2005

Sun, Oct 30

<01:20 EEST> Life is getting nice and busy with my second JYT production well underway. Once again, I'll be responsible for music and sound effects of the play. This time everything is bigger by an order of magnitude, and music plays a more central role. Fortunately I'm better equipped this time, with the synth among other things — what a way to learn it by producing something real :)

Among the drawbacks of intense musicianship is an increased sensitivity to music. I find very little need to listen to any other music besides what I'm working on. The occasions when someone forces music onto me, for example my bloody neighbour at 4 am, are more annoying than ever. On the other hand, I get urges to listen to something beautiful like Apocalyptica's version of Nothing Else Matters, and the increased sensitivity pays off.

Fri, Oct 14

<21:11 EEST> It's Fall! That mascinating time of the year when Autumn leaves and civil rights go down at 9.80665 m/s². I'm referring to the new copyrestriction law that was apparently signed today by President Halonen, in advance of the planned schedule so that our pledge for her to veto the law could not be presented on time. The law was passed by the parliament last week.

Among other moronities, the law makes organized discussion of decryption illegal, which is interesting for things like mathematics as well. Personally, I don't feel too much affected by the law, since I haven't supported DRM artists before, and I won't support them in the future. But eroding civil rights is a slippery slope in general.

A related entity in this whole #! is Teosto, a copyright organization that, among other moronities, charges a levy on blank media such as CDRs. It's wonderful for an amateur musician, since I can support Teosto and its members by distributing my own music! Yay! There was, by the way, a great comment by Samuli Torssonen as he appeared on telly last Sunday. He said that Star Wreck 6 could never have been so widely distributed if their musician had been a Teosto member, since it charges a fee for each distributed copy.

Thus it's unfortunate that many great artists are its members. I bought Aavikko's new CD last Friday as they threw a gig in Lutakko, and I got a little worried that the disc also carries the Teosto logo. I'm seriously considering a boycott on anything related to it and similar organizations like Gramex.

I was going to write something nice about Aavikko, their wonderful new CD, and my current musical endeavours, but I'm too pissed off about the situation. I think I'll watch a movie I downloaded off the net, which BTW continues to be legal AFAIK.

Sun, Oct 2

<23:12 EEST> Yesterday was quite productive and fun in many ways. I bought my first synth, a Korg Triton Le 61 8) I'd been planning this for a long time, and had narrowed my options to just a couple of keyboards. This decision came up as they had one of these Tritons in the local shop Musikantti. There's also a new play coming up later this fall, and I'm signed up as the music guy once again.

I haven't actually played all that much with the synth, since there was a student theatre party last night. It was to welcome newcomers and I made a number of new acquaintances, whom I'm hoping to see again in action. Later in the night we went to a karaoke bar, and it was great fun with about 20 of us there guaranteeing an active audience. I did my share with the song Pop-musiikkia :)

I've just got into the sequencer functions of the Korg, and it's surprisingly easy to get into. It does have its limitations, but I imagine it should be perfectly usable for my current purposes, so I wouldn't necessarily have to learn computer sequencers quite yet; I'm completely new to this MIDI stuff. At least the onboard sequencer is much easier to learn than trackers, and I hope it tells something about MIDI sequencing in general.