Rhythmic Symphony

RS is playing live at Bruno’s this Saturday. Swing by…

08/25/2007 10:00 PM - Bruno’s Saloon
8501 E. Colfax Ave
Denver, Colorado 80220

I made it all the way to chapter 9, which makes the book almost complete since I made the decision to cut the length from 16 chapters to 12. I figured 16 chapters was a bit much to sit through anyway.
The show at Acoma plaza yesterday was a lot of fun, even with the brief threat of rain. Thanks to everyone that came and stayed, even with the rain drops.
So, okay… now to may favorite reason to write these posts: to rant.
My brother and I had been talking about what makes people get so peeved when an individual decides to take their individuality “too far.” Here’s what conclusion we arrived at….
Society, especially ours, is the most productive when conformity reigns. I agree with this to an extent because I believe in an absolute right and wrong, an ultimate truth, an inter-reality. If everyone drove how they wanted to driving would be a perilous and time consuming task. However, we’ve put rules in place to make sure everyone conforms so we can get were we need to smoothly and with relative safety. Unfortunately our business run society takes it quite a bit farther. There seems to be a set of ideals that you are expected to accept and profess without thought or argument. If an individual openly questions the validity of a “common sense” ideal then people quickly get annoyed and even volatile. The best we can tell, this is because our merchant run society praises the man who fits in the best with the money making empire. Now, I just want to say for the record that I don’t have a problem with money. Money is just a system set up to make things easier. It’s the idea that we should spend our lives attaining as much money as possible that irks me.
The average joe is just trying to be what he is told he is supposed to be, and when someone like me comes along and brings up a non-approved topic or an uncommon view, or especially if I start to think stuff through out loud, it throws off his groove. It’s like he’s trying to be the guy who’s got the right opnions and has all the money and all the toys and all the babes and power, and then here comes some jerk to unknowingly put a stutter in his mojo!
So to all of you who I’ve offended by throwing off your groove, I’m sorry. I’d like to think it’s what I do, though. Not for the purpose of screwing up your mojo, or whatever, but because it’s good to think things through every once in a while.

Rhythmic Symphony will be performing at Acoma plaza (Denver) this Wednesday. This show’s in the middle of the day, so get lunch to go and we’ll see you there!

08/15/2007 12:00 PM - Acoma Plaza @ The Denver Public Library (West entrance)
14th and Broadway
Denver, Colorado 80204
Cost: Free

Well, my one-song-a-week resolution pretty much died with this last song. But hey, I’ve never done a song in 5/4 time! Writing the music wasn’t too hard, but writing lyrics that can be sung to the beat without loosing your mind has been more than frustrating. After much straining of my brain and emotions I think I’m about ¾ of the way done. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be murderously incredible I think I’ll be a better artist for it.
My latest mind munch is probably going to offend some of you, but don’t take it too deeply to heart… it’s only my thoughts, not a fact. Anyway, a friend and I have been arguing about the innate specialness of every human being. I feel that human beings are all different, but in all being different we are made unspecial. For there to be special people there has to be a lot of mediocre, normal people. How can all six billion of us be special? We are all unique in some way or another, but being a unique human being is average. How do you think CEOs, rockstars, and politicians become successful? By pushing themselves beyond the mediocre uniqueness they were born with! Everyone has talent; talent is mediocre. Some have talent in something that is more highly revered in our day, but everyone has a talent.
So, I’m not saying this to make everyone depressed and belittled. If anything the moral of the story is go make something of yourself! Everyone is unique, and there will be people who will love you for you are. But that’s also a mediocre trait. If you want to be truly special then go do something or be somebody that is beyond the norm!
… hey, look how short it is. I told you guys I could make a short entry.

This Thursday the new RS will be performing with Situation @ JC’s Ground in Denver! This’ll be the first show with Matt on the electric geeeetar, and Amber on vocals. Don’t miss it!

July, 19 2007 at JC’s Ground 8 pm
15th and Champa, Denver, Colorado
Cost : $60,000

I’ve made good so far of my new commitment to write a chapter/song a week until I’m finished with Book 1. Yesterday I finished Chapter 6, a song that will bare (bear?) the title of something like “Revelations” or “Something or other about truth.” I’m excited to play this one live ’cause it packs a lot of emotion and it’s a fun, upbeat, trancy sort of track… except that it’s in 6/8 time. Trust me though, it’s good fun. Very danceable. I’ve been contemplating writing chapter 7 in 5/4 time, but we’ll see.

I’ve been thinking about time again lately, mainly because a friend of mine (Jake Pawlowski) who brought up a theory of his about it. He also mentioned that he found out that someone already came up with it and called it something like “The Now” theory. It;s kind of the curse of all mankind; If you have a great idea someone probably already thought of it. I think my inter/intra reality theory is great, but I’m sure someone’s already thought of it and published it under another name. Oh well. At least we’re figuring these things out ourselves, right? Anyway, the idea of time has always confused me, or at least as it is always presented. It seems like everyone thinks of it as a physical thing. Like we’re in a car moving down a road and if we could just figure out how to turn around we could go back in time to where we were. But, in my complete uneducatedness, this is what I think. Time is just a handy notion that we’ve created to give order to past, present, and future events. It’s like a measurement, but one that’s easily distorted. I could be wrong, but I think we measure time by the decay rate of atoms, or something like that. The problem is that this rate of decay is significantly altered under certain conditions, like intense gravity sources. I’ve heard it said that in a black hole the gravity is, theoretically, so much stronger that it speeds the passing of time. So if someone could go into a black hole and come back out, we outside of the the black hole might have only experienced a day, while the guy who went in had experienced a year. I may be totally misunderstanding the whole concept, so correct me if I’m way off here, but it seems like this is wrong. I don’t think that the guy inside would have experienced more time as we think of it, but perhaps his body would be more decayed. It’s more like the device for measuring the passing of “time” is becoming distorted. Let’s say you have a plastic cup you are using to measure out flour. If you apply a flame to it will start to warp and maybe stretch, making the cup’s capacity grow. But the flour inside the cup remains the same amount, well… unless it catches fire or something. But the point is that stretching out the cup doesn’t multiply the contents. The way we measure “time” is faulty because it is not a constant. My friends idea, the “Now” idea, is that it’s just always now. The past only exists in our memories. It’s not a physical place that we can go back to, and the future is not a physical place that we can go forward to. All there is is now. Time is just an artificial construct made by movement. Even if we could make things exactly like they were in 1600 B.C. it still would just be a xerox of the original, and it would still be the present. Anyway, that last part was Jacob’s thinking, but it fits in pretty well with my theory.
Was that as long as the last journal post? Sorry if I broke my promise to not make this one so long.

Keeping a blog (a real, true blog. Not just updates on concerts and the like) is a tricky thing for a band. Every release, review, concert and passionate exclamation point is taken into consideration by the fan. I tried keeping a, shall we say intimate, blog for a while, but I decided maybe my opinionated attitude wasn’t in the best interest for RS. Well, in the tradition of throwing past resolutions to the wind, I’m gonna take another whack at it.

I finally finished Chapter 5 of The Envaryan Chronicles; The Epistemological Path. While the lyrics came fluidly enough, the music was viciously uncooperative. It’s funny how there are songs that just kind of materialize within a few hours or so, and there are songs that I labor over for weeks upon weeks. In the end I show off the sum of my labor only to be confronted with “Oh yeah. That one’s okay I guess. But that real popish one with the four-on-the-floor beat; that one’s great!” Oh well. At least it’s hit and miss, instead of miss… miss.
After several false starts I settled on a sort of minimalist/retro feel for the track. The chapter is comprised of the simple dialogue between Cinder and Dorie as they are on their way to the house of the Keeper of the Book of Knowledge, making in the first chapter in book one that is less about building the story line and more about a stray idea.
It’s all based off of a theory that I’ve been bouncing around in my head ever since I took my first philosophy class last Fall. My professor was a proclaimed epistemological relativist. We studied the topic with no lack of debate and raised voices, but while I couldn’t quite grasp what it was; I knew something was amiss with the whole theory. I agree that at some level there is a construct that we build within our minds that dictates how information entering our minds is interpreted, and we can never step outside of our minds 9and this construct) to seek truth in pure, unbiased judgment. But then many proponents of this theory go on to say that this reality within your mind is your only true reality, and that mine is different than yours and so what’s right for me may not be right for you. I think this is partially right, but partially so wrong. Now, before you get angry, listen to why I’ve arrived at this conclusion. To accurately convey my theory I’ve created some new terms; intra-reality and inter-reality, although I’m not entirely sure if they’re punctuated correctly. The realities that exists in all of our minds (the intra-realities) are very real, but they only reach so far and are governed by an Ultimate reality: the Inter-reality. Your intra-reality says Chocolate Ice cream is best, my intra-reality says double fudge brownie ice cream is the best, while the inter-reality says that your favorite is chocolate and my favorite is double fudge brownie. Your intra-reality says that the clock on the wall is to the left, my intra-reality says its to the right, but the inter-reality says its between us. Your intra-reality says that a car serves the purpose of getting you places and making you look good in the process, my intra-reality say that a car serves the purpose of being a get-a-way car in my secret other life, while the inter-reality is that we all use our cars for different things but a car is comprised of these components and it was designed with these purposes in mind. We may experience life from the confinement of our intra-realties, but there is nothing within them that is apart from the basis of the rules and finality of the inter-reality. So, how can I prove this without stepping from the translated confines of my intra-reality? I think the answer is simple, but then again it took me months to finally nail this down, so I could be desperately wrong. Cause and effect is something that we can even prove from the restrictions of our own minds. Whether or not a piece of data is corrupted by our minds construct, it’s makeup still effects us in predictable ways. The smell of food makes you hungry, a frightening thought gives you nightmares, the image of a loved one makes you feel all fuzzy. These patterns would not be possible without cause and effect. Therefore, from the confines of our minds we can prove this law. Now comes the part where I knew there was something wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it. How could there be a totally original mass of artificially constructed worlds? There is no original thought! There is no original dream! Our intra-realties had to be based on something. You can’t have corrupted information without a basis for the information in the first place. So saying there is no absolutes is as absurd as saying there is nothing! From our perspective we can’t really prove what this inter-reality is, but we can prove that there is an ultimate reality with rules and absolutes. Even if our intra-realties are based on another intra-reality, there needs to be a concrete cause somewhere. There has to be something that binds these pseudo worlds. Can you imagine something that you’ve never experienced? And I don’t mean like a 4 headed wolf. You’ve experienced a wolf and a head before. Can you imagine something that isn’t based on anything you’ve ever experienced? The answer is no. Something does not come from nothing.
So, wow. That was a lot longer than I’d anticipated. Here’s the lyrics to Chapter 5 if anyone’s interested. I promise not to make it so long next time.

Down this mossy path
So familiar and yet never the same
The moss under foot turns to ash
As the trees burn down and grow up again
Tell me what is knowledge, Cinder
Can it’s purest form be obtained
Or is truth tainted by minds
That can never ever interpret the same

Whatever I may hear
I wanted to, I want to hear
whatever I may see
I wanted to, I want to see
Whatever I may believe
I wanted to, I want to believe
Did we ever want to be free?
To be free

Minds build realities
Twisting facts to fit the frame
Believing in normalities
So familiar and yet never the same
I must take my leave now, Cinder
Down towards the city and my cottage
And you up through the trees to your father
The Keeper of the Book of Knowledge

There’s no original thought
No dream without an experience
All intra-realties are wrought
On the inter-reality basis

Hey all.
So RS will be playing live in Denver for the first time in quite a while, with Tristraum and DJ Dave Vendetta. The show is in honor of Randall’s (Tristraum) 40th, so everyone through the door is going to receive a copy of Tristraum’s “Gray” album, free!
See everyone Friday!

04/13/2007 09:30 PM - The City Beat Club
4040 E. Evans
Denver, Colorado 80014
Cost: $5

I finally got over my tech block (kind of an ironic problem…) and got Beauty in Dissonance uploaded to the RS myspace profile… by getting someone else to do it.
So it’s up, and available for free downloading!

It’s been a looong time since I last posted, but peole have been telling me that I have this music project called Rhythmic Symphony, so I guess I’ll just have to take their word for it… er, words I guess, and do something about it.

I’m VERY psyched to finally get started on the new material for the next release. Although I dare not give away the thrill of the suprise too soon, the album will follow a mythical story format, with each chapter in the form of a song and each book in the form of an album. I’m currently planning on making it a 3 album series, since it seems you can’t go wrong with the old trilogy approach, but you never know.

Though the distinct Rhythmic Symphony flow of the music will reamin intact (I dont think I could change it if I wanted) the feel of these new songs will be much more epic and otherworldly, like the sounds I produced in my early teen years.
Although the project in it’s entirety will not be finished for some time, I will mix some of the new songs into the live performances in the months to come. Hope all of you are having a great 2007!