older and newer

11.
this here tonight
within these four walls
is a fire burning sleepless for our entire lives
running marathons over land mines
chasing dreams our parents once had
but we sometimes soon forget
in the absence of family portraits
that the things we need to say
are the things we need to hear most
to be able to say
to each one of you
how much it means
to know that you don't have to carry the weight of the world
as long as we're together

12.
because somewhere
out there
tonight
sits a hungry child
draped in yesterday's news
of has beens
and what nots
of forgotten headlines
and tear drops

13.
for dorothy

how do we look back down the corridors of our paths
and know that we did everything right
that we stole our own hearts
and traveled around the world
leaving tattered ribbons
so we may know how we got here
how do we know that when the last grains of sand fall
we have nothing to regret
that regret is only a figment of our imagination
that could never possibly exist
because we know that we're full
off the friends we drank
and we could never finish half empty
how do we stare fear in the eyes
and make it taste its own medicine
to never realizing its full potential
to cower at the foot of possibilities

dorothy, you held the world in your hands
a raven perched on your shoulder
you carried her

14.
surrendering to constellations / the sun crashes into the waves / tides washing up warm footprints that fade too fast to save / i bang my head to the cadence of this exhausted march / cause its got the best of me this time beaten from the start / maybe questions are better left unanswered for a while / an elected excuse to play the fool / good enough for another mile / i've wrecked myself in this nervous habit and its not helping much / a case grass-stained and starving for just an honest touch / letters paint forgotten scenes and photographs read like a diary / hits too close to home and breaks the bones that cage memories / and i am choking on the dust that kicks up when nostalgia sets in / a broken heart with bandaid fixes that bleeds for just a friend / the black labrador's coat coloring the endless stellar sky / lacquered and polished interrupted only by planes passing by / gracious bodies speechless / pressing hands an innocent crime / victim to becoming another thread woven through the fabric of time / the felicity of that one night fuels the burning adoration / as skies the stale shade of gray dishearten summer expectations / packed up but far from giving up / no resignation at versailles / i'll swallow this package whole and harbor it in my stomach that's leather lined

bhurin

playlist:
the get up kids - the ep's: red letter day and woodson

thepenismightier part deuce

these are older, found them on my computer. and poetry is meant to be heard, so read them out loud.

6.
somewhere in all of us is a note
that our heart holds ransom
destined for vocal realization
trapped behind macho sighs

7.
only if we could crawl beneath haunted beds
lined with old chewing gum
paper stars
and jump rope dances
shake hands with velvet monsters
who are just as afraid as we are
of algebraic unknown uncertainties
we would see as lucid
as a dreamer's dream realized

8.
close your eyes
and listen
can you hear it
if you listen closely
you might hear it
there
the old playground
gravel rocks, giant swings, and metal slides
gravel rocks, giant swings, and metal slides
and there
between your toe and shoe
gravel rocks wait for your attention
to draw it away from war games you and your friends played
portraits of next generation politicians and complacent voters

9.
so let's greet death
with smiles and open arms
knowing that when the time comes
we did everything we could
to fill our lungs
under beautiful texas horizons
paint buckets of mixed emotions
swirled
picking out each line of poetry
with drum fills and steel strings to match
we'll hop on our bikes
and ride grass stained jeans
down half pipes
into bullet holes
of those who died to let us live
so we can finally feel comfortable in our own skin
then stack popsicle sticks
collect wasted time
and put them in mason jars
with leaves and broken twigs
so we'll never get homesick or hungry

10.
there was a time
where we spoke in the language of dreams
where our imagination screamed down barrels of shooting stars
and where we didn't know what the word fear meant
there was a time
where we slid off of turtle shells
launching ourselves onto canvases
exploding watercolors detailing vibrant worlds
unknown to bank accounts and war
and we would run down dark and mysterious pathways
faster with each footstep
towards the pulse of the unknown
and we were never afraid of what we might discover
because we knew
it was only ourselves
we would find

bhurin

playlist:
eva cassidy - time after time
the dillinger escape place - miss machine

thepenismightier

as requested by chang, here is the beginning of poetry/writing/stuff i've been sketching out and working on in my notebooks at home. pretty much all of it are excerpts from free-writes and notes. they are works in progress.

1.
enjoy the decadence
of exploding eardrums
and fattening wallets
bound tightly by copper wire
and shrink wrapped for last year's store shelf
of musical suicide
and enjoy the sensation while you still can
before your mind blankets by numbness
from sonic deliverance
of plastic mouthpieces
firing off rounds that would make a GI jealous
and enjoy the lyrical lexicon
founded by third grade spelling books
rhyming itself to itself
for a call and response
to questions better left unasked
that provides clues
to how our generation of music
has become
a decadence of exploding eardrums.

2.
sometimes i wish
that i could wrap my fingers around
the very breath that escapes me
and squeeze tears out of it
like rain clouds pouring
i'd fill a glass
and let you drink it
until it fills your chest
until you could understand

3.
created out of ashy remains
of what we once were
reminders of rice grain footprints
carbon dated bookmarks
for interment journals
etched on weeping walls
hatched under full moons of
pax americana
applie pies
and baseball railroad tracks
crossing over the wrong side of the tracks
kissing bullets whizzing by
faster than childhood memories
while riding cotton dolphins
across cellophane oceans
a mix of your favorite colors
sitting at the foot of destiny
ready to shower ourselves in oceans of
knives
and pitchforks
to save burning witches
from unholy crosses
chanting our name
we're a miracle born disaster
drinking from the lips of the pacific
careful not to get swallowed whole
immigrated suitcases
unpacked
and left floating

4.
at the brink of the horizon
we each stare ourselves into disillusionment
our insecurities magnificent
until we only see shadows
blanketing our entire world
but to take that leap
a chance on chance
and to throw everything we know about fate
into a barrel of fresh gasoline burning
we'll finally be able to sleep soundly
knowing
we scraped by on hopes and dreams
and that it was really enough


5.
may 11 is independence day
from chemical wastelands
wading chest high through forty hour work weeks
desperately trying
to keep my sanity from drowning
and asphyxiating on exploding dreams
each day since then
has delivered new meaning to it all
bank accounts and frozen lunches
have never been this important to me
may 11 is the beginning of a new life
away from texas heat
and enormous trucks
it marks the day of
blue vaseline makeup
and eight bar patterns
you see
the last three years at a place
you never wanted to be
became a cornerstone
the starting line
the wire to ignite the dynamite
that will send me sending love letters
to myself
so that i can enjoy each day
without witnessing
creative paralysis that is a job
routine is crucial in a job
but spontaneity is vital to life
medical science and mathematical calculations
love the definite
the for sure
the one answer
but life
art
and music
breathe and feed on our ability
to be anything but that


that is all for now. word.

bhurin

playlist:
eva cassidy - time and time
from monument to masses - the impossible leap in one hundred simple steps

go go go.

so its been a while since i've last logged on and still 9 songs away from my goal. and what's great is that i think i'm the only one that reads this. muahaha.

i've been playing more lately. it seems everything i play sounds like the last thing i listened to. i'm a biological sonic copy machine that jams a lot.

bhurin

playlist:
the smiths - the best of the smiths, vol. 1 and vol. 2
pelican - city of echoes

loopity loop

so i'm in the market for another loop/delay pedal. and i'm thinking of snagging another line 6 dl4 for the job. been playing some lately, but the music is all over the place. i guess that goes with the different kinds of music flying through my ipod.

bhurin

playlist:
ipod on shuffle.

10 songs and go!

so its been a while since i've posted on here. after the project was over, i didn't really do anything else with the music. so i says to myself, "why not?" after a long discussion with myself, i'm planning on writing 9 more songs in addition to the one i already have and try to record a proper "album."

i've never really honestly tried my best at music. my last project with the myeverest dudes didn't really work out and it left a very sour taste in my mouth. so i'm going to try to go at it by myself. the inspiration is from jimmy lavalle of the album leaf. i remember watching a video documentary of his latest album and finally realized that he was the one behind all the songs. after that, i figured i'd give it a shot at musical poetry.

i'm going to try to set an achievable end goal for myself before doing a proper recording. the approach will be similar to the last song i wrote.

speaking of last song, you can listen to it here: http://www.myspace.com/organicsonicstry.

and here's the poem i wrote to help inspire the song:

somewhere
between the crash and where you rest
there is a place
where corn husk wrapped memories
served on break room table tops
wait
for the next time we meet

cheers.

bhurin

playlist:

sigur ros - ()
the album leaf - into the blue again
alkaline trio - all their songs on shuffle on my ipod

the chain of events

i wanted to include a rough chain of how the sound from my guitar travels to the speakers. here goes, starting with my guitar set up:

Black 1990 Les Paul Standard -> ProCo Turbo Rat Distortion -> MXR Compressor -> Boss Parametric Equalizer -> Line 6 Flextone III -> *Effects Loop In* -> Line 6 FM4 -> Line 6 DL4 -> *Effects Loop Out* -> SM57 Instrumental Microphone -> M-Audio Fast Track -> Laptop -> Garageband -> Your Speakers

the drums were programmed in reason and enters where garageband appears. the bass guitar runs the same way without the effects loop switched on.

bhurin

playlist:
brand new - the devil and god are raging inside
minus the bear - menos el oso

eh

so this morning i took a listen to what i finished yesterday. it sounds ok, i think there're some parts that i could elaborate more on. the drums are starting to bug me, so i'm going to rerecord the drums this weekend.

i forgot to mention in yesterday's post that for the leads in the first half of the song, i couldn't think of anything. so i tried to sit back and just listen to the music and let my mind think of something to go there. after a few minutes, i heard a few things and so i just went ahead and tried to recreate it with my guitar. the only thing that stuck was the part right before the break. not the lead, but the high guitar part.

bhurin

playlist:
the walkmen - a hundred miles off

still workin

so yesterday and today i've been working on the song for the project. originally i had proposed 3 songs to span a story. as of right now, i've got one. hopefully i'll have a few more before i have to turn in the project.

the current song that i'm working on is based on the poem i had written. i'm going to back and edit the poem a little bit to help fit the song better.

as for the song, i'm making the finishing touches before i share with the class tomorrow. i didn't really realize how much i rely on drums to help my writing. i guess its easier for me to play with rhythms when i actually have a rhythm section besides a machine. i'm also going to try to program some drum fills to help lift the song.

as for the meaning making part of the project, its been challenging to grasp. i'd like to still work on the song after i turn in the project. it'd probably help too to set it aside for a week or two and come back with fresh ears.

i hope i've been able to capture a little bit of the instrumental sound that i'm looking for. i know its a process to get there, but i do hope this is one step closer. after listening to a lot of instrumental rock lately, i feel that it misses the explosion that punkrock and hardcore can afford. hopefully i've incorporated that into the music.

til tomorrow.

bhurin

playlist:
thursday - war all the time
alexisonfire - crisis
bark psychosis - hex

new direction

the past few days i've been having a hard time trying to write music that has meaning. the project is about trying to give meaning to instrumental music. my interpretation of it is for me to be able to share a story through the music.

so yesterday while i was at work, i began thinking of what i could write about. i had never done this before. on friday night i was reminded of a good friend that is no longer here. i plan on building the songs around her story. the idea feels a lot better than what i had planned to do before, so hopefully it comes more naturally.

i also was thinking about the process of meaning making for instrumental song writing. i've started working on a poem to help be the basis of the songs. for a listener, it'll help give a better understanding of where the songs come from and are going. sort of like how coltrane included a poem in the love supreme. i was just thinking earlier how maybe building characters could help in writing instrumental music. it reminds me a little of how we approach writing theatre pieces.

during yesterday's session, i worked on more drum fills and sequences. its becoming increasingly difficult to get the sound i really want. even with some filters and reverb, the drums still sound dry. hopefully before i turn it in, i can get my friend's drum set to play on.

i revisited some bands that i haven't listened to in a while and it reminded me how the music doesn't have to be overly complicated to have feel and meaning. maybe sometimes, simple music can be more moving and powerful than complicated patterns.

more to come tonight.

bhurin

playlist:
maserati - the language of cities
thursday - a city by the light divided
don caballero - world class listening problem

its jammin time

so today i should be jamming with one of my drummers mike. i wanted to toss the ideas with him to see what he thinks and see where i can take it. so hopefully we'll be grabbing a room down at music labs.

anyways, more to update later.

bhurin

playlist:
radiohead - kid a
radiohead - the bends
saekou sundiata - longstoryshort
bad astronuat - houston: we have a drinking problem
bad astronaut - acrophobe

old stuff to compare

i was able to dig up some old stuff that i did with my previous band as sort of marker of where i was before i started this project. the music was written by myself and arrangement was done together by the band at the time over the course of this past year. the recordings were done this past august. check them out here: http://www.myspace.com/myeverest

hopefully i will be able to notice some growth or maybe some patterns that i fall into when writing. one thing that i did notice is my amp tone. at the time, i liked it. but now it sounds a bit too grainy and electronic. the new turbo rat should fix that up.

its raining very loud.

bhurin

playlist:
explosions in the sky - friday night lights
explosions in the sky - the earth is not a cold dead place
myeverest - old demos
thrice - vheissu

ah, more thinking

i had a conversation at work with one of my good friends about one of our favorite artist's solo side project. although it is a solo project, his bandmates played the backing instruments. we started talking about how this could have come up. maybe the singer wrote all the parts and just needed people more proficient at the other instruments to play them for the record, which we believe is the case. my friend asked me if i could recognize the singer just based on his lyrics. the lyrics are different than what he would've wrote for his main band. i told him that i could probably sit down and figure out it was him just by the language and style he uses. then i told him the same goes for the guitarist. on the solo album, i could tell that the guitarist from the band was playing the majority of the lead. it was the style, the way the notes were slurred, the preciseness, or the different accents on certain notes that led me to believe it was that guitarist.

so i was thinking back to the wong article about the asian american performance and more specifically jazz performance. in the article, wong mentions that come asian american jazz artists can pick out whether or not a player is asian american or not just by the playing style. maybe this is the same case for the guitarist mentioned above who happens to be japanese american. his style was precise, exact, and present. there was a little jazzy feel to it, almost souful. what would happen if we were to have jimi hendrix or even slash, both black guitarists, play the same melody on the guitar. we would definitely be able to distinguish the player, but would we be able to distinguish the race?

rock music hasn't been too much in the itinerary for asian american studies. but if rock music was also a cultural product of the black community, would this be enough to consider it along the same lines of jazz and hip hop?

just a few thoughts.

bhurin

playlist:
circa survive - juturna
darkest hour - undoing ruin
elbow - leaders of the free world

and just a little bit more

as i was driving back to work after writing the last post, it made me think some more. maybe the question that i've been asking is begging for greater application. maybe it isn't so much the fact that popular media is distorting music. maybe that's what popular media functions as. its a different lense. and for myself to judge popular media in such a way is also a lense. but the true meaning behind this all is the actual music and our own interpretation of it. and this is what the project is about.

in bruce lee's tao of jeet kune do, bruce explains that the action is more than just the actor. the action being the event that has taken place, or in our case a song, melody, or rhythm. the actor being those that contribute to the action, which in our case is the musician. bruce explains it in terms of combat, but it is easily translatable to music or any kind of art form. what we see is the emphasis on the actor and not the action. maybe we live in an era in which ownership, fear, and reward are stressed over the actual product.

take my workplace for example. our little community is based around the idea of fear. everyone is more interested in creating and placing blame on individuals whenever a problem occurs. all focus and energy is spent on this that when it comes to the actual problem, we find that it rarely gets done in a timely matter.

a month ago i saw a special on pbs about the mystery behind andy warhol. andy played a very bland character every time he was interviewed. he never once showed any sort of character. in fact, many of the interviewers told the special that he was boring to interview, that he never showed emotion. but maybe andy is thinking of the exact same thing as we're talking about here. the importance of the art should take precedence over the acclaim of the artist. we can find meaning and understanding in the artist through their work and not necessarily through their escapades through the bars and red carpets.

and its hard to judge, because we all want to get to know our favorite musician or artist, but maybe the first place we need to look is in the actual art. who they are will eventually enter into the work.

bhurin

playlist:
dustin kensrue - please come home
dredg - leitmotif

just a little bit

i was watching an interview of brian eno and his reasons behind writing instrumental music. when we think of instrumental music, we assume that there won't be any vocals done on the songs. for the most part, its true. however, brian eno suggests that we can use voice as an instrument and still make the song instrumental. the voice as an instrument should not distract from the rest of the elements in the song. when we think of pop songs, the vocals take center stage while everything around it plays a part to make it shine. the vocals also contribute more than just a melody, it contributes a character and attitude of the artist performing the voice. popular media focuses and surrounds the artists and this becomes problematic. there is greater emphasis placed upon the artist than the actual product. we can take any pop artist as an example of this case. the popular media is more worried about who is with who, how much one weighs, and how much bling is around their neck that we lose focus on what really matters or at least what matters to me: the artistic product.

eno explains that if we take the persona away from the song, we can really see the essence of the song. for a while, eno thought that to do this, he had to eliminate the vocals from the song entirely. but he missed the soul of the voice and wanted to reintroduce it into his work. so he tracked some vocals, added effects, and mixed it in so that it blends in with the rest of the instruments.

i'm not sure if this is the solution to the problem, but it is one way to get there. listening to instrumental music for the past few weeks, i do miss the soul of the voice in songs. there is a deeper connection and instant gratification with songs with voice in it. maybe there's a way to still use vocals without it being too distracting. but maybe there isn't. or maybe the problem isn't in the songwriting but in popular media and its power to influence. maybe it could be the array of radio stations that play the same songs every two hours. or maybe video killed the radio star. or maybe radio is a sound salvation. maybe we just need to break out of the daily routine of listening to what we're told and find alternative ways to express ourselves as music listeners.

just a few thoughts to start the day. more writing to come later tonight.

bhurin

playlist:
dustin kensrue - please come home
pinback - summer in abaddon
modest mouse - the lonesome crowded west

glitchy

i worked on some drum programming on reason yesterday. i wanted to try to get a simple pattern so that i can play keyboards over it. it sounds ok right now, but i think i need to tweak the drum sounds a bit. they sound too electronic/perfect for my ears, maybe i'll edit the deterioration on it or smack a filter on top. i'll work on it more.

then i started working on a glitch drum fill. kind of like the drum sounds in electronic music. this got tricky since i had to scale down to the 1/64 count. so all the quarter notes for my snare were really spread out. i'm going to try to work more on this one today. i'd like to use this sort of drum fill as a break in a song or an intro to give it a little more dynamic.

i'm going to try to lay down some keyboard ideas on these drum tracks. good thing reason has a huge soundbank of keyboards. yay rhodes piano.

bhurin

playlist:
the album leaf - into the blue again

back to the drawing board

its been a while since i've done any work on my music. i've been busy with an out of town show, but everything is back to normal now. i just wanted to check in and lay out the next few days. i'm going to be mostly working in reason with some drum beats and piano fills. i'm down in houston visiting my folks, so i don't have my guitar handy, which may be a good thing. it'll make me write music differently than i normally do. i think for some of the tracks these next few days, i really want to try picturing/hearing the melody in my head and making it work on the keyboard. we'll see how that goes.

i did get a chance to listen to some of my older tracks that i first recorded during the beginning of the project. i can picture more things happening or really letting parts play out. i remember discussing a creative process with a friend and how letting ideas soak in for a few days or even weeks allows you to see it differently and really dig into it. guess it sort of worked!

bhurin

playlist:
thrice - vheissu
strike anywhere - change is a sound
denizen kane - tree city legends volume 2
the doors - the very best of the doors

simple and jazzy

didn't get a chance to play today. but i did get to listen to some music and chat with one of my friends about song writing. he mentioned that there should be space in a song where feeling is emphasized over straight up riffing. i'm used to doing something on the guitar, like riffing nonstop, to fill the space. but maybe trying simple chords over a sweeter and simpler lead would do just the trick. throw in a few filters and atmospheric sounds and there you have it.

probably won't get to play that much the next few days, but i'll definitely be listening to music to hopefully get new ideas and the such. for now, just keeping track of today's rotation.

bhurin

playlist:
coldplay - x&y
sufjan stevens - seven swans
explosions in the sky - how strange, innocence
jeff buckley - grace
no knife - fire in the city of automatons!
killswitch engage - as daylight dies
isis - in the absense of truth

repairs and reason

headstock repair, success! at least i think so. i still need to set up the strings and see if the glue is going to hold the break. otherwise, taylor guitars here i come! (granted i win the lottery)

some more writing and improvising were done today. i threw down a couple of guitar tracks and then went into reason to try to pull together a decent drum track. didn't turn out too bad. i'll have to mess around with reason more to get the hang of it. the sounds i was getting today were video game-ish and there was a hint of isis near the end of the track. i was also able to hook up the midi keyboard and play with the synth sounds garageband has preinstalled. its weird how certain kinds of influences come out despite what you've been listening to all day. i think tomorrow i'm going to try to do some off time signature riffing. math rock anyone? hopefully that will help break up the 4/4 monotony that i've been falling into.

a lot of my tones sound the same and i need to start experimenting with dynamics and timbre more. found out that garageband has a few filters on it and reason is full of them, so that will help out. also on reason are a bunch of drum samples. i was reading that thrice's last album, there was drum sequencing done. but they sampled their drummer playing and did some effects editting and programming from those samples. maybe i can try that out. oh, and it'd be cool too to try dave grohl's method of tracking drums. i'll have to read up more on that.

i took some pictures today of my guitar, amp, and pedalboard. i'll post those on flickr sometime this week. until then, cheers.

bhurin

playlist:
cold war kids - robbers and cowards
doves - some cities
miles davis - kind of blue
led zeppelin - led zeppelin ii
the mercury program - a data learn the language

ideas

yesterday's session went pretty well. rearranged my room over the weekend and its helped out a lot, made the cables to and from my amp less visibly cluttered. anyways, the ideas were sounding mars volta-ish. i think it had a lot to do with the new distortion pedal coupled with some tremolo and delay. got to use the whammy doing some ambient sounds and bending them in the background. also got to try to jam on the drums to the recorded tracks. i need more practice on the drums. the headstock on my acoustic snapped, so i'm going to spend some time today repairing the guitar. cheers.

bhurin

playlist:
foo fighters - skin and bones
hot water music - caution
elvis costello - the very best of elvis costello