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pilgrimOmega



Last Updated: 10/28/2009

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Status: In a Relationship
City: Regina
State: Saskatchewan
Country: CA
Signup Date: 10/12/2006

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Friday, March 06, 2009 

Category: Music
Have a look at the new video for Beaujolais and String Theory, and if you are up to it, please enter the contest!

It's supposed to be fun.

Beaujolais and String Theory
8:57 PM 
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Friday, December 19, 2008 

Current mood:  rejuvenated
The Radio Under The Pillow EP is to be released January 17 2009. Stay tuned for details on purchasing.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who comes by to listen, and I hope the EP is something you will enjoy.

All the best for the coming New Year, for all of us! We could use it. ;)
1:24 AM 
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Friday, October 17, 2008 

Current mood:  high
Category: Music
Here's the news:

Album is almost mixed. Blew a monitor. Waiting for replacement. One song left. Been having MRI's and shit for a persistant, almost paralyzing back pain. A lot of medication is in these veins.

All in all, an interesting life as the old curse goes.

Follow up to Radio well into being written.

For anyone still out there following along...the shit is coming. And I hope you like it when it gets here.

stace/pilgrim
2:58 AM 
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Wednesday, July 02, 2008 

Current mood:  enlightened
Category: Music
First of all, happy birthday, Canada!

It's a national holiday for us Canucks today, the birth of our nation. 141 years!

OK, pardon the patriotism.... ;)

I've had a really busy couple of past weeks here, getting married on June 14th to the best friend I've ever had, and ever will have.

I also received my new monitors, a pair of M-Audio BX8a's....and they've really opened my ears up to what I am doing.

Which brings me to my next point: the EP is very close to completion now.

With the new monitors, I am now putting the songs through their final mixdown and I think I've been surprised a number of times. The demos, as you hear them here on MySpace and other places online, are about the best I could do with what I was previously using, and now...

Well, now, it's something else entirely.

I think that the final versions of these songs, plus the ones that no one has heard yet [been saving some new material for the E.P. - It just didn't feel right only putting songs I had already posted online in demo form], are actually gonna be worthy of releasing.

It's something I am going to be able to stand behind.

That's a great feeling.

So is this:


10:26 AM 
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Thursday, June 05, 2008 

Current mood:  adventurous
Category: Music


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIqSIv_OMXM

object width 425 height 355 > param NAME movie value http://www.youtube.com/v/NIqSIv_OMXM&hl en&rel 0 > /param> param NAME wmode value transparent > /param> embed src http://www.youtube.com/v/NIqSIv_OMXM&hl en&rel 0 type application/x-shockwave-flash wmode transparent width 425 height 355 > /embed> /object>

3:29 AM 
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Saturday, May 24, 2008 

Category: Music
"The Radio Under the Pillow" EP is finished, save some mixing and mastering that I would like to do on it before I deliver it.

I've conceptualized the full length follow-up in my usual, left-field way.

I am a child of the Seventies, no doubt about it.  The things that continue to influence and inform my creative process is the stuff I was immersed in as a kid.

Chrome, wood and glass furniture. Sci-fi concepts and imagery from the 60's and 70's. Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica. Star Wars. The Black Hole. Logan's Run. Planet of the Apes and Omega Man. Hell, toss in Soylent Green too. The Charlton Heston Trifecta, if you will. Intellivision video games. Top loading VCRs. Anything that evokes the youth I had, and the imagination that formed during that time.

Somehow, it comes out. The soil I was grown in continues to adhere to my creative skin, like dirt on a carrot freshly pulled from the garden.

The full length follow up is called "PXL80R - The Last Converter".  Pronunciation: "Pixellator".

My concept for the album art:



"The Radio Under the Pillow" is slated for summer release this year, in association with type3music.

If you want to be a working musician who can live off their work without falling prey to the major label vampires who will try to eat your soul, follow that link.

It's worth it to see how good reality can be before you start buying into the fantasies that Simon Cowell and the majors want you to believe.


9:03 PM 
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Friday, April 18, 2008 
Linkin Park :Shadow of the Day vs: U2: With or Without You.


2:40 AM 
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Friday, April 11, 2008 

Current mood:  accomplished
Category: Blogging
Back in the old band days, one time we ended up getting the opening slot for "Fight" on a leg of their North American tour. For the uninitiated, "Fight" was [at the time] the latest music project of Rob Halford, legendary singer for "Judas Priest".

If I need to explain who Judas Priest is, just go ahead and skip the rest of this story.

OK, for the metlers out there (metlers, of course, the Southern Ontario phonetically spelled word for "metallers"), here we go.

When we heard we got the slot we were all kind of freaked out. To us, I guess Judas Priest were kind of legendary. I mean, they sit at the table with Zeus, Apollo, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. Still, it doesn't really sink in until you see Halford for the first time, in the room.

In my case, it was even weirder.

The tour got off to a really bad start.Killer bad. We left Toronto to hook up with the tour in Texas. The first show? A metal festival in Corpus Christie, Texas, a place with some very nice beach front area.

In those days, we had a few more people to drive than back when it was mostly me, and Dean, the drummer. Well, at one point it was ONLY me, and Dean.

I digress.(Yes, a lot, in fact most of the time. Part of the ride. Whaddaya want? It's free) :) ;)

It was about 4am, and I had just taken over driving in Toledo, Ohio. Going south on I75, I was listening to KISS "Destroyer" on tape, but not too loudly because it was just me and Adrian, a reporter from MEAT magazine riding shotgun who were awake.

There was a transport on each side of me, and we all crested a hill at the same time, going about 60 MPH.

There, in front of me, a car. Stopped. Lights off. Both truckers start honking, I make a choice and signal right, slam the brakes and crank. It just didn't work out. Here I am driving a 35 foot motorhome with an 8 foot trailer with all of our gear in it behind me.

The truck to my right got in front of me. Which might have saved our lives, really. I cranked it hard right (in fact, I cranked it so hard that I bent the metal steering wheel over at about 45 degrees) but I still caught the car in front of me, directly on my left front side. The wheel housing crumpled in and blew that tire. I remember seeing the car slam forward (it was at a complete stop and I was still going at least 55 when I hit her) and I remember seeing this splash of blonde hair snap around in the glare of the headlights.

And then it was a guardrail I was rushing at. We'd kept going right. I twisted the wheel left, hard, and swung across two lanes towards what I knew was a grassy median that I had seen.

We came to rest there, half on the asphalt, half in the ditch. I looked back and finally I could hear. Everything really did get quiet. Like, how the depict it in that first battle in Saving Private Ryan.

While I have dreamed about that night since, I cannot recall the sounds of any of the impacts. All I remember is looking briefly at Adrian during the crash and watching his mouth move while I distinctly heard the voice of Yoda in my head, saying "do or do not, there is no try". I wish I could say I was joking, but sadly, the blood of a true geek runs in my veins and I channeled the gods wisdom as I believed it to be.

I yelled, something like "Is everyone alright?" Everyone was fucking alright, and they let me know. Having been sleeping, I think most of them assumed that I perhaps had done the same. Thankfully, Adrian was there for it.

So, they checked in, and I was never so happy to be sworn at. I tried to open my door but it was crunched in. I think I kicked it open like I saw dudes do it in the movies, but I actually don't know for sure. I ran for the car. I kept seeing that glowing halo of blonde hair around that head rest. And then it snaps forward into blackness.

I ran for the car, and I remember thinking "If this bitch is alive I'm going to fucking kill her! Oh God don't let her be dead don't let her be dead..." that pretty much was all I could keep in my head.

It's the only time in my life where I thought I was responsible for someone's death, and unless you've never felt that, you can't understand it. It's so weird, I can't explain it.

I got close enough to look in. Saw the slumped body fallen over into the passenger floor area. She was dead.

I swear she was.

I collapsed...the adrenaline had shut off from the accident, and then seeing it....

As luck would have it, there was a couple of state troopers at another (far more minor) accident site, on I75 North.. I remember seeing them, lights firing into life, swirling red and blue and realizing that the sun was just starting to come up because I could see the dirt and grass spinning out from their back tires as they ripped across the median to our accident site.

I think by then some of the guys had caught up to me, but everything starts to blur from here. I remember one trooper opening the car door, and leaning in. He immediately stuck his head out, looked at the other trooper, and said one word. "Booze".

I remember watching the impossible. I saw a dead woman walk.

I remember someone telling me...a cop or .. I dunno. One of the guys. The woman was drunk. So drunk she had run out of gas and passed out. She'd had a fight with her boyfriend hours earlier, and started drinking. While driving away from him.

Because she was so drunk...she was unharmed. Like, not even a whiplash collar. Just a few superficial scrapes and bruises, apparently.

I remember watching the sun come up as I sat on the side of the road.

I remember an ambulance arrive. Fire trucks. News crews.

I remember one of the guys thanking me. He had walked to the guardrail and looked down to see a 45' deep hill. That would have killed us all.

I remember seeing the holes that had ripped into the side of the RV, mere inches from a sleeping Terry Landry's feet, and further down, his head. And yet none of us were injured.

I remember being at the auto wreckers and unable to take my eyes off of the RV, or the other car in the crash.

I remember next being at an airport. I think renting mini vans. I think there were two. And one towed our completely intact trailer and our uninjured gear.

I remember being in the passenger seat while, I think both Christian and Chris drove. And Dean. I don't think I did. If I did, guys, and you are reading this, I was in shock and I don't remember doing it. How's that for scary? Sorry, but hey, we all lived.

I remember being interviewed by a cowboy DJ. I don't remember what he asked or what I said.

I remember the ocean.

I remember thinking that playing an outdoor concert to 22,000 hard music fans was an awesome thing to be able to do. I remember all the brown faces in the crowd, smiling, cheering, throwing beer in the plastic cups. I remember white teeth.

I remember feeling so happy to be alive...and thinking that I was the luckiest guy in the world to be doing exactly what I wanted to be doing in life.

I used to stand on the far right of the stage during most of our shows. My rack of gear that I was always fiddling with would make me face into the wings on the right.

I remember turning to load a song on my sampler for the next song, and looking up. About 10' away, behind the curtain, stood Rob Halford. The song started so I started along with everyone.

I looked back during the song, as we played, and Halford was grooving out to our song. Bobbing his head along to the song, nodding at me when he saw me looking. He was digging it.

They guy who co wrote and sang some of the best metal songs in musical history was digging something I was a part of.

I thought back to the accident, just 2 days earlier, everything that led up to realizing that I was having the most fun anyone could have and still be legal...and then seeing Rob Halford enjoying the music I was a part of creating. There's no drug that can beat that. Why do you think Mick and Keef still tour? It ain't because they need the money, honey.

It seemed as though I had the personal blessing of the God of Metal music to live in that moment, and to remember to go back there any time things don't seem how I think they should be.

I still remember to go back there sometimes.

I find I don't need to as much as I used to. I find that now, I am looking for something new to remember.

Something yet to come.

Which is always cool.
4:11 AM 
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Thursday, February 21, 2008 

Current mood:  artistic
Category: Music

1. Watch some cool ass* science fiction movie, probably while in an altered state.

2. Fixate on the thematic elements of the film, while focusing on visual and auditory cues that underscore those themes. toy with it for a week or so and then...

3. With the movie playing on my tv that's positioned right beside my workstation, I then start to noodle around with different sounds...sometimes inspired by the score, or the sound effects, or just something that uses audio to approximate how I feel a certain set or theme should "sound".

4. I usually get some basic chords down first (face it, all my stuff is basic), but I guess what music I write for my songs is usually done first. So, I get my chord progressions in order while I cycle through patches. Once they are locked down...

5. The rhythmic elements are next. About half the time, I start with a bass line to the chords. If I don't think I am gonna do anything too serious with the bass, then I do the drums first. A custom combi preset that has a redrum with all channels submixed into a mixer.Out through some effects, and into the next rewire channels to the DAW.

EDIT [2-21-08]:>>> Upon further reflection, I'd like to amend 4 to include the fact that often, the drums (loops or whatever I program) used can often cause me to go back and tweak the bass line for complimentary rhythms or notes.

6. I usually use a couple Dr. Rex's with additional drum loops to build up the drums at points.

7. I start noodling with additional melodic components with (what I hope are )complimentary synth sounds.

8. If I have done any sample chopping or anything in the DAW (I've been using Reason for everything but sample manipulation. I will do short hits/drums/ or whatever but if I get glitchy I just prefer the DAW)then it's in place, and by now the song is half arranged.

9. After coming in from the garage for a brief talk with my spirit guide (subtext, read between the lines man) I'll lock down my versions of chorus, verse, bridge, etc etc and get it in line.

10. What was I saying? Oh yeah. Hey, wanna watch a movie?

What the hell. A footnote? This post was big enough for a footnote? I get talky. Ooops! Anyway, about that movie...

* (for my purposes, "cool ass" would be defined as a certain number of films made from the mid-sixties to the late seventies. Reference Logan's Run, The Omega Man, Planet of the Apes, THX-1138, etc)

9:57 PM 
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Tuesday, February 12, 2008 

Category: Friends
Thanks for listening, everyone!

;)
12:58 AM 
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