good moron-ing- music babble

Switzerland December 2011

i woke at 7AM in darkness- & went upstairs to make coffee; Jackie & Albert had finished having tea and were leaving to go on tour. i again, began reading Ned Rorem's Paris Diary*, smoking while the coffee made.  i began it* yesterday while J was at the hairdresser & i felt like doing nothing; so laid on the couch/canape in the living room and read till J returned. she had to go out again later, so i took my book and went to bed at 8-ish to read; fell asleep around 9PM then woke at 3AM. had to gobble sleep & pain meds to try and sleep. bad sleeping habits, i.e., never having gotten my hours straight, i wake early and am ready for bed early- which is the total opposite of my nature. i am usually a night owl; working until dawn, then sleeping until mid day. 

but i feel drained from ALL this; and am NOT in the best of moods 90% of the time. it could also be from never going outside; never getting any exercise. [but i hate the cold/winter; just like i hate summer]- the sun has been playing hide and seek since 10AM, is out now- which is almost a reason to go for a walk, if only around the block. mais, non. but i am still suffering from/battling severe depression, which i have been ever since earlier this year...



i have also had equipment- and now software- problems which drove me over the edge. NOW my ACID music programs are not working right; and ACID 7.0 quit working altogether, and foolishly i had opened several work files in it; ACID 6 & 7 update and when you use them you cannot use older THE OLDER versions. you can open one from an older version into a new version but then, IF you save it, you're screwed if the new version screws up. so a lot of newer stuff i have written wont open- or will open, but there is no audio- because 7 is now dysfunctional and 6 wont read it. i am completely pissed. the only option would be to reconstruct the song from wavs, which i could never remember. i always save the files as an acid zip... which includes the files used; but they do not show up. so now i either have to pay 150-300$ for an upgrade or a new copy of the acid 7.0- OR lose the music; unless some hacker can send me a copy.


the ZOOM is here, but after having dealt with this new techno horror, which i tried dealing with all day yesterday and some of the day before, to no avail, i am out of the mood to even do any music. i've been using combinations of computers, software and hardware, and have saved files hither and yon... until i am in mental/emotional quicksand. i feel like i have reached total burn out. i need to find a good engineer to work with; do the music and let him do the mixing and fixing and filing, oh my. 

studio in the garage- Switzerland 2011

after having read Bill Evans bio, and now reading Ned Rorem's, i'm again questioning the meaning/purpose of any of it : music, art, career [or anything]- i'm not even sure what i want to do, anymore. reading the bill evans bio, i was certain- as i was before i read it, when i began doing all the improv stuff- that i wanted to simplify to the max- and only do solo piano recordings; no vocals; and the same with synth stuff. one track, fini. then i got into all the multritrack stuff, and 'beds' for songs, etc. that i decided while here to prioritize and work only on the vocal 'songs' [most of which i had created using Audacity then, stupidly did vocals [& added extra instruments, washes, sounds, etc.] in Acid 7.0. i figured before i go into 'avant weird jazz 'brown rice' experimental classical ambient weirdness music' i should release the vocal cd. that is semi off the chart unless i reconstruct the songs. now i am playing/recording a broken 1/2 strung, out of tune, mandolin... geez louise. Mandeville/Waldau here i come. so now i have got to re- prioritize. 

on top of everything else youtube has gone crazy/changed [upgraded] which now sucks... and for some reason i have 5 or 6 'big file' music 'albums' on my phone which i did not put there. [turn off the bluetooth] i am seriously considering becoming a quasi Luddite... getting a jitterbug  like my friend jimmy, [or better yet NO cell phone] and only using my magic jack & email to communicate; use the DR-1, the Zoom to record -maybe Audacity & Acid 4- and upload whatever to cdbaby via my laptop. get rid of Fecesbook and My-effin'-space, and maybe even my NEW website [which also blows]- despite the perks. 

i keep rolling lighting forgetting cigarettes in the ashtray, and leave my coffee till the soy milk clots in clouds. 3PM and already it's like it's 8PM- feeling like night- frost hangs in the air. i've wasted a whole day babbling in this blog, reading NR's diary, writing in my own, and feeling like i NEED to be hacking away on this mountain of music; but then feel like creating more new stuff. insanity, pure & simple. 

i didn't/don't understand in the Evans bio why he always recorded different versions of the same songs over the years; NR, like me, seemed to want to: just do it; be done with it; and get onto something else.
 
"we are what we are and because of it we do what we do"... and... "our gifts are not gifts, but paid for terribly"  Ned Rorem
 
Apparently, the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012- so i dont know why i worry about anything. the way things are, and are going, globally, it might not be such a bad thing; and/or as my cousin donna says, "this hasn't been THAT much fun" - Mother Earth/Nature is turning on her destructive, ungrateful, demanding, cannibalistic & spoiled demon spawn. 

oh hell... back to my out of tune 4 stringed mandolin
[C]2011 DOUG DUFFEY