It’s late at night.. super late actually.. sun’s starting to come up.. I should be in bed sleeping.. but it’s just one of those late night howling kind of moments.. a need to howl from this blog.. or via this blog.. out into that there internet.. and blah blah blah.

Seems like there’s a million things I want to say, and as time passes.. they slip through my fingers.. those sands of time I’ll tell you!

So I just wanted to write something random.. in the hopes that I might touch upon some of this stuff.

I’ll tell you a big thing I want to say.. Thank you.. you as in the universe.. you as in..  err… God, I do need to explain myself here, ha? And if I do that, I’ll never finish this damn post.. never get to much of anything I might like to touch on.

Well.. what the hell, who cares, it’ll be what it’ll be!

I feel a real need to thank social media….

I believe it was last night.. well, lets back up a little..  Yesterday I made my way to a book store.. aww, the temptations for Bad Matt! But Bad Matt was good, and didn’t give into any of said temptations.. but none the less.. I spent some time in that there magazine section, and in electronic musician monthly there was an article on vocal synthesis… which is to say using a computers to generate a vocal track. This particular article focused on how to do it for free.. It was rather avant guard in its aims… but it got me to thinking.. and reunited me with some old ideas..

I write poetry, or song lyrics or.. not sure how to describe them really. I haven’t written too many lately, but I’ve been keeping note books since highs school…. so I’ve amassed quite a bit of stuff… and one figures, just statistically speaking, there must be something in there, somewhere, of value.

I’m a crappy judge of myself and my work. I really am! I often need to take a good deal of time away from my stuff in order to come back to it, without emotional ties to it, in order to see what’s really there.

So I was having this conversation with someone online.. while trying to figure out what kind of sound synthesizers where out there.. and how much they are running these days.. and um.. well the person I was talking to is a fan, I guess you could say.. a fan of my music, a fan of this blog, a fan of me..

It’s so nice to have such people in our lives.. particularly when you’re struggling to believe.. well this wasn’t really a night of struggle.. but as I was showing said person some of what I was finding.. the subject came to these lyrics / poems / whatever.. that I had.. and could this person see.

Well it just so happens that I was on my pc lap top at the time.. which happens to have folder full of stuff.. dating back to when I got the lap top.. which I’m guessing was sometime in 2004.. simply because that was the date of my Indra’s Net Project… which was done on said laptop.

Matt Searles – Archaic Rejuvination for the Post Modern Male and Female

And um… So the deal is.. I tend to not like showing this stuff… mainly cause I figure it sucks, you know? Like who am I kidding? I’d be embarrassed to show that trash… but ok, what the hell, why not?

Well.. my fan friend was blown away buy it and I was like “you really like that stuff?” Before you know it.. I had sent something like 20 or more of them through the IM.. and I think we were both a little astonished.. this person had, after all, put me in the right mood to see the virtue of it..

Oh my God! This stuff was insane! I almost want to describe it as the words of “a bad boy saint.” It’s stuff that just screws with your head.. It has an intense kind of darkness to it, that almost kinda scares you.. and..

Oh my God, you know how I’m given to talking about Jesus and God and all that sorta thing in this blog? I always feel like.. when you bring up those kinds of subjects.. people kinda want to run away..  run from the Jesus freak.. like talking about religion is just not a safe topic.. its more dangerous then politics.. Well what was crazy about the treatment of the subject was.. it was mystical.. and it was like.. well it was twisted.. just in how it played with it. It was as if it was this crazy heretical sorta thing.. kinda like South Park playing with Jesus and all that stuff.. accept this was like.. way more dangerous. It was more dangerous because it seemed to be speaking truths.. speaking truths that most folks wouldn’t have the balls to say..  I mean it was just crazy.

It had this kind of earthy feel to it.. made me think of Muddy Waters.. but like crazy intellectual.. which is part of how it would mess with your head.. It’s as if there’s the prejudices of our modern time and of authority.. prejudices that produce the mental cages we are all living in.. and it’s tearing the hell out of them…  to the point where it all most hurts.. 

Ok, how about another track from yours truly.. again from Indra’s Net:

Matt Searles – A Short Trip To Another Day

The words called back to me the psychology I had at the time.. I was reminded of the darkness of those days.. of the struggle.. of the darkness. The struggle to just hold on to hope. The pain…  The blood that was just dripping from me.. psychologically.. from the wounds of life.. all the ways life can be cruel.. and how it felt like that then.. and that deep struggle of not knowing if I’d ever make it in life to where I needed to make it. Feeling like… life could get worse then I could really handle.. and that it might not be too long till that reality would be confronting me..

This is the subtext… beneath how I was driven to make this work.. driving to try and make something of me.. get to where ever I needed to get to.

Funny thing is I haven’t gotten there yet! Funny thing is I’m still struggling…  And though, in my current struggle.. though I do struggle with faith, in what I’m doing or trying to do, on a daily basis… I must say there are moments of overflowing hope. That over flowing hope comes through the vehicle of social media.

I’ve had this feeling in my head for sometime.. that in the end it will be social media that saves me. To really explain how this works.. well it would take more then I have to give tonight….

A couple things though.. You meet so many great people. I can’t really tell you how thankful I am. I don’t know how to tell you how moved I’ve been…  I mean like when my mom died and people reached out to me via blog comments, twitter, emails.. At a moment I had anticipated as being the loneliest moment of my life..  I felt the least alone of any moment in my life.

So one of the things that’s giving me this need to Howl.. is just the want to give thanks.. which I am sometimes so bad at.. If you’re reading this.. and we’ve had some sorta social media type.. I don’t know.. we’ve met, had a conversation.. or maybe not even that much… you’re probably someone I feel somehow thankful about…  So.. if I don’t get around to.. doing something that would properly express my gratitude.. I just want to tell you thanks here.

It is the little things that count, isn’t it?

How about another track:

Matt Searles – Offering A Hand To The Ghost

That’s actually one of the few Indra’s Net tracks that was done on my Mac.. With like Reaktor and Cubase SX.. maybe SX2? Maybe 3? I don’t remember.

So back to the story of vocal synthesis and these lyrics:

Well a few years ago there were a bunch of vocal synths that hit the market, and so immediately I was interested. I think people need lyrics to kinda.. “get it.” Or what I mean is.. instrumental music isn’t the most sorta commercially viable thing out there. So….

Well I can’t sing…. I don’t really have a vocalist I can easily call on any old time.. have yet to really invest in the proper microphones.. or learned the proper recording engineer stuff.. and not only that.. even if all that was a go.. It wouldn’t easily fit into my process. So, how to I get there from here?

As it turns out there’s a number of possible directions:

1.  Vocal Synthesis
2. “Vocal Tuning software:” There’s lots of software out there that can make an out of tune vocal in tune.. if you just get the phrasing right… 
3. Integration of found-ish elements.

Category 3 is where I would fit this track for Zar Matt A Thsutra’s Deep Space Adventures:  

Matt Searles – Hanser Show HerStory With Mark

Here we have a field recording type thing, of Mark talking on a train with his then girl friend.. It’s rather crazy experimental.. but I still sorta like it.

Any who, so I’m over tired.. and should prolly post here..

Oh wait.. can post without posting this here clip!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 10:18 am and is filed under Indra's Net, Mom and Stuff, Music Production, Zar Matt A Thustra's Deep Space Adventures, musical composition, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.