Tripecac - Sixawon

According to the website, this was my 601st Tripecac song. It's also a reference to the album title. You can also pretend that I started the song at 6:01 pm, but it was more like 5:38 pm. You can also pretend that I started it on the 1st of June, but it really was the 6th of February. You can also pretend that it's a good song, but really it's yet another repetitive doodle, just like the other six hundred Tripecac songs.

Malinger, male anger. Get it?

Well, I'll try to keep this description short and sweet bitter, just like the song.

I know, I know, this doesn't sound like a lovey dovey Valentimes's Day song. The music and title are nasty and aggressive.

Fortunately, I don't have a rocky romantic life. In fact, everything is grand today, except for the fact that the microwove broke. I initially called this song "Microwoven", but after I found myself pounding away I felt I'd better name it something more fitting. I thought about "STFU" but settled for something more subtle.

"Bait" refers to what was happening earlier this week on the guinea pig forum. Typical flame war trolling. I was a sucker and fell for it, and when I started criticizing the monitor she almost kicked me off. But then I zipped it and installed some user blocking scripts (via greasemonkey), and everything is fine now.

Anyway, the last song was much too soothing (more like snoozing) for my tastes. As a followup (and wakeup) I wanted something powerful and feral, like the Fall. I knew I couldn't get a good guitar sound without the guitar (which I haven't touched in a while), so I tried to grunge things up using some ugly synth patches and weird drum sounds. I tried hard to keep everything loud, monotonous, and foot-stomp inducing.

The end result reminds me of Can, or more specifically, one of their remixes on Sacriledge. Cool. I can live with that. :)

We've been having trouble with our microwave oven(s). The one I had for over a decade finally quit, and the replacement started acting up within a week. At the same time, our washing machine stopped spinning so we had to buy a new washer. And my main computer has been crashing. Ugh!

This song aims to express my frustration with the malfunctions. I wanted it to sound jerky and stuttering (like our ailing applicances), but then every time it seems to lose the groove, I wanted the drums and bass to kick in forcefully and steadily, "fixing" things. These are supposed to represent my efforts to fix the problems. Of course, soon after I "kick things into gear", the weirdness starts up again...

So we do that over and over and over again. There are several themes woven together... at a micro level. Get it? Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Okay, sorry, I think my humor is malfunctioning too.

When it rains it bores, eh?

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Hmmm...

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

I started this on a Wednesday ("hump day") and finished it on a Thursday. Thursday plus hump day equals... yet another groaner!

The music starts off muddy and mellow. This is a let-down after the previous two songs, which are rhythmic and intense. Fortunately, I quickly got bored with the gently melody "thang", and so morphed the quiet groove into something more repetitious and syncopated. It's almost punky at times; when the high horns come in my head starts bobbing. Head bobbing is my goal, after all.

Yeah, sing along schming along, gimme some heads bobbin' and I'm happy. A happy comper. Get it???

(Ah jeesh, Travis, save the clever puns for the song titles... Don't waste them in these descriptions that no one reads!)

Ok, so anyway, the song is really long and repetitive, in a not-so-cool way. It doesn't have enough "oomph" to make it an enjoyable trance-epic. Instead, it's just muffled background music, pretty blaa if you ask me.

This is definitely not the type of music I want to create. In fact, I'm trying hard to get away from this mellow mud.

Am I repeating myself here? Am I repeating myself? Am I repeating myself?

The music and my thoughts are at least on the same wavelength. The same mellow, muddy wavelength.

Oh well, maybe the next song will have some sparkle!

Due to computer problems and a ski trip, it had been a while since I worked on new songs. The title expresses my estrangement from the music making process (Sonar in particular).

I wanted to make the music trancy, aggressive, and krautrockish. Did it work? Dunno.

"Comping" is short for "accompanying". I'm always "accompanying" myself in my music. I'm happy doing that; hence, I'm a "happy comper".

I was listening to a lot of French pop right before I started this. I've always liked the catchy, jazzy lilt to French rock. I wanted to try something similar in this song.

So, gone are the German trance-like metronomic thumpings. Say hello to almost-swinging, almost-hummable ditty-esque riffs and riffettes. Little cavy riffs nibbling at your ankles.

Hey, I just realized something; Stereolab is kinda French and kinda German (Krautrock). How do they do it??? Not that I wanna emulate Stereolab or anything; they're very listenable but I generally don't get them stuck in my head. I think I prefer the German/British combo a bit more (e.g., The Fall).

Okay, so I can take French music in small doses. Here it is: a small dose of French-influenced waste-o-tape.

Update: Upon listening to this song again, I realized that it sounds in no way French. And in no way good. It's just a blaa mellow blaa.

Yep. First it's blaa, then it's mellow, then it's blaa. Actually, it's more like blaa blaa blaa, but I'd like to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Okay, forget the benefit of the doubt. It really is blaa blaa blaa. Or even blaa yuck blaa. Or yuck yuck yuck. Or just barf puke snore. Yeah. Barf puke snore.

A happy comper is a barf puke snore comper!

I started this on the day that Giovanna found out that she passed all her CPA exams! So, it's celebratory, but unfortunately, it's also a little cheesy, self-conscious, and nervous-sounding... Kinda like the round of yellow smiley face congratulations she received in the office that day.

I'm extremely happy for her, but now that all the studying is over, there's a feeling of: "Okay... so now what?" This song has the same semi-timid "question mark" feel for me.

Hi.

Sometimes it feels like certain people only talk to me when they want favors. As soon as they get what they want, they ignore me.

"Hi Trav, how are you? Look, I was wondering if you could help me out. ... Thanks. Bye."

When people do this to me, I see right through their temporary "friendliness". Of course, some don't even bother to be friendly. They just abruptly ask for stuff, within a few seconds of initiating conversation. It's like I am a toy tree or favor tree to them. Fudge that, I say. Fudge it.

So I avoid those people. If I can. Unfortunately, sometimes I have no choice but to continue interacting with them. Nope, no choice at all.

Of course, meanwhile, other people might be saying the same thing about me: that I only talk to them when I need them. Maybe the "hi, gimme, bye" problem plagues us all. Just some more than others, I think.

Thanks for listening.

Bye.

I recently started using Microsoft's new operating system (Vista) on a new computer. At first, I found it pretty retarded, with all the "are you sure" prompts and pointless bells and whistles. Then I slowly began to see that it's really just a slightly fancier version of XP, which also seemed pretty "retarded" when I first got it (I guess). Oh well.

I'm starting to like Linux more and more these days. Of course, I still need XP for Tripecac, since Sonar is a Windows-only app.

Anyway, about this song... The music is mellow. The kick drum "heartbeat" represents the eternal dominance of Microsoft. The other sounds represent the applications on top.

What is it with April? Four days before the anniversary of Columbine and we get another one. :(

Well, this song attempts to make light of recent events (in a gentle way)... but IMO kinda shoots itself in the foot.

The memory in my new computer was giving me problems. Memtest is a program we use to test memory. I ran it and it told me that my memory had errors. So I decided to return the memory. So, like, the memory is toast, man...

Get it?

Coincidentally, while I was finishing this song, the UPS guy delivered some extra ram. Neat, huh? Yeah, I know... not really. Time to run memtest!

This song ends my first "unruled" album in ages. By "unruled" I mean there was no rule or theme to which I adhered. I just wung it for each song. This gave me total freedom, but at times I felt total boredom.

The making of this album made it clear to me that I prefer working (and playing) with rules. Time will tell whether strict rules yield better songs, or whether the rules just comfort me in the short term. Either way, I plan to have clear rules for the next album. I just don't know them yet.

Anyway, back to this final song... I wanted to make it challenging and different. So I crossed a gentle 3/4 EP dirge with a peppy, drum-laden 4/4 swing. Just to shake things up a bit.

I dunno yet if this is gonna end the album on a bang or a whimper. My guess is the latter, but that's okay. The bottom line is that [by the time you read this] the album is finally finished! That's always good news to me! :)