(no subject)

"There are lists upon lists of those artists and writers who experienced the glorious highs and lethargic lows of bipolar illness. Virginia Woolf, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell are just a few on a long list of well-known writers (5); Tchaikovsky, van Gogh, and Pollock add composers and painters to the list of bipolar sufferers (6). This extensive documentation of writers’ own experiences with mood fluctuation is highly convincing of the link between bipolar illness and a creative temperament. Combine those writings with the overwhelming results of studies that find a far greater incidence of manic depression among artists and writers than among the general population, and the link is as well-established as a scientific truth can ever be.

This conclusion, however, leaves us with a few very pressing questions. These days, the automatic response to a diagnosis of manic-depression is to medicate the patient (3). While doubtless this creates a calmer life for both the patient and those around him or her, it is often doubtful whether the patient leads a happier life while on medication. As is described by a bipolar teenage girl on lithium: "How can I tell them I LIKE being high? ...I feel dull. I feel robbed of my creativity. I feel robbed of who I am, or rather who I was" (7). From a slightly different perspective, is society better off with these artists and writers medicated? Psychiatist Joseph J. Schildkraut of Harvard Medical School studied the lives of 15 artists in the mid-1900’s; at least four had committed suicide (8). Even with these casualties, Schildkraut maintains, "Yet depression in the artist may be of adaptive value to society at large" (8). How would the literary world have changed without the mad genius of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, F. Scott Fitzgerald? Is it fair to allow a writer or artist to sacrifice their emotional stability or even their lives for the creation of new art? Where do we draw these lines between the public and the private good?"

This is why I don't deal with bullshit Psychology. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1675

I LIKE being high too. The lows -are worth it-. I work with what God gave me.

According to the Gurus

It takes ten years to really know what you are doing in any aspect of music and audio.

I'm three years off. I feel comfortable with that.

(no subject)

Last Hope
In Clan Arena, frag 3 or more opposing players to win the round, when you're the last alive.

• Date awarded: 02/05/2010
• 2 friends (100% of total) have earned this award
• 26605 players (2% of total) have earned this award

Me > 98%

(no subject)

Deadmau5?

I have to admit I do like his stuff. But the thing is...

It's not very complicated, although it's a lot better than Basshunter (he makes me want to throw up as a musician.) It's kinda like Daft Punk, you know...I seriously can't listen to Around The World again after hearing it once.

I like the emotions he evokes but he's very repetitive. I understand that's the whole thing with dance music, but I think there can be a whole lot more ingenuity and structure going into it...it doesn't need to be just tweaking a knob here and there on a repeat beat and bass pattern that lasts the whole song and has a few breaks...rinse and repeat album after album...there's a reason there are live percussionists in successful bands...it's because they can modify what's going on with their instrument to fit the emotion of that moment in the song...a sequencer and producer can do the -same exact thing- but guess -what-...they are too lazy to do it. Repeating patterns for various parts of the song is fine in my mind...but Faxing Berlin by Deadmau5...nothing changes with regards to the percussion. For all 5 minutes or whatever.

So many guys have made their name like that, Tiesto and Armin Van Buuren to name a few, and there's these new fangled "industrial" artists that are even worse about it, running the same lame synth for four minutes straight...what I like about Deadmau5 is the production quality and the sound design...although there's no telling how much he didn't do himself...I could grab hundreds of gigs of sound samples if I had the HD space right now, but I simply don't.

But I am going to have to work on picking up as much good stuff as I can...because I'm beginning to feel like I've been working with low quality for far too long. The fact I can even impress people with what I have used in the past is absolutely mind blowing...but the truth is I've never really been able to impress myself.

But maybe I'm looking at it all the wrong way...for me, it's about making music good enough people want to listen to it at home...for an artist like Deadmau5 or these other "electronic" artists, maybe it's not so much about that, but about the live shows and making something people want to move too, something everybody is feeling...and maybe the complexity isn't all that important in that case.

There was this one song I heard by Deadmau5 today, at the end of it, there was a soundbyte from an "angry producer" about how "these electronic musicians are ruining the genre" and the thing is, I absolutely agree. But Deadmau5 was throwing a punch at the producers that feel that way. Truth is, that tells me he feels a little insecure about his work with regards to the greater scheme of things...I'm sure he knows there's small time and unknown underground artists that are a thousand times better than him...but i guess it breaks down to he got lucky and now he feels like he can throw punches at those guys, because they aren't making a living like he is.

Or maybe that little sound byte was him venting his own frustrations over artists like Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brother's, and all of the fucking pop and rap on the market today...all of it is heavily electronic, but it's not defined as such...and the electronic genre has never been able to get a real foothold on the market because of the way it is treated, even though so much of what is popular is electronic...