Last Updated on 08.24.09

(We got an XBOX 360 here.  Not gonna be apping as much, yeah.)

Howdy, friends...both new and existing.  I am going to use this space to explain a few things so that I might just point to it rather than repeating myself infinitely.  This 'blog' is pretty much used only for my apps now and you can find my real blog by googling 'BrapBlog' (or from visiting my actual website), as Myspace calls it 'spam' when I try to link it, which is retarded.

1) This is a music (or band, but it's just me) account and some of the apps just plain don't show you these (me...) to invite...say, some Zynga games, for instance.  Please use the links below to add yourself.  Many of the games show me just fine, too.

2) If you send me the Kiss Me or Hotties For Sale or Green Planet apps, I will deny them.  I have no interest.  Boys vs. Girls?  NO.  Anything 'pets'?  Doubt it.  (I'm a cat person...but real cats.)  Stick to the games with me and things go a lot better.  These above are NOT games, they are ad revenue generators.  Wake up.  Play something that requires some actual strategy or something.  Or don't.  But don't expect me to join.  I block the ones I don't like (about 30 now...), but some of these just won't block, dammit.

3) My Top Crews are full.  You may add me to yours if you like, but someone else has already taken 'your slot' in mine.    Just the way the cookie crumbles, eh...especially when I have thousands of friends and most of them are really new.

4) I only regularly play a very few apps anymore.  Use the add links below and hopefully they will work for you.  I spend very little of my attention on inviting, but accepting is always easy...and many of the games have gotten better at showing me in the listings.

Games I prefer (in no particular order):

You can add me in others and I might accept to give you the bump, but I really have no interest in them.  Seriously, I must have 40 apps blocked already and more accepted.

This post will be perpetually updated to reflect where I am at and what I find interesting in the apps.  Apps are kind of evil.  Did you know that? 

ALSO, if you would like another easy add for apps, you can hit my wife up by simply clicking here.  She'd appreciate it, too.  :)

Also, ALSO, you can add my best friend, Ed, who likes Street Racing a lot, by clicking HERE.

P.S.  If you post a comment as a request to add, I do read it and act on it, though you will never see it; I moderate the comments just to keep this detritus off my music profile, sorry.  If you send me a comment regarding Hotties For Sale or Kiss Me, I actually curl my lip in disdain as I click Deny.  If you don't know why, start at the top and read it again.    But don't take it personally, please.

Ah, Saturday morning, no cartoons.  I am sitting here staring at Legos on CNN Headline News...what magic the word inspires in me...like a little well that bubbles forth a bit more each time the word "Legos" is heard...or even read.  :)  They have been a part of my life since I was a wee pup (to varying degrees) and I intend to make them even more a part of my life; we started using them in jewelry.

Last weekend in Big Sur, Manda and I caught quite a lot of attention over the Lego bracelets and earrings we displayed.  It's hard to get much funner in personal decoration than drilling (I love my Dremel!) and stringing Legos...they bring smiles on a number of levels (read: EASILY).

Ableton Live is like working with Legos...if you don't get that, never mind.  Some of you did, surely.

Anyway, I just felt the need to shout out one of my favorite, most inspirational words.

Peace.
Brap

OH MAN, what a show last night.  Manda and I went to see Skinny Puppy last night in Santa Cruz (California...) at a club that I haven't been in years...The Catalyst.  I know I have been there a handful of times, but almost always on a guest list and getting so drunk the show ends up a hazy memory (at best) with no stub for later recall, even.  I know I saw Pigface there way back when.  Maybe RevCo.  Helmet, I think.  Who knows...it's damn near local for us, it's such an easy drive of about an hour tops.

Okay, I must say most emphatically that these guys has long, long been of enormous musical inspiration for me.  My nick (Brap) is derived from them (and for damn good reason) and has been for 20 years...do you get the inklings of how far back my relationship with this band goes?  Yep...pretty far.  Hell, THEY have been around since the early 80's and touring almost exactly as long (with a long break in the middle due to the death of a member, Dwayne, who I knew a bit) and they have had all the trials and tribulations of any Great Band.  I could talk about them for days, but that's what Wikipedia is for, right?  :)

Anyway, AWESOME show.  I recommend anyone who likes them get out there and see them on this tour.  They were about the best they have been (to me) since the Too Dark Park Tour (which I saw 3 consecutive shows of, whoah, what a week, yep) and *everyone* had a great time-- it was obvious.

Now it's time for dinner.


Peace!
Brap

I suppose I should say something about 'The Dander Lion'...my newest track.  You might notice quite quickly that it has no drums and kinda sounds like it should.  Decidedly a passionate piece, but no thunder to accompany the lightning?  Well, yes and no.  No and yes.

No is complicated...the entire song took quite a number of hours and is derived from one short piece of music I recorded in a number of minutes.  Using Ableton Live, I bounced tracks as gleefully as I desired from moment to moment, using the original recording as my only source material and effects of quite varying natures to change the sound as I went, sometimes compounding it, sometimes ditching the old for the new.  For me, it was really the first time I had the ability to freely pursue this kind of experiment.  Learned lots.

YES, because the drums *are* there...you can hear them...but no drums were used.  *I* certainly can hear them.  I have tried to add them a few times and been thwarted.  Someday, maybe...it seems to want to be what it is, so far.  BUT, there's vocals being worked up many, many miles away in The Wicked State of Nevada(TM) by my buddy Whelp.  He is the person most familiar with my music, being about the only audience I had for years.  You should hear us throw down a brap.  It's somethin'.  Anyway, no drums....yet.

I should also mention that the dander lion herself is my cat, Miette Ubercute Allgood.  No 'Miss', either; we gots her fixeded and that point is moot.  'Ms.', if anything.  She's a royal terror and love.  She sits and watches me as she listens to me...well...as she wonders what the hell my hands are doing and where is all that noise coming from.  She likes what might be called 'Orbital tones' lots.  ;)

Oh...and all three posted tracks are available for free download.  Share and enjoy all you like.  Sell it, though, and we'll come hunt you down.  I have ninja swords around here somewhere.  Don't uff with me, eh. :-/

Peace.

Howdy.  Life has been a bit exciting lately.  I have drastically upgraded my home studio of late and have SO MANY toys to play with now, I dunno what to do with myself-- but I am figuring it out.  :)

Check it out:

- new reference monitors...sweeeet ones
- new DAW - Ableton Live 6 - YOWWW!
- new E-MU keyboard controller...I dig the feel and size
- new ideas...it took a week to read the signs,
   but inspiration arrived when asked for...always have faith  :)

SO, in a first tentative step towards pursuing my newly discovered inspiration, I offer up this recording entitled "Cubist1-2".  It was crafted in Ableton starting with nothing more than a _very_ basic loop that was easy to capture.  Once I had this loop, I struck out along a dark path of math and intuition that suddenly (hours later, heh) left me with "Cubist1-1".  This morning I took the tracks and lightly remixed their content relative to each other (which has little to do with how they were derived...which was quite independently) to allow "Cubist1-2".  Enjoy.  I do.  It has more evolution to experience yet, but I am now excited to move on to Cubist2, now.  :)

Math in music can be fun.  ;)


Peace, y'all.
Brap Allgood

I am pleased to announce that my track 'brap195' is going to be the Experimental Electronica Track of the Week at GarageBand.com.  Here's a banner:

 

I am also pleased to announce some serious upgrades in my studio here at home, finally finished...well, they will be when I get my new reference monitors, both of which will be here by the weekend.  I love Sweetwater Sound.

Cool.  :)  Peace.

Brap Allgood

Ah, yes....there is so much change afoot.  Folks are waking-up right and left, which pleases me to no end.  We were told to expect sudden, virulent change...and here we stand on the precipice...at least in The United States.

I LOVE it when they argue on Capital Hill, most especially when they are arguing with The Criminal Bush.  It is long overdue (or 'just in time!', your choice) that someone put together 2 with 2 and built that square...it's like a window into truth and our future.

I mean, I was never fooled by The Bush Gang in any way, so far as I can tell.  Dubya looks pretty sweaty lately...though i didn't actually see the State of the Union speech yet, as we were buying a new tv at the time....  Still, I am digging the ensuing (slow) crucifixion throughout The Media (on the new TV, sweet).

Like I said, long overdue.  :)

What else?  Hillary!  That's exciting.  I have only very recently joined the Democratic Party (after long resisting with independents, then deciding to actually make a difference) and didn't give two shits when Bill was up there...until after he was gone, when I did sorely miss him, duh.

I think it would be fantastic to have a woman for president for a change...or for LOTS of changes, to be more specific.

It's certainly time for that, as I said to begin with....

I am very proud of what women are achieving right now...it shows a fundamental shift in the collective consciousness that needs to (is...) take (taking...) place.  I was told to watch for it sometime around the Winter Solstice of 2000 (I think...) and now I can point at it for others to see.

I mean, look around the world...even in the Middle East, things are changing for women.  How cool is that?

VERY cool.

When CNN can make me smile, I do believe the colors are brighter....

Well, I finally got this SNOCAP Mystore thing up and running...and the tracks got all wonky for some reason.  To preserve my sanity, I will only be uploading numbered tracks to Mystore (i.e. brap193, brap195...).  The only tracks that shall be granted names will be album tracks...until then, it's a definition of a recording (or 'brap') denoted by a sequential number.  They don't seem to be screwing-up these kinds of tracks at SNOCAP...I'm not even gonna try and describe what they did do to my tracks...it's stranger than me.

The plan is to use SNOCAP for a long, long time.  I'm doing my best to make a living from home and Myspace can only grow from here--it's more than 5 times as populated as it was when I joined.  They take a huge chunk of that buck, but YOU can buy me a meal by simply buying some tracks...it's up to you how good of a meal.  :)  The better I eat, the more likely I am to play and share more.  My health prevents me from doing the work I always did and, now, from playing out much...the internet shall be my salvation.

Of course, I am always willing to sign with the right offer, too. :)  Just don't expect me to tour in anything but extreme comfort....  ;)

Back to the sampling...I have been collecting the oddest assortment of snippets from the television...completely random, most run through heavy effects before the sampling.  See, I like to collect sounds and then hammer them into cohesion...I also like to create my own sounds from scratch in synths, but I find the random stuff saves time and can be more exciting.  I don't want to steal from anyone, so I keep it as obscure as possible...it's all about tonality and fitting into the overall mix.  I ramble.  Time to get to it.

Last night we watched this movie called The Oil Factor that was highly educational, if not exactly a breathtaking display of entertainment.  :)  It's about the current US administration and the 'war' in Iraq and how the two met.

Personally, I saw much of this stuff go down without the blinders that many of my peers were suddenly stricken with after 9/11...it's nice to see some other folks putting the information together in such a way as to be easily absorbed in a couple hours of viewing.  This new trend of 'infotainment' is nice...it's changing the world, in some ways.

AND SPEAKING OF CHANGE...the triumphant takeover of the House and Senate yesterday--one finally led by a woman, no less--was breathtakingly beautiful.  Change is a afeet and the shoes are looking nicer each day....

 :-p

Peace!

Brap Allgood