DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News http://hackerblinks.com/news.html Hacker Blinks: News Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Mon, 16 Apr 2012 01:18:09 -0700 Google+ http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#8 In the interest of centrally-managed news, etc., I've got a Google page up where pretty much everything will end up distributed.  Take a look, give it a follow!

]]> http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#8 Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800 DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News Jabberwocky http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#7 up and ready for sale! Take a listen and let me know what you think.

And the mome raths outgrabe. by Hacker Blinks]]> http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#7 Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700 DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News The Intertubes http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#6 Several people suggested I set up a music-specific website, so here it is. All my musical information (and a bunch of tracks to listen to) is here. Not sure how permanent this is; might set up my own version on AppEngine pretty soon... (I'm not Hacker Blinks for nothing), but I'll try to keep all the information available.



Let me know if there's anything in particular you want to see. I'm available at hackerblinks AT hackerblinks.com, if you want to email me directly.

]]> http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#6 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800 DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News New Release: Broken http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#1





Broken: Some more Philip Glass-inspired electronica while waiting for the RPM Challenge to start.

]]> http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#1 Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800 DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News New Release: Dreamscape http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#2 Dreamscape : Awake at night on a train, watching the outdoors float past the window.]]> http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#2 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800 DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News New Release: Slip Away http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#3 Slip Away: Soundtrack to the holodeck.]]> http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#3 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800 DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News New Release: Exploration http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#4 Exploration: Got a new MIDI controller in preparation for the RPM Challenge this February: an M-Audio Axiom 61. Hooked it up to Logic Express, and this jumped out.]]> http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#4 Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800 DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News RPM 2007: Grayscale http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#5 I started the month off well — my plan was to write a draft of about one song a day for the first two weeks, and then clean up each two-week old draft for the next two weeks. It went faster than I thought.

By the time I went to work on the first day of February, I’d finished my first draft. This would eventually become “Patience,” track 6. On the second, I wrote “Regret,” track 2. I took a break for the weekend, and wrote another draft on the fifth. Each draft that I completed was uploaded to RPM’s Sample Engine, so other groups in the challenge could take a listen and give me some feedback. An RPMer by the name of Mr. Glide noted that this third piece was “achingly wistful,” which sounded like a great title to me, so I used it.

At this point, I was thinking about a theme for the album. I had the album artwork; my own photos taken of Gasworks Park would do well for the cover and lining. I already had a title for one song (track 3, Achingly Wistful), and I was thinking a lot about mapping emotions to colors.

* WARNING: Technical thinking below. *

You see, colors have a hue, a saturation, and a brightness. (Google for HSV if you want to see where that comes from.) Hue is the shade of color (is it red or blue?), saturation is the amount of color (fire engine red or gray-red?), and brightness is where it stands on the line from black to white. I thought that hue could represent the type of emotion, saturation could represent the strength, and brightness could represent the good-bad axis of emotion. Thus, feeling “gray” would be completely neutral. No important hue, no saturation, middling brightness. The entire gray scale (from black to white) consists of weak emotions, apathetic in a way.

* OK: You’re safe now. *

That’s where the album title came from. With that in mind, I started naming tracks: Patience, Regret, Wistful. Day 6 brought “Experiment,” a strange guitar loop on top of piano. I couldn’t think of a word for the emotion it represented, but I was going for the mood I got when working on a new project. “Contentment” was written on the seventh, just after I got a new acoustic-electric guitar and couldn’t wait to try it out. “Rising Sun” was originally going to have vocals, but I couldn’t get my voice to sound the way I wanted it on my equipment. Just the same, the emotions behind it have remained the same for over sixty years, so it fits the general concept.

“One More Thing” was written on day 9, about the difficulty in leaving well-enough alone. “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” and all that. As a musician, it’s hard to take a piece that I love and stop adding lines to it, even though I know that I should. “Escape” was about the feelings I get when I daydream (thus the jungle sounds near the end), and was written on the tenth. “Electric Sheep,” written on the eleventh, was about the robotic state I get into at around three in the morning after staying up all night. The title is taken from a 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

By this time, I had nine pieces that I was generally proud of, and I had been going back and editing old ones as feedback came in. I spent the next day-and-a-half working on cleaning up my remaining problems with the first nine, and then got so excited to release that I pushed out a piece extremely quickly on the 13th (“The Wind-Up,” track 1). By the 14th, I was happy enough with them to release, so I did. (Got so excited that I forgot to get my wife a Valentine’s day gift, but she was wonderful enough to forgive me.)

Thus, ten pieces. Pushed them to my publisher so I could get hard copies, and waited (it seemed like forever) for a demo copy before sending them to CD Baby. CD Baby didn’t get the shipment until the 27th of February, and it took until March 7th before my site was up and ready. (Of course, it was all worth it. I’m now even on iTunes!)

I’ve already got plans for my next album, but I’d like some more feedback on this one before I plow ahead. What do you think? I’ve been compared to Philip Glass, Brian Eno, and Aphex Twin, but who do you think I sound like?

]]> http://hackerblinks.com/news.html#5 Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0800 DJ on the holodeck. - Hacker Blinks - News