Tag: music

Writing about the comfort of writing

Well, we made it to Friday. That means a small respite in the cycle of working and working in favor of just the writing part of the equation. Back in March of this year I picked up a K65 RGB mini mechanical gaming keyboard directly from Corsair. It’s a 60% size keyboard with Cherry MX speed keys on it. Really the only thing that from time to time is awkward with the keyboard is the complete and total lack of arrow keys. You have to be more focused on what you are doing and writing as you cannot arrow around on the screen. Outside of that I ended up getting a Kensington Duo gel keyboard wrist rest to make typing on the keyboard comfortable for longer periods of time. I have the corresponding mouse pad as well, but the keyboard wrist rest was key to making the whole thing work. I did not find it comfortable to type for long periods of time on the mechanical keyboard without it. I just realized that this last paragraph was really an exercise in writing about the comfort of writing. 

I was not sure that a min keyboard was going to work for me or that the sounds of a mechanical keyboard would be acceptable in my office. My office is really only shared with the dogs and they do not seem to care about the clickity clack of the mechanical keyboard. For the most part I have come to find it soothing and a part of the writing process. My typing speed is solid enough that the keystrokes end up just being a long string of crashing instead of one off disruptions to the silence. Really for the most part based on my writing schedule the day starts and some music gets played. During the course of listening to that music a blank word processing document gets opened and the writing process is supposed to start. Sometimes I get pulled into a productive effort outside of writing in a stream of consciousness style. Most of the content that gets posted on the weblog is like this where whatever comes to mind is going to get posted shortly after it is written. That pretty much means things that are not a manuscript, academic article, or work of fiction. 

One of the things that I want to really refocus on moving forward is taking notes throughout the day. Right now I have both Google Keep and the Recorder application setup and ready to capture notes at a moment’s notice. That does not mean that notes are actually captured. Letting all those little seeds of thought disappear beyond the active reach of consciousness is problematic based on my writing schedule. Being productive and actively writing is an important part of my planned daily activities.

That autobiographical record order

Today started out with a spin of the album “Actor” by St. Vincent (2009). Buying vinyl records is something that really lets me jump into the work of an artist without any compromises. I opened the vinyl record and sat it on the record player with side A up and let it play. At the end of that side of the record I’ll either let it play again or move on to side B. This time around I made a slight mistake with the discography and grabbed the second album by St. Vincent. I was going to try to listen to them in order to see the progression of the artist over time, but I’ll have to circle back on that one at some point. Later today my big plan is to move my vinyl record collection from the top shelf of my bookshelf to a lower shelf. My record collection has grown to the point where I cannot keep it sorted into autobiographical order anymore. I’m going to have to take the plunge and go alphabetical with my entire record collection. 

My vinyl record collection… 2021 before the new sort

False start writing Monday

I’m a couple false stars into this writing session today. For some reason the prose starts to get going and then the pace falters. That could be due to the rain today. Apparently, in Denver, Colorado today it is going to rain throughout the entire day. Capturing a bit of that rain sound had seemed like a good idea, but so far this is not the type of rain that is super noisy it just seems to be rather consistent. Oh yeah, in an update to what I was thinking about yesterday apparently finding a session drummer is much easier than I thought that it would be online. That plan to add drums to my epic quarantine album could be coming together today. That is a rather exciting possibility that might just get going today.

Containing all those words

Each day I’m still working this ongoing writing project out of new Google Docs files. Instead of keeping all this content in a single file I’m producing new files each and every day. That probably reflects my predetermined bias to not release this content within any type of publication. That probably has to do with my efforts to just write a page each morning and the pages themselves do not have any real continuity between them except they were written by the same person in a time series. That should generally create some degree of ongoing narrative or a degree of continuity. For those of you who have been checking in on this weblog content for years (potentially 20 of them) you inherently know this last paragraph was historically correct. Content gets produced without any ongoing narrative. Maybe the only common theme across all of my writing relates to general questions about the intersection of technology and modernity. That alone is not enough to create a thread that binds all of this prose together. For better or worse each writing session happens on its own. 

Today Rocky dog was kind enough to wake me up before sunrise. That should have created the opportunity to sit and write without interruption for about an hour. Seizing that time to make something happen would have been a good idea, but instead of that you got this missive on containing words and managing content. Not that this missive is not going to be a solid page of prose, but I feel that is not really stretching any philosophical frameworks or questioning anything deeply. It is entirely possible that today is not going to be a day where deeper work is going to be accomplished. However, at this point my writing processes should be fully warmed up and the possibility of creating something interesting should be primed. Google Docs as a web based piece of software has gotten better at providing live editing suggestions. 

Back in June of last year (2020), I apparently completed a full 33:03 minutes of a guitar based EP album. Yesterday, I decided that it might be a good idea to send that off to a session drummer to see if it could be upgraded from guitar based to include drums. That would add a bit more consistent rhythm to the album and might make it better. To that end I’m going to work on figuring that out later today. I’m not entirely sure how expensive half an hour of session drum work would be or how long that would take to complete. I had briefly considered using an automated drumming program, but that would be awkward and poorly match my entirely analog guitar efforts from last year.

Bidding on a new guitar pedal

Today I spent some time looking at EarthQuaker Devices Fuzz Master General guitar pedals on eBay. I even went as far as submitting an offered for one today. My offer was declined within a matter of hours. Getting a new guitar pedal is probably not the top of the things I should be spending my time on today. For some inexplicable reason, I tend to focus in on guitar or computer technology and sort of look at it, research it, watch YouTube videos about it, and spend time wondering about when it will actually be mine. This type of effort is not entirely useful. It does occupy my time and keep me focused on something. Sure, I could just sit around and watch old episodes of The West Wing on YouTube. If you were wondering where my last round of binge watching The West Wing episodes left me, then you might be interested in finding out that it was around season 4 episode 10. That is really a time in the series where the density of writing per scene has hit a place where things are happening and you just feel like you are immersed in the political adventure. I have a lot more thoughts on that and a few thoughts on why a Northern Exposure crossover episode with The West Wing could have forever changed politics in America. Seriously, that last sentence was not meant as satire or to be ironic.

Anyway, back to the topic it hand. Getting some type of fuzz effect guitar pedal is probably going to happen. The real decision on that front is related to buying an actual physical guitar effect pedal or taking the plunge into some type of computer processed experience. Over the years, I have avoided taking the plunge into digital effects. My entire guitar rig including guitar, pedals, and an amplifier are all analog. That is the way it seemed to need to be. My efforts to play guitar are purely for my own entertainment and based on that never needed to be streamed to my computer. The epic sounds of my guitar are really mine and mine alone to behold. That is probably the way it should be as having a hobby is really about the art of it and not the end product. I’m not entirely sure that last sentence stands out the way I had intended for it in terms of really bringing home my point. Maybe later when I am feeling a bit more creative something better will appear on the screen during my next writing session.