Real Quick

This is it. Today represents the last day of my youth, in a sense. I've graduated college, am about to move into a sweet apartment with good friends (in less than two weeks) and have landed an awesome job...which I start tomorrow.

In short, I have gained complete independence, particularly financial independence and your run-of-the-mill entry into the realm of real adulthood. You know, the one that entails paying all bills, utilities, (no tuition or school fees), signing leases (already done) and coordinating moving/installation schedules. Yes, I've previously accomplished most of these in various forms before, but being back in New York makes it feel so official, I suppose.

To finish off the evening, I'll probably play mind rotting video games and drink apple juice, or something. I'm enjoying this transition, yes. However, I will never give up on my values, ideas, beliefs and anything that drives me to be the person that writes this, dear reader.

A lot more to come.

-Scott

Runoff

Any time I get an idea that I believe is at a somewhat sound idea for a story, I spend the rest of the day jotting down a bunch of notes. I have pages upon pages of scattered notes (now in boxes, thanks to the eventual move), all dealing with separate topics and ideas. I even stated a while back on here that I started writing a novel, which was true. However, like most (if not all) projects, I quickly and quietly abandon them after I find something I feel is fundamentally wrong.

So, after going through some notes I've taken down and journal (yes, I keep one) entries of the past, I decided to combine them and start anew. So, once again, I'm trying to write the good American novel; if I tried to write the great American novel, I'd be out of my league, right? I need to develop a portfolio, and nothing says "portfolio" like an unpublished book. However, I've been throwing around some ideas, themes and experiences into one giant first-person narrative, and I think I'm getting to a good place. I certainly have the notes to back me up.

In other news, I got towed in Manhattan. Go to Google Street View here. See where the pole is? The pole reads "No Parking Tuesday and Friday, 9-11:30 am." That's it. It points to the car behind it and that's it. If you move more down to the left on Riverside, you'll eventually get to a bus stop, approx 100 feet or more away from that pole. I was towed because I was parked to the pole (but right next to the pole) in between another car and a cab in front of said car. It's costing $300. Whatever. I'll debate it, but probably lose, even though I was PARKED 100 FEET FROM A BUS STOP. Worse things have happened. It's the first and only time I'm ever driving into the city, and will gladly accept the new MTA fare hikes with open arms, for they're a lot cheaper and nicer than any NYC traffic cop can ever be. I wonder if the impound lot people and the DMV play softball on the weekends together.

I had this long, thought out post on the way home tonight, but I got distracted by that awful Jennifer's Body trailer and forgot everything. Thanks a lot, Diablo Cody.

Oh. Go see Moon if you can.

-Scott

Boy, Do We Have Some Catching Up To Do

New York is kind of like Florida. Florida is kind of like New York. People from New York move to Florida to die. Floridians move to New York because they've either never lived in a good state for the entirety of their lives or they're originally from New York. They're both the same state, just a thousand miles apart. Makes sense? Probably not, since I'm sort of rambling.

I've been here for a little over a month. Life is good. I'm jobless, I live with family (soon to live in Brooklyn with some dear old chums of mine) and I'm slightly broke. I'm single, and I take 100% of the blame for such a status. I just graduated a two bit university with a two bit degree in a two bit state. I'm at the point of my life where I have to either write a book to justify my existence or be complacent with my existence as a failed artist (for lack of a better term). I could not live with myself doing the latter, and so, dear internet, I've decided to take a leave of absence this past month to get settled and think on a bunch of really cool and stupid ideas.

There have been times for the past few months where I think to myself, "God damn it, Scott! This could be a wonderful blog post!" Well, I assure you, dear reader, that such incidents are not lost. Pretty soon, I will be blogging up a storm, like I used to say for however long I've had this site. I will, though, write quite a bit more now that I have all of this free time. I need to write. I need to be creative and vent and all of the great things that make me a dumb twentysomething with access to broadband internet in the greatest city in the world. In due time, my friends. In due time.

-Scott

(You have "Seymour: An Introduction" to thank, by the way, for the whole "stream-of-consciousness" thing. What a dull but impacting book.)

The Move

Four years, three days and twenty-four minutes ago from when I first started writing this, I came to Florida. I was a resident of New York for a little over eighteen years, and after a series of events, I had decided to come down here and finish out the rest of my college career. Now, I am done. I graduated. The diploma is in the mail and everything. I walked across the stage exactly one week ago from today, and if I ever attend grad school, I will never go through such a tedious event again.

On May 29, 2009, I'm heading for home. Sometime in August, I'll be heading for Brooklyn, my new home. According to BrooklynVegan, every single musical act I've missed while living down here will be performing all across the boroughs this summer; aside from finding a career, planning a big move, recording an album's worth of music and writing a lot, this is where I will be for the rest of the time.

After the move, I'll contemplate and weigh the pros and cons of the past 4 years on here in a nice little narrative. Until then, I have some packing to do and friends to see.

Vocal Correction and How It Affects Me

You might hear this quite often, but it is repeated for its overall truth: the music industry is changing. One aspect of this change is the use of new technology in music production. Digital audio workstations such as Pro Tools or Reason have been prevalent in music production for the past decade, but only within the past several years have they become of such great importance to the production of most popular music that even Steve Albini, a great analog loyalist, was forced to implement a digital recording studio at his Electrical Audio recording complex in Chicago.

If one were to turn on the radio, especially pop and hip-hop stations, they would notice that each song is saturated in vocal correction, or Auto Tune. This has become a recent trend, escalating the careers of people who can’t actually sing, while people who can carry a tune use it because their counterparts have made it commonplace in popular music. Lady GaGa, a former resident of my hometown and recent worldwide pop chart success, explained to reporters that “the radio is used to a certain perfection and it compresses the voice in a certain kind of way, it smooshes all of the sound together so it sounds smaller but fatter, its not open, very condensed. Unless you are Duffy, where it’s this extremely organic record, its important to play into the psychology of the listener who is used to a certain sonic quality in the voice. If they don't hear that, its not hip."

What are people that use Auto Tune as their main drawing point, (like Akon and T-Pain) to do if everyone and their mother are using it? Would they be out of jobs? Sure, they were there before them, “singing” and putting on shows, but now that their competition actually exists and has increased exponentially, will they be just another face in the crowd?

Personally, I don’t bother with this kind of music. I don’t listen to it, I don’t have a lot of people in my circle of friends that do, and I’ve never seen the need to purchase a $1.29 single on iTunes (used to be $.99) or a ringtone for three times as much. I’m not saying I’m better than those that listen to Pop music, it’s just that I would rather spend me 3-5 minutes fixated on something that took less than 5 writers, 10 producers, and a revolving team of engineers to churn out in as much time as it takes to play the song back. Because I tend to listen to things lumped into the overall bland category of “indie rock”, I never thought Auto Tune would become an issue.

This year, after purchasing The Century of Self, the new self-released album by Austin Rock Group …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, I became more aware of vocal correction in music. Being a trained musician with a trained ear, I can easily pick up on whether or not vocals have been digitally altered and matched to the perfect pitch. While listening to their music, I noticed that front man Conrad Keely’s vocals were a little too spot on. Having recently come from one of the band’s excellent shows and losing my hearing for a week, I spotted a major difference between Keely’s actual singing and what was on the disk.

Some people use Auto Tune subtly, avoiding the robotic tones of people like Kanye West and make their voice perfect but not too perfect. Top 40 stars like Shania Twain and Nickelback are known for doing this in both studio and live performances. However, after listening to Keely sing a bit more on the album’s fifth track, “Bells of Creation”, it was not only noticeable that he was using vocal correction software as a safety net, but a slip-up in the second verse of the song included a snippet of the dreaded “robot vocals”, proving the use of Auto Tune during the production of the album. So, being inquisitive, I played the song back again and noticed the same thing, again. Having this in mind, I played the entire album back, and in every single track of the album, I could hear traces of Auto Tune.

With this in mind, how many recent albums within the past several years that I listened to use this same technique? How many times have I gone through an album and the singer (or singers) used vocal correction to make slight adjustments to vocal dissonance through software? Personally, I don’t know, nor will I ever, for these are supposedly trade secrets that are kept under wraps during recording sessions. To think, however, that the same production techniques used in pop music and hip-hop are now hand-in-hand with indie rock, a vague genre known for radical leftist agendas, do-it-yourself mindsets and lo-fidelity approaches to recording, is maddening, to say the least.

Gone are the ideas of sitting in a bedroom with an acoustic guitar, two microphones and a four-track cassette recorder (such is how I spend my weekends). Bands who once believed in recording in garages, like the Black Keys, now opt for studio time. I’m no futurist, so I’m not here to make any outlandish claims about how recording will be several years from now, but what is there to expect? My only wish is to actually know whether or not the lead singer is actually singing and not through a program that alters his pitch to perfection. However, due to the elusive nature of those that do use Auto-Tune and related products, such a wish will certainly fall on deaf ears. I only hope for people to stop using it and the fad of hearing perfect, robot-like vocals on the radio will slowly die out.

NEU! Literature, Life, Sound and Screen

Hello, all.

I decided recently to refocus this site and have focus on more than just using it a creative dumping ground. Yes, I will still post prose and poems on here when I finish writing/editing them (I have a couple in the works right now). However, there's a bit more I'd like to discuss than just my own personal creative (this is a loose definition here, folks) works. I'd actually like to get a bit more traffic on here and talk about thinks I actually know about as well. That's where the four categories listed above come in:

Literature: Yes, literature. This is what I've consistently posted on the site since its inception. As stated above, I'll keep posting the sum of my creative output and updating it as it happens.

Life: This overly vague category could practically mean anything, right? Well, I'm trying to narrow the subjects here, but they will include (and are not limited to):

• Social and Political Discussions/Rants/Opinions
• Lifestyle decisions and "hot topics"
• Nothing incredibly personal

Sound: I'm not attempting to brag here, but I play quite a few musical instruments and listen to more music than is deemed necessary. I've been schooled in musical theory, studies and all things popular music/rock and roll, so I think I can give my two cents on certain albums, musical acts, and various occurrences in the world of music.

Screen: I'm a movie snob, so I had to include this in. Too often do I read movie reviews by local and national critics that gloss over gaping flaws and plot holes that potentially ruin a movie. It's time for me to have a voice, I suppose.

I understand doing all of this makes me just another asshole on the Internet, giving their own opinion amongst millions of other bloggers and town criers on the Internet. I was well aware of that when I signed up for this. However, hopefully, in the long run (or short), I can establish a unique voice that you, the reader would take kindly to and continue to read on. Also, I'm open to all ideas and suggestions, for I take input pretty seriously (and well, to boot).

Thank you, and more to come shortly. Like, less than 48 hours, shortly.

More News From the Real World

-About a week ago, I went to the Harvest of Hope Music Festival in/around St. Augustine. It was a lot of fun, both camping and the shows. I saw a lot of bands I wanted to see, some I didn't expect to see, and ran into people I knew from my high school, which is a couple thousand miles away from where the festival was. Among all of the acts I saw (I counted about 50), I have to say that the Mae Shi, King Khan and the Shrines, Deerhunter and, of course, the Mountain Goats. Everyone else gets an "A" for effort (except for Black Kids).

-I've started to write more poetry, which is pretty cool, considering the fact that I'm doing it at my own pace instead of being forced to do it for a workshop class. I spent the majority of the spring break with Mr. Andy Riverbed himself, who encouraged me to do such a thing. Here I am, doing such a thing. More poems to come.

-After a lot of thinking and such, as well as "honing my craft" and things like that, I decided to start writing a long-form story, a.k.a. a novel. I've said this a million times before, which is funny, because history shows that I'll probably disregard it after a while, but I'm actually taking it seriously. From the way I'm planning it, it's more of a multi-character driven collection of short stories that tie together (like one of those Robert Altman films), with topics ranging from music, the cult of celebrity, addiction, the current state of the world economy and other themes of sadness and symbolism and such. I'm not throwing down a deadline for myself, but I expect to be done with the planning (and possibly a bit of writing here and there) by the end of the semester, starting to actually write it line-for-line in May.

That's about it. More to come.

-Scott