Reduction For Creativity

This is an idea that I’ve been fiddling around with a little bit. The idea that limitations are the only thing that really makes me explore my environment. Recently I decided to go vegitatian and it’s opened up my eyes as far as food goes. Now I’m eating lots of eggplant and avacado and the likes. Things I would have never thought to like but now don’t know how I went without.

It got me thinking about my music again though. The idea that I never really finish anything because the whole process is so open ended. Maybe that’s why I do well as a DJ though. The limitations of vinyl are a place where I can really streach out and find my place in. I can simply look to focus on finding great tracks and packing my bag well for the night at hand. I don’t know what the hell I would do if I had every record I owned on Serato or Ableton. What the hell would I play if I had unlimited options?

The irony is that more options is limiting for me. And it’s a concept I’m finally coming to terms with when I’m doing productions. I find myself setting up limitations for myself in my own music. Say, only making a track using one instrument or making something with the limitations of hardware. The more limited something is the more inclined I am to explore it to the brink of what it can do. It’s a idea that I’ll be playing with more now that I know where it all falls for me.

What limitations have been inspiring to you?

Back to life though, back home from San Francisco. Had a great time. Roomba is cleaning the house as we speak.

San Francisco!

Just a quick check up from San Francisco. I love the wine bars down here! Num Num Num

Still, I’m having a great time down here and I’m recording a ton of samples with my best friend field recorder. Looking forward to tomorrow where were taking a ferry ride under the golden gate bridge. Going to be fun. Check in here soon for some more tracks and new stuff. But for now this is vacation.

Early Version Of Black Dollar Bills Remix

Black Dollar Bills

This has been a passion project of mine that I was really eager to finish and then I just sort of put it off to the side. But for some reason today it just felt right to revisit it. I got to spend some time listening to really good ambient music last weekend and remembered that what I do is pretty good and I need to keep doing it.

So long story short here is an early version of my remix of Hope Of The States’ Black Dollar Bills. I’ve been working on it feverishly at a hotel while eating a bagel so I hope you guys out there in radio land enjoy it. I should have a finished version once I manage to get home and work on the levels and over all mix down.

So head on over to this link @ Soundcloud and check it out.

http://soundcloud.com/the-paused/black-dollar-bills-the-pauseds-broken-people-remix

Much thanks!

Getting Ready For Vacation

Not much to post about today. I’m getting ready to head down to Portland tomorrow. Then San Fran on Monday. I’ve got some great hotel rooms that I’m happy about and you better believe I’m taking both my field recorder and laptop down there so expect some good tunes to come from this trip. Sometimes new scenery is just what you need to get some new perspective.

Other than that I’ve dived head first into the world of Twitter and decided it’s not the yelling into a black hole that I thought it was. Well, actually it is but it’s really got it’s uses. I was amazed yesterday watching all the MJ posts popping up. This really is the way we communicate now. It’s amazing and scary. Either way. I’ve tried to streamline my twittering to follow music production, friends, and wine (yum!). You can follow me at www.twitter.com/thepaused I’ll be posting phone pictures from my trip and maybe. Just maybe some early tracks in progress.

Well, It’s time to get to the gym and climb some rocks. I’ve been slacking on my work out the last week because of going to Idaho (which I really should post something about the crazy ass time I had there) but I got to get back on that gym horse before it rides off.

RIP MJ

Sad new breaking all over the twit-o-verse about the death of the King Of Pop. Hopefully it turns out to be a cruel prank but now that TMZ has confirmed it’s looking less likely.  Dead at the age of 50. Damn. A lot of my childhood memories come from his records and I’m sure a good portion of people my age have a lot of memories wrapped up in the first time they saw Thriller, or Beat It, or hell, maybe even going an riding the Michael Jackson ride at Disney World (which was amazing when I was a kid).

Well, there’s really not a lot to say. My prayers go out to his family and children.

Here’s a personal favorite video of mine for You Rock My World.

Getting My Online Life In Order

It’s been a sorta crazy month for me with lots of changes happening in my life. I’m finally off the USS Maine and enjoying the freedom that allows me. I went to Idaho and had one of the craziest weekends of my life. I’ve had several music experiences that have changed my perception of what I’m doing and opened me up to new ideas. So I figured it was about time I figured out what I want to do with this whole internet thing and make it fit my needs.

So with that said in the next few days I’ll be overhauling this blog to fit my purposes. Streamlined and more relevant to what I’m doing right now. I’ll be getting a Soundcloud pro account to let you hear tracks as I’m making them and give advice. Over all I want to tune this to deal with more production stuff.

More to come. Hope you come back.

To leave you here is a pic of my Yamaha SU700 that I picked up from those jolly fellas at Craigslist today.

Device & Impulse – 10 & Loathing Remix Contest!

Hell yeahs!

So I decided to place the parts for a small little diddy that Mr. Joel and myself made last week using only samples of a Casio PT-10. The results were interesting and the message boards fired up with exactly zero hype over our creation due to the fact that I only really gave a Facebook link to it and really didn’t advertise it at all. But it exists and if you head over to here. Long story short we had fun making the song in between eating tacos on a Saturday.

but back to the point. Remix Contest.

By following THIS LINK RIGHT HERE you will find a Zip file (megaupload.. sorry) containing all of the parts of our little song on it. The idea is to do a remix contest. Grand prize…. er… nothing…. as I’ll be putting every single track that is sent to me on this blog right here for everyone to listen to. A little bit of extra exposure for both of us and a useful waste of time. It might just strike something creative in you and if you hate it you can just go back to reading Vanity Fair or something.

Feel free to use the parts in whatever capacity you want as I am far to lazy to unleash my lawyers.

Worst case scenerio. No one participates. Best case. I get flooded with 10 Billion MP3s and crash the internet forcing millions of people to stop fucking around on the internet and jump start the economy.

Well. Get to cracking.

1,000 Views. Much thanks.

Just thought I would hop on real quick and say thanks to the people who have come to this site regularly and helped me have what I feel is a mild amount of sucess. Yeah. It’s not much in the scope of things when you consider that a lot of blogs get this many hits in a day, but it means something to me. So much thanks to you guys.

Device And Impulse – 10 & Loathing

New track. This is a collaboration between myself and Joel Dimarzo. This is the first thing both of us have created with each other and it’s experimental as hell. All the sounds from this song are taken from a very circuit bent Casio PT-10 and as you’ll be able to tell from the song, very very very processed. Available in 320  as well as streaming on www.soundcloud.com

Thanks for listening people Much love.

Right click and save the link below to download

Device and Impulse – 10 & Loathing

10 & Loathing by Device And Impulse on Sound Cloud

The Googly – Basement Mix Vol. 6

Made this sometime last week but I’ve been lazy on the posting of it. Here you go. Right click and save as to enjoy.

Basement Mix Vol 6

No frills today in the post. I’m sorta busy as I post this.

A tracklisting.

01. Zombie Zombie – Texas Rangers (Danton Eeprom Remix) [Versatile]

02. Jurgen Kirsch – Rain In Osaka [Stil Vor Talent]

03. Rene Breitbarth – Cooling The Plasma [EQ]

04. Mathew Jonson – Marionette (Adam Beyer Remix) [Wagon Repair]

05. I:Cube – Acid Beatless (A Critical Mass Edit) [BBE]

06. Oliver Hacke – Subject Carrier (Alex Under Remix) [Trapez]

07. Envoy – Acres Of Space [Soma]

08. Kenny Leaven – Feed Me Better [Traum Schallplatten]

09. Chymera – Saphiron [NRK]

Thanks for listening.