(no subject)
I haven't been sleeping at normal times as of late. This is a result of, a few days ago, I came down with what looks like bronchitis and I tried to go to sleep at a relatively normal time and just layed there and coughed a lot. So I didn't actually fall asleep until something like 5:30 or 6 in the morning, and this went on for a couple days. So now my sleep schedule is way out of whack. Hence the 7 am livejournal-ing.
Things lately have not been going so well. The band is in the midst of pretty much falling apart. For a while now morale has been pretty low, there've been arguments aplenty, and attempts at writing have been difficult or short lived. My own personal gripes have to do with trying to write things that break away from the style of the older songs. The old songs are alright and all, but we've been playing the hell out of them at show after show and as such, a lot of what I'm writing now sounds pretty similar. That isn't exactly true in every case, as there's been a couple promising things, but there's been a lot of ideas I've just scrapped because they sound too much like Vending Machine or something. And of course there's the "build up, build up, build up, Oh look they stepped on their distortion pedals and now it's a big loud rocking part" syndrome. I don't exactly understand how/why this happens so often. I've only written one song where that was explicitly the point (Ohio Sucks) and after that I pretty much got it out of my system, but a lot of the times when Jeff and I collaborate on something, the result is that kind of big crescendo type of thing. Now, I'm all for dynamic changes, but after a while it starts turning into pretty predictable "post rock bullshit". So it's a little strange to me how exactly we turned into that, because I never really would have thought it a couple years ago. I mean, hell, in a lot of songs we're using riffs I came up with 3 or 4 years ago and intended to write a pretty little diddy out of (but didn't have the knowledge/the motivation to do so), and now they turned into these loud, and admittedly at times a little masturbatory, rock fests. I mean it's fun for a while, but after that...
Fortunately Jeff shares my views, and for a while was pretty eager to start working on new things that went in a little bit of a different direction. We were actually planning on writing an entire acoustic set of new material for our show on the 21st, as we have almost a month to do it, but in the first day of this some problems arose. Apparently, for a while now Tyler Jones, the drummer, has felt like he doesn't have much say in the songwriting process and pretty much just has to do whatever we (mostly Jeff) say. Now, he's got some validity in what he's saying, seeing as there've been a few times in the past when we've gone "No, that doesn't feel right, do something tastier!" but, as far as I'm concerned, that's the extent of any "controlling" that goes on. I mean, I'm not a drummer, so it's not like I can say "no, hit the bass drum here and the snare and the tom like this and blah blah".
Anyways, he's felt that he's "never actually written anything" for the entire time we've been a band, which is getting close to a year now. This is a bit of an exaggeration in my opinion, but I can understand where he's coming from. He suggests that we focus on less breaking things down into parts and working them out note by note and piecing them together, and more on just playing a song. He doesn't want to go all out jam band, but he doesn't want it to be so dissected either. Now, the problem with this, and what I kind of want to say to him is: Dude, you're a fucking drummer. I mean, drums are important, jeff and I could be playing the same exact part at the same exact speed and depending on the drums the feel and pacing of the song could be entirely different. That being said, however, I do feel that it's much easier "to just play a song" when all you need to do is hit things. I'll be the first to admit that I am plain and simple not a good enough guitarist to just improvise songs just off the top of my head, so I find the "disect everything, write some parts, put it together" method a lot more effective. But I'm willing to do it another way. It'll just probably suck a lot at first.
Jeff, however, has misinterpreted what Tyler is trying to say as "You are a controlling, overbearing bastard and I hate you", which isn't at all true. So he thinks Tyler just doesn't want to do it anymore, which isn't exactly true, he just wants to try some different approaches to songwriting.
But, Tyler has been really stressed out in other areas of his life (his girlfriend for starters, our housing situation another example) and is generally just in the middle of pretty much a nervous breakdown. The idea that this all may be the result of that is not a bad one, and I've been trying to help him out with this because I've been there. 'Course it's been almost 3 years since I actually went to therapy regularly and thus I've forgotten anything effective I ever learned there (I'm not counting last summer because I frankly had a bad therapist and stopped going). So I can't really do much other than offer a sympathetic ear.
Jen feels that this is all pretty much ridiculous and has spent most of her time actually working on shit for real life. She's probably leaving to go back to england this summer anyways, which is another source of grief for Jeff, as he's the most attached to her of all of us. I mean, she's a nice person and I'll miss having her around, but at the same time I don't feel like we'll be completely ruined when she goes, as Jeff does. The viola is a nice thing to have but I don't think its necessarily crucial except for a handful of songs. In fact I think it's better when she plays bass.
So anyways, all this is going on and in the meantime we still need a place to live in the summer. We found a pretty nice house with good space for practicing/storing all the shit and some big bedrooms for an affordable 750 a month (3 people), but due to all the Jeff/Tyler tension, nobody really acted on it very fast, and now it's been snatched up. This is the 2nd time a prospective place has been snagged by someone else, so it's a little frustrating. Tyler's financial situation pretty much limits us to a place that is no more than 800 a month, and that's a hard thing to find. Plus Jeff is now a little wary with living with him anyways.
So things are hard. School is doing moderately well I assume but I honestly don't really know as none of my classes give me any sort of feedback. I could be failing for all I know, which is a scary thought as this is quite literally my last chance. I've gotten sick 3 times this semester (that's not just a lame excuse, it's actually happened), and on top of that I've missed plenty of classes due to playing shows on weekdays and not getting home until 3:30-4 am. However, I haven't missed any tests and none of my classes grade on attendance so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I have missed a couple minor assignments. The class I'm most worried about currently is actually one of what should be the easiest ones to pass. It's this bullshit computer class where you just have to do a lot of busy work that isn't actually difficult, its just hard to motivate yourself to actually do it. So I'm a little behind on that, and I don't know what the results will be.
I'm still a little lonely here as well. I only really know a handful of people in Ohio, most of which are either in my band or the friends/roommates/girlfriends of my bandmates. Or they work at the radio station. The band eats up (well, at least until recently when we just haven't been doing anything) most of my social life so I don't get out any. I've been hankering for an opportunity to just sit around and be a dork and play some video games with some of my friends but none of them actually play anything, a phenomenon I find incredibly strange.
So we shall see what all happens. Summer is a-comin', and that's my favorite time of the year, although this one looks like it might just suck.
Things lately have not been going so well. The band is in the midst of pretty much falling apart. For a while now morale has been pretty low, there've been arguments aplenty, and attempts at writing have been difficult or short lived. My own personal gripes have to do with trying to write things that break away from the style of the older songs. The old songs are alright and all, but we've been playing the hell out of them at show after show and as such, a lot of what I'm writing now sounds pretty similar. That isn't exactly true in every case, as there's been a couple promising things, but there's been a lot of ideas I've just scrapped because they sound too much like Vending Machine or something. And of course there's the "build up, build up, build up, Oh look they stepped on their distortion pedals and now it's a big loud rocking part" syndrome. I don't exactly understand how/why this happens so often. I've only written one song where that was explicitly the point (Ohio Sucks) and after that I pretty much got it out of my system, but a lot of the times when Jeff and I collaborate on something, the result is that kind of big crescendo type of thing. Now, I'm all for dynamic changes, but after a while it starts turning into pretty predictable "post rock bullshit". So it's a little strange to me how exactly we turned into that, because I never really would have thought it a couple years ago. I mean, hell, in a lot of songs we're using riffs I came up with 3 or 4 years ago and intended to write a pretty little diddy out of (but didn't have the knowledge/the motivation to do so), and now they turned into these loud, and admittedly at times a little masturbatory, rock fests. I mean it's fun for a while, but after that...
Fortunately Jeff shares my views, and for a while was pretty eager to start working on new things that went in a little bit of a different direction. We were actually planning on writing an entire acoustic set of new material for our show on the 21st, as we have almost a month to do it, but in the first day of this some problems arose. Apparently, for a while now Tyler Jones, the drummer, has felt like he doesn't have much say in the songwriting process and pretty much just has to do whatever we (mostly Jeff) say. Now, he's got some validity in what he's saying, seeing as there've been a few times in the past when we've gone "No, that doesn't feel right, do something tastier!" but, as far as I'm concerned, that's the extent of any "controlling" that goes on. I mean, I'm not a drummer, so it's not like I can say "no, hit the bass drum here and the snare and the tom like this and blah blah".
Anyways, he's felt that he's "never actually written anything" for the entire time we've been a band, which is getting close to a year now. This is a bit of an exaggeration in my opinion, but I can understand where he's coming from. He suggests that we focus on less breaking things down into parts and working them out note by note and piecing them together, and more on just playing a song. He doesn't want to go all out jam band, but he doesn't want it to be so dissected either. Now, the problem with this, and what I kind of want to say to him is: Dude, you're a fucking drummer. I mean, drums are important, jeff and I could be playing the same exact part at the same exact speed and depending on the drums the feel and pacing of the song could be entirely different. That being said, however, I do feel that it's much easier "to just play a song" when all you need to do is hit things. I'll be the first to admit that I am plain and simple not a good enough guitarist to just improvise songs just off the top of my head, so I find the "disect everything, write some parts, put it together" method a lot more effective. But I'm willing to do it another way. It'll just probably suck a lot at first.
Jeff, however, has misinterpreted what Tyler is trying to say as "You are a controlling, overbearing bastard and I hate you", which isn't at all true. So he thinks Tyler just doesn't want to do it anymore, which isn't exactly true, he just wants to try some different approaches to songwriting.
But, Tyler has been really stressed out in other areas of his life (his girlfriend for starters, our housing situation another example) and is generally just in the middle of pretty much a nervous breakdown. The idea that this all may be the result of that is not a bad one, and I've been trying to help him out with this because I've been there. 'Course it's been almost 3 years since I actually went to therapy regularly and thus I've forgotten anything effective I ever learned there (I'm not counting last summer because I frankly had a bad therapist and stopped going). So I can't really do much other than offer a sympathetic ear.
Jen feels that this is all pretty much ridiculous and has spent most of her time actually working on shit for real life. She's probably leaving to go back to england this summer anyways, which is another source of grief for Jeff, as he's the most attached to her of all of us. I mean, she's a nice person and I'll miss having her around, but at the same time I don't feel like we'll be completely ruined when she goes, as Jeff does. The viola is a nice thing to have but I don't think its necessarily crucial except for a handful of songs. In fact I think it's better when she plays bass.
So anyways, all this is going on and in the meantime we still need a place to live in the summer. We found a pretty nice house with good space for practicing/storing all the shit and some big bedrooms for an affordable 750 a month (3 people), but due to all the Jeff/Tyler tension, nobody really acted on it very fast, and now it's been snatched up. This is the 2nd time a prospective place has been snagged by someone else, so it's a little frustrating. Tyler's financial situation pretty much limits us to a place that is no more than 800 a month, and that's a hard thing to find. Plus Jeff is now a little wary with living with him anyways.
So things are hard. School is doing moderately well I assume but I honestly don't really know as none of my classes give me any sort of feedback. I could be failing for all I know, which is a scary thought as this is quite literally my last chance. I've gotten sick 3 times this semester (that's not just a lame excuse, it's actually happened), and on top of that I've missed plenty of classes due to playing shows on weekdays and not getting home until 3:30-4 am. However, I haven't missed any tests and none of my classes grade on attendance so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I have missed a couple minor assignments. The class I'm most worried about currently is actually one of what should be the easiest ones to pass. It's this bullshit computer class where you just have to do a lot of busy work that isn't actually difficult, its just hard to motivate yourself to actually do it. So I'm a little behind on that, and I don't know what the results will be.
I'm still a little lonely here as well. I only really know a handful of people in Ohio, most of which are either in my band or the friends/roommates/girlfriends of my bandmates. Or they work at the radio station. The band eats up (well, at least until recently when we just haven't been doing anything) most of my social life so I don't get out any. I've been hankering for an opportunity to just sit around and be a dork and play some video games with some of my friends but none of them actually play anything, a phenomenon I find incredibly strange.
So we shall see what all happens. Summer is a-comin', and that's my favorite time of the year, although this one looks like it might just suck.