POLYFONKEN LOG

Spring Cleaning (a.k.a. It's All Gone Soon Enough!)

2008-04-02T16:50:00.004+03:00

So, it's a new day. I'm off big companies (at least for now) and working in our very own Secret Exit Games. Our aim is to do cool games or go bust, I'm currently an art director, graphics slave, resident musician and sound guy, parts of a game designer and a level designer. Let's see what happens. Anyhoes, if someone reads this well-hidden piece of tabloid journalism, I'm really sorry I haven't been updating.

In other related but SURPRISING and SHOCKING news, I hate polyfonken dot com. I'm pretty adept at creating static sites that have a bit of everything I put out but that are more like cd-roms than Interwebs, you know. So I'm gonna fuck it up, shake it up and make it into a whole different kind of a beast. As soon as I get some time off from work :D

See, I've never been good at keeping a diary. Even worse than in keeping a clean house and i totally suck at that. But I do create a lot of stuff for one person. So the most logical thing is to make a web page built on kind of a blog thingy that I can up stuff in and when I add a new Ghost Monkey track, it'll be shown on the front page but also on www.ghost-monkey.net or the gm subpages. Right? Interesting? Nope.

Anyways, all this, the current Polyfonken, will be gone. Good riddance, I say. It's a beautiful weather outside for once, I'm gonna go there and see what happens.

Love ya as always.

t.. // polyfonken

Turn on your radar it's getting too dark to see

2007-10-22T23:50:00.000+03:00

got back from paris.
loved it there.

i met nice people, walked a lot, got to spend time with the family..
and traveling just seems to fill notebooks with ideas.
it would be nice to know some french. like. some day.
anyways, i haven't been just sitting on my ass all the time

Turn on Your Radar rhythm
Trying to get through sketch

so, how's finland? frostbite on the lawn and plants and the morning haze look beautiful but don't hide the fact that it's getting downright inhospitable. still, i wish i had a proper camera so i could capture the beauty of it all. while there's still light.

in the future i should look for ways to make really cheap signs,
propel stencil and mixed media works.
prints for sale somewhere

umm. and
oh yeah, i need money too, guess i should start looking for something good to do about that. maybe i should stop doing pixels, i've been earning my living off the little fuckers for almost a decade!

<3,t..// polyfonken

31 years

2007-08-12T16:49:00.000+03:00

Children's Party Hour

2007-07-20T01:32:00.000+03:00

Want to hire me to compose music for children's shows?

Why not?

Why not??

t.. // polyfonken

From the Blender

2007-07-07T12:56:00.000+03:00

Here's a little mix i did. It has all kinds of songs. It's mixed together. So it's a mix.

M is FOR MIX pt.1 (LINK)

love,
t..

My Vanity Blog

2007-06-25T11:13:00.000+03:00

just a couple of links to brighten up your day:

Take-G: Wooden robots from Japan. So damn cute. If I ever produce little bastards they will have those to break ... in case I get filthy rich, that is.
Flickrvision: is almost as addictive as slickr the screensaver. Sometimes it's fun just to watch what people from all over the world are posting to flickr.
Pterodactyl porn (on youtube): This is the only porn film I'd want for myself, solely for the reason that it makes me laugh my ass off. Seriously, pterodactyl porn? What the hell were these people thinking of?
Jamming the Blues (1944): A really good live session / documentary that should make even the most stringent jazz haters come around. Just watch how happy these people are playing together.

<3 t..

Nina Simone loves me

2007-06-20T13:03:00.000+03:00

if i could sing
all of this would be much easier
then again
i can already breathe
and scowl

nyrki called mine a jack bauer -morning
get up, brush my teeth, get dressed
all in the space of two minutes
"and five minutes from waking up he's
already in a chopper"
i should probably get bigger headphones
i could blast myself awake
before the first commercials

<3 t..

Bad poetry in a tram

2007-06-16T11:09:00.001+03:00

these past couple of weeks i have been sleeping less than soundly. here's what i wrote on my way to work this week:

there was a smell of conserved wino in the tram
it felt like an invisible hand was squeezing my lungs
and, as the pressure spread, my head.
the couple of hours of sleep that i got last night
told their own oppressive story
about a time when there wasn't enough oxygen
and our beloved technology
would have lost its usefulness
what a great beginning for a sunny week

at times
depending on the situation, of course
no medication
seems like the wrong dosage for me

then again
often it seems that the whole fucking town
was on totally wrong kinds of remedies

good night
------" "------
good morning
-------" "---------
there's still some coffee left for you
thanks honey

primates have learnt to eat meat
with varying successes
primates have learnt
to live without a herd or family
with varying successes

after we have consumed all
this world has to offer
disappeared into our impossibility
the wolves and lions won't be
roaming our concrete and steel canyons
families of monkeys won't inhabit our flats
that would otherwise offer them billions of caves
to take shelter in
nope
life has to begin again
from simpler forms
beetles, cockroaches, rats, bushes, spiders
only then can the world begin to repair
the hole we'll have left

i sleep at my home
in my dream i sleep at home
i wake up
about a dozen people
are sleeping or half-awake in my room
fully dressed, as opposed to me
some of them are conversing in subdued tones
i wake up
cold
grab a t shirt
"surf instructor"
the people gradually disappear
i´m wondering whether they took something with them
later at night when they return
i forget to ask

do what you gotta do
really
do what you must

in one way or other
we're all here
searching for our fortune
happiness
balance
place in the world
pillow to think of as home
and just like those things flee from us
we sometimes have to run
into the darkness, after them
so do what you gotta do

that's it. living alone doesn't do me any good to be honest. time to fetch some coffee.

t.. / polyfonken

"zis one goez out to all my frienzz"

2007-05-17T19:41:00.002+03:00

Since it's a day off and all, I've been going through my old tunes (to find examples of music I could sell to earn cash :D) and came across a stash of my old tracks. I mixed some together for you to enjoy ... or laugh at. Whatever. Here they are:

Beer and Freebies

<3 t..

Limbo

2007-05-14T13:35:00.000+03:00

Dear diary. Sorry I've been out of touch. You see, I'm somewhat unhappy. The work stuff is very OK but separation doesn't suit me. Currently I'd like to just crawl onto some rooftop and bask in the sun on my corrugated steel bed.
Let's see how that turns out.

The upside of it all is that I'm creating new stuff - I'm always better at my personal projects when i'm not in a safe, happy place (complacency, eh?) . I made a new flash intro for polyfonken dotcom, have taken a couple of synths onto the living room table and started making simple, sad melodies and have drawn a bit more. But in the end being happier feels nicer... duh.

Days Between Days
On a positive note, we went on a date and Emma bought a camera, EOS 400D. I want one, now! Because I haven't had a fully working camera in a while, I had almost forgotten that there's a certain magic in looking through the viewfinder.

It's completely different from using a point&shoot digital like the µ mini i have used for the past two years, there's a feel of total control over the image. I start looking at things differently when carrying a proper camera, seeking textures, frames, forms and oddities.

be well!

<3,t..

Goddamn Flu!

2007-03-22T20:49:00.000+02:00

I'm suck at being sick. It's the first week at a new, exciting job and i caught a flu. The problem is, I suck pretty badly at staying in bed - even tried to invade the workplace today. After being sent back home I watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (brilliant!) and did this completely unrelated piece about repetition:

Have a fine day/night, I'll get back to you once I recover.

<3 t..

Friends are Pixels

2007-03-01T13:05:00.000+02:00

humans are quite special in that we have a strong grasp of patterns*. we are experts in spotting irregularities and seem to prefer certain kinds of mathematical ratios in construction, imagery etc (fibonacci and all that).

*this might be linked to our highly developed understanding of causalities - they can also be thought of cause/effect patterns that our pattern recognition deals with. now ... if only we listened a bit more to that part of our brain..

anyway, when the resolution gets coarse enough, pixel graphics are just grid-constrained mosaic - something that has been with us for a long time and that has survived myriad of generations of aesthetic changes. there are certain continuums that are generally more pleasing than others, simple, crisp, beautiful curves and dither patterns that just feel right. and there are all kinds of deviations that hurt our eyes - unnecessary nooks and crannies, double pixel arcs (where lines seems to form clumps, breaking the illusion of continuity) and patterns that do not flow.

which of these line divisions make nice-looking lines and which are not pleasing to your eyes?

when someone is learning pixels, they generally have to learn their mosaic. as an example, drawing a vector shape and just rendering it without anti-alias usually leads to something that's 70% there but has lots of little details that make it shoddy. if a fully realized pixel artwork was a painting by one of the Old Masters, those attempts are akin to the portraits that you can get from street "artists" by supplying a photo of your dog.
on an advanced level pixels are not about mathematical perfection and correctness of shapes, more about continuity, use of positive/negative shapes and patterns - the author must believe his/her eyes and not the tools they are using. and to be effective, you have to have your own set of "tools", the shapes and pixel line angles you know to work well.

uh .. that's about enough of pseudo-science and opinionated monologue for today, right?

<3 t.. / polyfonken

What Up Hummingbyrd

2007-02-13T10:52:00.000+02:00

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

Bossa Mortem

2007-01-24T09:29:00.000+02:00

Krushing and myself went to this battle of bands -type of an event yesterday to see Sami of Neocite and the esteemed Captain Jansson play a really good set of Alice in Soundgarden -inspired grinding. There were other bands in the event, too, bands like The Chant, Drifting Brigade and ... Postmortem.

Postmortem. Say that without wincing, would you?

I'm not going to talk about their music or talent, a thing that has sadly been detached from success anyway. We left after a few bars so I'm officially not allowed to comment. However ... (oh you know where this is going, do you?)

Had they stopped for a second and thought about differentiation they would surely have realised that (1) there are probably hundreds of bands called Postmortem, Post Mortem or Post-Mortem, at least one of them being a major death metal player. (2) looking like emo kids and choosing an irony-free name is NOT the way to go. Why? Because all the skinny self-mutilators are doing the same thing, the only ones who get noticed are the ones who latch onto the titties of a Big Record Company like ticks.

Bossa Mortem doesn't have to do that. They're different even though they can't play for shit and look like scrawny punk/metal hybrid kids. Only, Bossa Mortem wear white Cannibal Death Grinder t-shirts, jeans and sneakers instead of the common black ones. Bossa Mortem may not have much more class than their real life counterpart but at least they have a factor of differentiation on their side.

"I'd sure like to boot you blatantly underage crooners from my respectable establishment but the song you just sang reminds me of my own youth"

Unlike their real-life counterpart, Bossa Mortem will not get booted from the pub next door to the venue because they topple a few drinks while getting their pre-gig plaster on. As the bar lady approches they just break into a song, she breaks down and the whole thing is settled.

Bossa Mortem - Corpse from Ipanema
Tall and gone and dead and lovely
The corpse from Ipanema goes stalking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes "uuuuh - SCARY BITCH!"
When she stalks, shes like a samba
That skin so cool and sways so gentle
That when she passes, each one she passes goes - "uuuh - I'D CUT MYSELF FOR U GIRL"
(ooh) but I watch her so sadly
How can I tell her I love her
Yes I would cut myself gladly
But each day, when she crawls from the sea
She looks straight ahead, not at me

Ladies and gentlemen, Bossa Mortem thanks you.

<3 t.. / polyfonken

positively negative temps

2007-01-23T09:29:00.000+02:00

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>

Tried a bit of animating last night

2007-01-20T10:57:00.000+02:00

New year, new site

2007-01-15T11:03:00.000+02:00

Polyfonken dot com is new and improved. Of course most of you end up in here after being to the said site so this shouldn't be of news to you folks. Anyway, i spent a good couple of evenings on it and didn't use any nice gimmicks that would make it stand out. It's rather simple.

Since I'm currently in the business of trying to figure out what the hell kind of a job to apply to (one nice company already called less than two days after the new site was published), I've obviously been thinking about work and work ethics.

I'm no good with totally unchallenging safe jobs. After a remarkable stretch of work (creating Habbo) we spent at least a year fixing minor bugs, revising legal texts to make them fit the new teen demographic and all that kind of stuff. That was a real low point for me. My productivity had been very high, almost worryingly so, and now my job consisted of minor tweaks, some concepting, graphics and a lot of sitting around. (Note: It's possible that I actually got to do a lot even back then but after the stretch of doing Pellehyppy and Kultakala/Habbo, it sure felt like a life-sucking experience!)

For me there are few things in this world as depressing as wasted potential. And that kind of makes the whole job-seeking experience I'm about to embark on a bit more difficult: I don't want to end up doing totally brainless work (and it probably wouldn't earn me the massive amount of money I need to keep ahead of the loans etc.) but at the other end of that scale are thing like:
* overtime: a sign of lousy co-ordination if anything ... and I like my life.
* management jobs: I want to do stuff, not push pencils.
* huge companies: in my experience these end up making people a part of a machinery, usually one that's too big to be really effective. And I do not come with spokes.
* moving abroad. can't do this right now.

Let's see what happens. I surely can't do everything I want to and at least the music bit I have no pretensions of wanting to do professionally.

Anyways, enough of that. I did a new version of a Polyfonken tune yesterday. It's called "9 volt girl", and another one from day before that:

Nine Volt Girl

Frettimetsa

Office Space

2006-12-01T14:09:00.000+02:00

There was a theory that it would be beneficial for the average IT worker to be able to gaze far when they lift their eyes from their TFT/CRT:s. I'm sure that the people responsible for this fine thinking were thinking of a sight akin to the windows "green pastures" wallpaper, not of boring white office furniture and someone's neck.

Boy, this really relaxes your eyes and brain. I think employee number 143 needs to trim his neck hair a bit ... mmmmmmmm ... nice white, oh look, there's a stain.

I hate "open" offices filled with uniform white tables and displays. The thing that commonly passes for work is mind-numbing enough without having to share it with 20 or more co-employees, all in one large off-white space, careful not to make too much noise, always aware that their superior might walk behind them and interrupt their googling. I work better when i'm not in some fucking herd. I believe in a creative mess (being one), these offices are very much not fit for me. Maybe for herd animals or some financial people.

Some years back there was this tendency to separate working areas with glass walls. Great, I can't hear you but see what you're doing. Meaning that there will be no communication but you still don't get to work (avoid) in peace... Where the hell is the point with that, the whole idea must have been coined up by a retared CEO who wishes to show off his offices to the investors very often but doesn't want the said investors exposed to the kind of language that the workforce uses. Fucking hell.. I'm pretty convinced that without cocaine we would never have such contraptions.

<3 t.. / polyfonken

winter equals bbbbrrrr

2006-11-09T14:28:00.000+02:00

i spent an hour or so yesterday sketching this stuff on illustrator. i'm really getting into that POS and the excellent, free scriptographer plugin that lets me write my own tools. i even flexed my puny javascript skills and created a highly controllable n-sided polygon spray tool for the snow in that picture. MAD SKILLZ!

it would be nice to learn a bit more coding but to be honest i'm already interested in graphics and music and doing game/concept design for living ... and with only 24 hours a day there's only so much one can stretch to.

<3 t.. / polyfonken

Look Alive

2006-11-07T10:03:00.001+02:00

hiya!

along with my inevitable escape plan i've also been thinking of other kind of busting out.

what's live music?

i've been thinking of doing a solo live set of polyfonken stuff (with some of my ghost monkey bits as bonuses). but it would be just me, a sequencer/sampler and maybe a small synth i could turn the knobs of.

the most boring live shows i've seen have been those featuring lonely guys with their shiny laptops, usually doing some glitchy trickstery. just mousing away, maybe nodding to the overtly complex beat they're currently raping. no seeming correlation between the flegmatic mousing and the attention-deficit music. the audience either drinking their drinks and talking or, if the "music" is loud enough, on the dancefloor looking at the guy, trying to nod to that needlessly glitchy shit.

seriously, for me that stuff is even more boring than listening to finnish academic musicians playing "world" music or their weedless version of dub. of course there's a distinct possibility that it's just me. that the rest of the world is content with laptop live shows.

yeah. maybe it's just me but i wouldn't want to end up being the guy boring his poor audience to premature death with his laptop-sturbation. even if it has knobs and flashing lights, the sequencer/sampler can be seen as a huge laptop. not as shiny and mousey as those guys use but something that could be kept on my lap if the said lap was a bit stronger. and i wouldn't be doing a lot of actual playing, just like those guys aren't. Besides, i only have a single pair of hands.

but it would be nice to play some tunes live. maybe if the music was loud enough? if i would only play house and really distorted and loud amen variations?

I don't know.

---
Mountain Sketch

Sonic Sketches (batch #2)

2006-10-30T15:00:00.000+02:00

Hi kidders!

The winter seems to be hitting this part of the globe soonish. Emma moved to my our place yesterday and we're surrounded by boxes. Boxes good. If it gets too cold, we set the boxes on fire.
Here's some more skeleton tunes for you to enjoy.

Stressirytmi / Stress Riddim
Patterna Magica
Polaris Rhythm
Metal Balls Rhythm
Kbab Donor
As far as these ships take us

love,
t.. // poly

bilingual motivational image

2006-10-26T13:56:00.000+03:00

Sonic Sketches (batch #1)

2006-10-25T10:02:00.000+03:00

Welcome to yet another blog. I aim to bore you with my ramblings but first it's time for some audio terror.

Traditions for two (sketch)
Waiting (sketch)
Switched on skit
Work Avoidance Ninja

4 quick and rough sketches, mostly just MPC&machinedrum, pretty much recorded live (which explains why they're quite long to be so empty). Some day maybe one or two will become Real Tunes.

Spanner

Played with ms 20 and a bent digital delay yesterday. Very therapeutic.

Public Transit (sketch)
Stop motion sex (sketch)
Windshield (sketch)
Power Pill (sketch)
Liberteen (sketch)
Domination (yesh)

Another batch of quick sketches for your amusement.

And finally, an extended boring mix of my golden oldie, Assas(s)ins:

Assasins Boring Bomb Bass Phat Mix

That's about it for now, tell me what you think..

love,
t.. // poly