What Up Hummingbyrd

i'm switching.

first of all, i'm switching jobs for the first time in over six years.
maybe it's just that i spent so much time in my current company, but i feel my job has become a bit too easy at times. it feels like i'm a part of Standard Equipment in here. complacency makes jacko a dull boy and drains away energy ... and i need that energy for my extracurricular activities. if i spend eight hours staring at a screen or doing something i could do in my sleep, i'll be brain dead in the evening when i try to focus on music.
this has been the best company i've been in and it's been a great experience to watch it grow but i suppose change is good. i want to stay active and keep my professional (i.e. graphic/game design/whatever) skills up-to-date.

the other switch is like an apple ad: i have pretty much stopped using pc:s. and my life's better for it.
after the 20" imac i bought the licenses for Logic Express and Ableton Live and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. making music on a computer has become something i look forward to instead of something that seems to sap away creativity. i'd like to go home now so i could transform a song that was previously boring and unstructured into a blatant hit. can i go now? please?

in these past weeks Logic has become my favourite multi-tracking workstation and the Express version seems to have all the features i really need at the moment. here's the first Ghost Monkey track I've fed it:

Dreamscape (Cheese Mix)

... and Ableton Live is probably the best piece of software i've used (at least seeing that it cost me less than 20% of a single user Photoshop license). this is a piece of software that works like my favourite hardware does plus some added bells and whistles. learning it has been fun in itself, a bit like learning new synths or drum machines has always been for me. because of this enthusiasm i end up using the characteristic features of the said instrument and thus, with Live ,the results will at first sound cold and computer-y as with this one-day-in-the-making-too-long-digidub:

Aero Dub



<3 t.. / polyfonken

positively negative temps

frosty winter morning
colors of the sky have turned all oily
like the whole thing was made of cheap petroleum
smoke hangs frozen in between tall buildings
looking more solid than it has a right to be
first hunded or so meters of it like an impregnable wall
of heat, some carbon dioxide and waste
an obstacle for the birds
-
as opposed to the previous winter post, now it's really winter, finally. last friday we watched an inconvenient truth which, even though we probably knew most of the facts, was something of an eye-opening experience and comes highly recommended. the film hit the spot partly because the things it tells about are self-evident in here. this is january and we didn't really have snow or sub-zero temperatures before last sunday.

this is finland. i know some people think there are polar bears and igloos in here (usually the same folks who think that finland is a part of russia and europe is a country). we don't have those things ... but we should fucking have a proper winter! i never liked it much, personally, but it should start in october or november at the latest.

thank you, george w. and your army of SUV-driving soccer moms. thanks to you we'll probably be having our summer holidays in december a couple of decades from now. underwater.
fuckwit.
-
on a more positive note, i have a new computer. only after using the 20" imac for a week did i realise how much i have avoided turning on my pc, how uncomfortable it has been to use. makes me wonder whether i would still be using hardware to do music if i had had a mac for the past ten years ... or would i be doing some glitchy laptop electronica...?

<3>