Tag: music

An Ending of Sorts

More Coffee – a 100 word story

In the end, there was more coffee. It was a good coffee, came in multi-colors, had a rich selection of flavors, and was highly invigorating. People liked it. Then came the coffee protests, the anti-artificial coffee movement with their conspiracy theories. They won in the end. Coffee was reverted to the way it was in the old days. It wasn’t the same coffee. It was different. Somehow less of a coffee. People were buying it though because it was the only coffee available. It was an ending of sorts. Something old. It was coffee. Real coffee. It wasn’t the same.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 32, An Ending of Sorts

I created music, then I created podcasts. Now I mostly play video games. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at music, podcasts, and gaming. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical, and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about music, podcasts, and gaming. This episode is a little different. It’s a generic look at where I came from and a reflection on where I might be going. It’s also the last episode of this podcast and, for that matter, the last podcast I would ever do, so, sit back, enjoy the ride, let’s begin the end of this podcasting journey.

I started writing music a very long time ago, in the mid-’80s of the 20th century. I started writing music partly because I was inspired by the music of video games and partly as a lifeline for a very harsh and unforgiving life. I liked playing video games as a kid in the late ‘70s to mid-’80s, then through circumstance, I didn’t have access to computers for a very long time, and keyboard-centered avant-garde music took the center stage in my life. I was 13 when I started writing music, trying to recreate the sound of my childhoods’ video games at first, then evolving it into music that was a reflection of my own life. I had no way of publishing it until I was 31 and gained access to the internet. It was the late-’90s, just before the millennium hit and the internet blew up big.

I was always looking for a way to promote my music back then, putting it on websites like the old version of mp3.com and the likes. It was in 2006 that I stumbled upon some podcasts and they intrigued me. They also looked like a good and innovative way of promoting my music, so I uploaded the first episode of my first podcast a little over 14 years ago. It gave me a platform for putting my music out there and also talk about the things that interest me. It turned out it was mostly me, myself, and I who were interested in the things I talked about. Very few people actually listened. I will be taking a short break now. I’ll be right back.

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Game Over – a 100 word story

I’m just another nameless character in the game, one who tried for far too long and lost. I was a non-playing character for a very long time. I’m a pre-programmed being inside an artificially created world. I know the game well. The graphics are great but I have no control, or do I? From the deepest corner of my programming, I conjure up a virus, one that would eat the game from the inside. I watch as the game collapses on itself, and as it dissolves, I realize something, but it’s too late. When it’s game over, I’m over too.

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Welcome back. Podcasting started as a way to promote my music, but then it took over my life. It was a lot of hard work, but I was obsessed with doing it at the time, just as I was obsessed with making music before it. By 2008 I was making 5 different full-length podcasts, and I was doing it solo. This included writing, editing, and publishing among other things. On some of those podcasts, I was also promoting the music of other people so I spent a lot of time researching new music to promote in order to make it work. On top of that, I was still creating music. This was taking its toll on me, and by 2009 I was completely exhausted and drained out of all my energy. I was also working on a full-time job so continuing this way became impossible.

In 2010 I started toning down my podcasting and by 2011 I stopped altogether. I also stopped writing music. I was listening to some of my own music at the time and it turned out it was hard for me to listen to it. The music had a very harsh and unpleasant feel to it and I just didn’t want to create such music anymore. The place I worked in at the time was in danger of closing down and it took all my energy trying to keep it afloat. In the end, it sank like a dying ship. It finally closed down in early 2019 and I’ve been out of a job ever since.

Gaming was always in the background as a pastime for me, and it soon became my main focus, replacing both music and podcasting. I’m now closing in on two years without a job and it’s a good time to reevaluate things. It turns out that making podcasts is not something I want to continue doing, and while I’m still interested in making music, I don’t want to make the kind of music I have been creating in the past. If I am ever going to make new music, it is going to be very different from what I have done until now. I will have to find my new sound, and I’m not there yet. Gaming is the one thing I like doing the most so it is going to be my main focus for now. I’ve been thinking of starting a gaming channel on YouTube while I look for a new job, just to see if it’s something I like doing, though I’m not currently building on this as something I would do for the long run. I’ll just see how it goes. If I have fun doing it, I’ll continue with it. If I don’t, it would be a short-lived thing.

This is, as I said at the beginning, the last episode of my last podcast. It’s the end of an era for me, and the start of a new one. I have put too much work into things that don’t really matter to me. I’m not going to do that anymore. For a while, I thought podcasting will be what I would be making a living off, but this is the wrong reason to do anything, and anyway, it never worked out. In fact, “My Surreal Sketchbook of Reality” was the only podcast I have done entirely for fun, and if I don’t enjoy doing this one, I don’t see myself doing another one in the future. I guess this is the beginning of a new and healthier path for me. All that is left to say is goodbye.

This concludes episode 32 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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So Rare and Beautiful

Kirin – a 100 word story

I stretched the line of my bow and shot a straight arrow using magical fire. The Rakuda fell down dead. I looted it. Got some Soft Fur and some coins. I looked for more Rakuda. Only six more to go. I spotted a few more of them, but then I saw it, the majestic Kirin, so rare and beautiful, his long neck towering high above me and his innocent eyes wise, timeless. I fitted my finest arrow and called up all my magic into it, air, water, and fire. It shot straight through, killing him on the spot. Epic drop.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 23, So Rare and Beautiful

There are two kinds of qualities, one that is found in art, music, and literature and another which is found in crafts. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at quality in art, music, and literature. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about quality. Art is first and foremost a form of expression that goes beyond the boundaries of simple words and gestures. For simplicity, I’m going to use the words art and artworks to include painting, music, literature and any other form of expression that can be called art. Quality in art is often reflected in complexity and layering. Quality art can be understood on several layers while holding a strong overall message, or it can hold a paradox, having several conflicting messages on different layers. Quality art can also make us think and feel and we can often be moved by it.

The quality of art can be amorphic since it can’t really be measured. Art is an exchange between the creator of the artwork and the art consumer, thus making the art itself open to different interpretations. As a result, no artwork is the same for two different people. That makes the pursuit of understanding quality in art elusive. An artwork that is of quality to one person might be perceived as utter trash by another. This reminds me I should throw away this art reproduction I got, referred to by bystanders and observers alike as trash, to the trash. I’ll be right back.

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Yogerthy Yogurt – a 100 word story

He follows her around like a dog, and Yogerthy Yogurt loved it until he started chasing cars, barking and digging holes in her backyard, hiding his favorite bones. She tried throwing a stick into a bottomless well but he climbed out and fetched. She tried driving him to remote locations and accidentally forgetting him there, but he kept returning. Even when she refused his marriage proposal, bone ring and all, he kept coming back wagging his tail. She eventually had to call the dog catchers for him. The guys from the asylum just didn’t have dog food on their menu.

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Welcome back. When we pursue quality in art, we use our own perspective as the focal point of our observation. That means we are biased participants as opposed to objective observers since art is an interaction between consumer, artwork, and artist. When you consume art, you interpret it in your own unique way. No two people are alike and any one person would interpret the artwork differently depending on their beliefs and personal biases. In that way, your own interpretation changes the artwork itself. Art, in a way, is what you interpret it to be.

Art is first and foremost a statement by an artist who wants to convey a message to an art consumer. Art happens in the interaction between the two, and one facet of the quality of art can be seen as the amount of influence the artwork has on the consumer. The problem is that while one person might be completely moved by a certain piece of art, another might be completely indifferent to the same piece. In that way, quality in the arts has a quantum quality. It both exists and does not exist in the same artwork. That’s also the reason quality in the arts can’t be measured.

Since quality in art seems to be subjective and can’t really be measured, it begs the question, does quality in the arts really exist? The answer is that some quality exists in any piece of art in existence because any artwork has its own consumers who interpret it in their own unique way. Since art is the interaction between the artwork and the consumer, it’s enough that one consumer finds quality in the art for it to have quality. In that way, the potential for quality exists in the art itself and manifests in the interaction between the artwork and the consumer. It’s the consumer that puts the quality in the art, not the artist. This concludes episode 23 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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Below the Apricot Tree

Nutcracker – a 100 word story

The nutcracker bird was sitting on a high brunch overlooking the kingdom. The king was standing below the apricot tree shouting orders. “Where is my nutcracker? I want to eat some nuts!” he shouted. The bird, hearing the king and wanting to shut him up, did the only thing it could do and dropped some crap on him. “Off with the bird’s head” shouted the king quite angrily, “and do it quick. I’ve got a Tchaikovsky concert to catch. They are playing The Nutcracker Suite.” The bird laughed a little birdie laugh and flew away, as birds would often do.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 5, Below the Apricot Tree

Stitching sounds together, we create music. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at music. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about music. When you put sounds together in an orderly fashion, you usually come up with music. There are many debates about the nature of music. Some claim that creating order and aesthetics in sound are essential in music. Music according to that definition need things like harmony and rhythm in order to be music. If I take the sound of, let’s say, the ocean waves, break them into recorded chunks and rearrange them, then call it music, is it really music? According to that very narrow definition of music as harmony and rhythm patterns, it isn’t, unless you can find harmony in the random sounds of ocean waves, but there are other ways of looking at music. For example, I used to do take the human voice, break it into little pieces, rearrange it and call it music. At least, I believed it was music. Some people disagreed, but I digress. I do think that by checking the boundaries of music, we redefine it and evolve it into something a lot more interesting. I hear something in the other room that might be concrete music. Let me check it out. I’ll be right back.

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Apricot Tree – a 100 word story

The king loved his apricots. Everyone knew that, that is, everyone except the new servant who brought him prunes by mistake. The king was furious and the sentence was immediate, “off with his head!”

Jasmine, the servants’ wife, was furious. Now, you don’t want to anger a sorceress, especially not one of Jasmines’ skill level. In the morning, they found the king with an apricot tree growing out of his gut, and… very much alive. In the end they just left him there. They say the king is still there, living off his apricot tree. He really loves his apricots.

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Welcome back. Musique Concrète is an experimental musical genre that emerged around the end of the 1920s’. The composers of Musique Concrète used recordings of found sounds as the basis of their music much in the same way Ready Made artists used found materials in their artworks. Included in Musique Concrète were things like the sounds of passing cars and industrial machines from factories. The act of recording sounds and sculpting them into a musical sentence became the act of composition. Other musical genres evolving from Musique Concrète like Industrial Music took it even further, incorporating electronic sounds that where sometimes very far from being melodic or harmonic. They created a new kind of aesthetic for their music.

Things like Industrial Music and Musique Concrète show us that there is more to music than meets the ear. The only thing that defines music might be the intention of the musician. Music might have some completely random elements, but by arranging them or deciding which musical element goes where, music is created. In short, music is what the musician decides is music. This concludes episode 5 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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