Faster, Stronger, Higher

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I’ve been making a point to buckle down and force myself to learn/practice all the stuff that most musicians take for granted. I begged for lessons as a kid–more than once, and I was refused every time, so I taught myself how to play and compose and arrange when I was 18. But the problem is, I did it the unconventional way on my own (even though I read books on music theory), and the side-effect is that I’m not very good at sight-reading or playing from sheet music–something I need to address because I think I’m missing out on a big part of being a musician–namely the classical training. Sure, being self-taught gave me a unique perspective and a distinct individual voice, but now I want the classical training too, and I’m going to get it, once again, by teaching myself. I have instructional books, CD’s, and DVD’s on ear training, music theory, counterpoint, harmony, orchestration, training for piano, guitar, durms, bass, harmonica, voice…etc. At age 36, it’s a little depressing to be catching up on things other musicians already learned in school or with private instructors, but I’m confident I’ll only become a stronger composer/musician/songwriter the more I study, learn, and practice.

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Speaking of becoming better, I was catching up on the latest in the world of Jpop, and I saw that Goto Maki has left UpFront Agency / Hello! Project and signed with Rhythm Zone / Avex Trax. Apparently she wanted to shed the previous idol image and become a worthy musical artist in her own right. She even went to L.A. for additional training, and has started writing the lyrics to some of her own songs, and I predict she’ll start composing some of her own songs in the near future as well. Now at her new label, she’s participating in all the production meetings and actually having a say in her own music, image, and ultimately her own career. It always makes me smile when a record company controlled pop princess breaks away from that corporate control and asserts her own identity and takes control of her own career. Too many do not–they have neither the desire, the ability, nor the courage–they just do what the record company tells the to do. They wear what they’re told, sing what they’re told, dance how they’re told, have no say in how they are presented to the public, and are ultimately puppets on a string. Maybe for some people that’s enough for them–they’ve gotten rich and famous, and they’ve never wanted more than that. But for those who have their own ideas and want to take control of their own destiny, instead of being a money making machine for big record companies, the only way they could be happy is to express themselves in their own ways, on their own terms. This is the difference between someone who one day becomes a real musical artist and someone who snaps and go shave off all her hair.

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I’ve just done another round of upgrades to my computers, adding six additional 1.5TB hard drives to my setup (for additional sample streaming, storage, backups…etc), and it’s pretty amazing to remember that it wasn’t all that long ago when I was storing data on floppy disks and had boxes and boxes of them, then to CD ROM, DVD ROM (filling up giant binders), and then hard drives only (with backups, of course). As of now, my entire setup has about fifteen terabytes of active hard drives and 4 terabytes for backing up the most important files. I also have about one terabyte’s worth of older drives (five 200GB drives that’s been replaced with higher capacity drives) that I don’t quite know what to do with. I used to use these spare drives for backups, but now that I backup onto two 2TB external drives, I don’t really have any use for those five 200GB drives. I thought about putting them together in a RAID or a multi-drive enclosure, but the extra cost to do that just isn’t worth putting that one terabyte to use.

While adding the new hard drives, I ran out of room in my drive bay, and I had to put them in the 5.25 bay. But since there’s no case fan there, I had to add 5.25 bay fans as well. The additional fans make a lot of noise, but I have my isolation panels for the computers so it’s actually not bad at all.

I’ll be splitting the streaming orchestral libraries by the main four sections onto four separate hard drives, and I’ll stagger the splitting of other orchestral libraries so that strings from different libraries won’t ever be on the same drive, and neither would the brass, woodwinds, percussion…etc. I’ll do the same for the various libraries of guitars, basses, pianos, voices, synths…etc. None of this is going to free up more CPU cycles or use less RAM–all it really does is not work the hard drive so relentlessly when streaming many different instruments at once, and the additional drives also allow me to install more large libraries that I otherwise would’ve run out of room for by now. With about 5.2 terabytes of sample storage, I can pretty much install whatever I want and not have to worry about it for a long time.

I also picked up two more sticks of 2GB RAM (maxing out my motherboard’s limit of 8GB RAM), since I plan on installing a 64-bit OS on the desktop DAW soon. I’m still on the fence about which OS to install since Windows 7 is getting such rave reviews from fellow musicians, but it’s not officially released yet and driver support may not be the best for a while. I’d hate to install Vista 64-bit now just to have to reinstall everything again when Windows 7 is out and the drivers become available. Supposedly if a driver works in Vista it’ll work in Windows 7 since the driver architecture is the same. We’ll see about that. Either way, I definitely need to get in on the 64-bit action. I already have Vista 64-bit on my laptop, but it’s only got 4GB of RAM so not much point there.

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I got my Zendrum back from repairs, and wouldn’t you know it–a day after I got it back, I accidentally plugged it into one of the 220 current sockets in the studio (our house has two sets for every wall outlet–one for 220 and one for 110) and I blew out the DC adapter. This is a problem in our household since we have appliances from Asia and the U.S., and plugging in the wrong socket is something that happens every once a while. I can think of five or six appliances we’ve destroyed that way. There’s not much we can do about it except to be more vigilant (in other words, stop being such careless dorks). I’ve ordered a new power adapter, and this time I made sure to get the international switch version. They did offer to send me the international power switch version when I first ordered my Zendrum, but for some reason I thought they were asking me to pick between 110 or 220 volts, and I figured since our house in China has both sockets available, but when we’re in the States I don’t want to be lugging around a giant voltage converter box, so I opted for the 110. Now I realize the international version is one that takes both 110 and 220. *palm against forehead*

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The older I get the more I hate being angry or negative, but whenever I hear about more of of China’s toxic food products, it just pushes me over the edge. The latest is that food vendors selling bubble milk tea will replace the bubbles (usually made with tapioca) with soft plastic so that it’s more chewy. Yeah, you read that right–PLASTIC. Absolutely fucking unbelievable. How the hell does a society sink so low to have such low moral standards? China practices the most disgustingly perverted version of capitalism I’ve ever witnessed in my life, and it’s a joke for it to keep on identifying itself as a communist country.

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Quickie film reviews:

Decalogue II – I’m a huge fan of Krzysztof KieÅ›lowski‘s Three Colors: Red (if forced at gunpoint to pick my number one favorite film of all time, Red would probably be it), and I’ve heard about his Decalogue films for a while and finally got a hold of them. I’ve had them for a few years now, but I keep holding off on watching all of them, since the Decalogue films are very dense in atmosphere and when my life is already so hectic, I often prefer lighter films. I’m going to work my way through all ten films eventually (originally made for television). The first one I liked, and I wasn’t quite sure if I got the ending of the second one. Did the doctor lie to both the wife and the husband to save a life and a marriage? That’s how I read the ending, and if that’s what the director intended, then it was a fitting ending to a moral dilemma.

Doubt – I quite enjoyed this film, and I especially liked how each of the main characters held on to their convictions and in the end it’s so hard to reach a verdict of who’s right and who’s wrong. And Amy Adams… *sigh* When did she leave heaven and where did she hide her halo and wings?

Vexille – I liked the two Appleseed CG animated feature films, so I gave this a try since it’s mostly the same crew (minus the director, Aramaki Shinji). I was quite disappointed. There were many things wrong with it, but the most glaring were the implausible premise, the one-dimensional characters, the bland lighting in most scenes, and inappropriate music used in some scenes. Even the title of the film is pointless–the main character Vexville carried no weight in the film–she’s just a bystander and did not exhibit any special qualities that warrants titling the film after her. The only things worth watching for were a couple of the action sequences, but even those weren’t as good as the ones in the Appleseed films.

Miss Potter – I enjoyed the film for it’s innocent charm, although in general I feel that biopics are typically not very satisfying, for the simple fact that fiction can be constructed for optimal pacing and dramatic twists, while with biopics you are limited by real life events that may or may not make compelling dramatic pacing. Obviously most biopics are not 100% faithful due to that limitation–the writer would swap events around, add a few things here and there, or leave out entire sections of a person’s life (and they did that in Miss Potter). This is the second time that Renée Zellweger has been chosen over English actresses for an English role, I think she pulled it off just like she did in Bridget Jones’s Diary.

I wonder though, why is it that most non-American actors can pull off really amazingly authentic American accents, while American actors have such a hard time with non-American accents? Is it because the rest of the world is exposed to so much American media that they have a better ear for it, while Americans are more self-centered when it comes to media and thus aren’t as familiar with foreign accents? Other than Renée Zellweger, I could only think of a few other cases where American actors really pulled off authentic English accents (Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma and James Cromwell in The Queen comes to mind).

Shoot ’em Up – While I understand exactly what the film was trying to do–that mixture of camp and seriousness, I was underwhelmed. I’m surprised that A-list actors would actually sign up for that kind of disposable and crass entertainment. There are plenty of other commercial films with over-the-top action and tongue-in-cheek storytelling that are better written and directed.

Silk – Beautiful cinematography, but the pacing was way too slow and the pay off in the end came too late and too little. Ultimately there just wasn’t enough satisfaction gained from what felt like an aimless story that had one worthy idea that was stretched far too thin.

Pieces of April – A quirky comedy/drama of the indie flavor, and overall I enjoyed it. I thought katie Holmes was miscast as the lead character though, because she’s way too soft and nice and is totally unconvincing as someone whose family has only horrible memories of. They should’ve gone with an actress who’s really edgy but also has a vulnerable side.

The Horse Whisperer – I’ve pretty much liked all of the films Robert Redford has been involved in, and I liked this one. His films always have this sensitive intelligence and maturity, and I think it says a lot about him as a person and as a storyteller. (Little known fact–I’m named after Robert Redford because my mother’s a big fan.) I didn’t know Scarlett Johanson was in the film, and I’ve mentioned before that I really don’t care for her in general except for in Lost In Translation. Johanson was only about fourteen when she acted in The Horse Whisperer, and she was far more endearing and genuine at that age than most of the roles she’s played as an adult. In fact, you can almost trace the beginning of her lackluster performances right up to the point when she became a media darling (probably right after The Girl with the Pearl Earring). I think the problem is that people started casting her in roles that did not suit her just because she was famous.

No Such Thing – A horrible film–one of the worst I’ve ever seen, and the score was unbelievably bad (the writer/director did the music himself). We’re talking about what sounds like meandering improv with General MIDI soundset from a consumer keyboard here–just really unbelievably bad. Why couldn’t he have hired a no-name composer that didn’t charge a lot? Even if there was no budget, he could’ve hired some student composer and the result would’ve been ten times better. This guy Hal Hartley apparently fancies himself as a composer as well as a writer/director because he does the music for all his films, and he really needs to stop and just hire someone that actually knows how to score a film (better yet, he needs to stop making films. I haven’t seen his other films but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re just as bad).

How the hell does Sarah Polley and Helen Mirren end up in such a horrible film? Did they lose bets? Couldn’t they tell it was trash from just reading the screenplay? The film is a pretentious, ridiculous, pointless farce, written and directed by the kind of pseudo intellectual, humorless, talentless hack who for some reason was able to get funding for his abomination. I rarely get this scathing, but to think trash like this gets funding and far more talented people are probably busting their asses waiting tables and flipping burgers while trying to scrape together funding to make their first feature–one that might never get made, just pushes me over the edge. This guy needs to become a producer instead and get funding for far more talented writer/directors.