many teach? Can anyone truly be His disciple? And if I count the cost and decide it's too high, what shall become of me?

And what does it mean for salt to lose its flavor (v. 34)? I don't want to be thrown out. Is this what happens to those who count the cost and decide it's too high, or to those who fail to count the cost and can't finish what they've started? I've read this passage since childhood and still can't make heads or tails of it.

I'm encouraged by verse 32 somehow. If I decide my ten thousand can't stand up to the twenty thousand coming against me, can I send a delegation with conditions of peace? If I decide I'm not cut out to be Paul or Timothy, can I just be Luke or one of Paul's friends that gets a mention? Are these analogies meant to encourage us to be His disciples or to discourage us because it's too much to handle for most of us?

Novel Idea: Western Intrigue

Just after going to bed last night I had an idea for a story that excited me. It would combine the ruggedness of a western with the intricate, weblike plot of a John le Carré novel. I would set it in modern day Oklahoma City, the city I'm most familiar with, creating characters in places I knew well when I lived there. It would contain corrupt government officials and police. One character would live in a rural area and would make his living from a natural resource. Someone would be lied to and cheated. The hero, whoever he is, would be shot at the climax, but not fatally. Perhaps he'd lose the use of his hand.

That's all I have so far. I'll need to chart out a bunch of nameless characters and figure out how they're all connected before I can even know what the story would actually be about, or whom the main character would be. One thing I like a lot about this idea is that it can't be nailed down to a genre. It would just be an American novel, which is exactly what I want to write. It would be gritty, suspenseful, character-driven and full of great dialogue (hopefully).

We went to Beehive Books yesterday, to get the girls books for their birthday--a new birthday tradition. I saw a novel from last year called A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. It's about an aging punk rocker and a woman he employs, and it visits their interesting history. It reminds me very much of a crazy action story I had recently begun to write. I quit when I realized it was way too far-fetched to keep my interest, as my aging punk rocker was nearly immortal due to a serum he'd been given in the '60s. I had been keeping the idea of an aging punk rocker handy, though. So this Goon Squad novel interests me.

Album Planning in the Infancy Stage

My new creative schedule was going to start today, but the new YMCA isn't quite open yet, so Tara and I slept a bit. I did get up a little early and spent some time listening to beat samples I downloaded free at Sample Magic. These will provide the audio I need for the percussion in my songs. I'll deconstruct the samples and make them into something totally new, of course.

I decided to go with a more electronica-influenced sound for this album, since my previous work using electronic drum sounds to mimic real drums sounds a bit weak. The percussion in my new songs will be influenced by Atari Teenage Riot and the experimentalism of Amon Tobin, among others. And every now and then I want to throw in a fat hip-hop beat, just enough. Audiences are used to electronic percussion that doesn't sound like real drumming, from disco to hip hop to jungle. But they aren't used to hearing it combined with noisy guitars and post-hardcore vocals in an experimental, math-rock-influenced style. This will be something new, particularly in Christian music. I haven't been able to find exactly the type of sound I'm planning anywhere.

And there will be more than guitars, percussion and vocals. I got a free organ when we moved here a year ago, and I still haven't used it. I figured, while I'm being experimental, why not throw in some organ? And some tambourine and Mellotron too, for an excellent mix of organic and digital. So what will I call this kind of music? I haven't actually heard it yet, but what I'm hearing in my head is something like electropsych noisecore. Google has no record of that term being used!

I'm still thinking about what I want to do lyrically. If I want my music to be as intense as possible, maybe I should dive into some of the darker passages of the Bible and explore those. A song about what the Bible says about false prophets might be interesting. A song exploring a wild Bible story you won't hear in Sunday school could be good. As a postmillennialist, I've got to have a song about Earth's awesome future the way I see it, so the album won't be totally dark--but totally intense.

Intro

I'm Scott. I've taken on various creative projects over the years, but I just took a year off to raise two baby girls up into beautiful one-year-olds. Now it's time to get those creative juices flowing again.

This journal is to keep track of ideas for my two creative projects and to chart my progress. It's also to note things that inspire me along the way.

My current music project is an album of intense, experimental noisecore songs with aggressive electronic percussion, avoidance of 4/4 time signatures, and lyrics inspired by the Bible. I want Christian teenagers to be able to experience a type of music they aren't currently hearing. The sound will be along the lines of XBXRX meets Atari Teenage Riot.

As for writing, all I know is that I'd like to write several realistic novels in a modern setting. Part of what I'll be journaling here is ideas for what those novels may be about.

I'll be getting started soon, when Tara starts exercising at the Y. We'll both be getting up at 5:30, while the girls are still asleep, and I'll be working in my upstairs office and my basement den.

Schedule:

• Music Monday
• Toosday's music too
• Writing Wednesday
• Reading Thurrrsday
• Film-viewing Friday
• Sleeping Saturday and Sunday

Feel free to ask questions, offer advice and interact however you like!

Happy first birthday to my two angels!