Last night absolutely rocked. It was a real honor to be floating about uncomfortably next to so many people with so much talent.

How’d I do? People danced to my music. Let’s get that out straight off. That was hardcore. People also remembered my name and complemented me after the gig. That to would be determined to be, were core samples taken, hard. To round off the hardcore trifecta, many of the people complementing my music were the actual winners. To me, that shows a level of respect and maturity lost on most artists.

The thing is, their music – the winners’ – was at a level of professionalism and talent totally unknown to my experiences. Were Mike on the mic to announce a song to have been from Squarepusher or AFX I would NOT have been surprised in the least. My work, in 48hrs, could not, at my present experience and talent level, be matched even for a second; imagine how it felt to have these people telling me they dig my track.

Big ups to the winners, massive respect to those hovering with me around the winners circle and a special shout to Selector Catalog: Big up your chest, rudeboy. If there is anyone that I envy out there it is you.

And a special thanks for the friends that came with me last night. It meant a lot and I am seriously stoked that you took, like, 8 hours out of your weekend to spend listening to music most of you would never listen to on your own. You rock the party that rocks the body.

I don’t know when the Ypsilanti one is this year, but I am going to enter. I am going to keep entering until I am able to make sounds like those in the winners’ circle.

Oh, one more up to big: Massive respect to the firteen crew and the blind pig massive. You make it all possible. Hell yes.

I was number 18 to turn my piece in. I was also number 19 to get the disc with the samples. There is some strange order that some mathmatician somewhere has discovered that would explain this, I’m certain, but its greater meaning is completely lost on me.

Submitted for your approval: Tanaka-no Tomodachi ROBO desu

It isn’t my best work, to be sure, but it sure as hell is better than what you’d expect from the time I put into it. The plight of this weekend has a moral, and that moral is as follows:

Software piracy is a terrible tool of the devil with which he collects the souls of teenagers, IT professionals and cheap-ass electronic music artists.

You see, FL Studio, which was suggested to me by many as the very best tool to quickly sequence tracks – Buzz being a total bitch when it comes to actually laying a track down that is not generated wholly IN it – under a time crunch, costs a hundo, and I’m not prepared just yet to shell out for a proggy that hasn’t proven itself; 48hrs is not time enough to prove yourself young pat-o-ware. Because of this unfortunate financial hurdle, I did as many in my situation would: I fired up thunderbird and hit asta.

The crack seemed to work just fine. I was saving and writing loops out with great ease, and even using a few of the nifty features FL has to offer. So far so good.

Then we take a turn toward the ominous. It is noonish on sunday – I have been up all morning working on the piece. I am fiddling through the options in FL and find a tutorial on a nifty effect I may want to try. The tutorial needs to replace my current project to display and, kindly, asks me if I want to save my work. Yes. Yes, please. I would really like to save my work. It would mean a great deal to me. Seriously. No, really.

The tutorial was great. Serious – it gets my nod for whatever the tutorial industry has in place of the oscars. Was it worth finding out that my cracked copy of FL corrupts its saves and can’t ever, with even the power of eternity, open them up again? Not even a bit.

So, there you have it. I was glitching the hell out of these samples, making the voices speak Japanese and using hisses and pops from the old recordings for drums – skinnystyle – and in a few short moments it is all gone.

“You should save your work.”
“I did, asshat – that’s the problem.”

And thusly is born Tanaka-no Tomodachi ROBO desu. It was an escape from the mortification of my loss, and is laid back and groovy because of it. A departure from the average skinnyfare, but 4.5hrs isn’t a lot of time to write a piece.

What we learned:

- FL Studio is FruityLoops in nicer shoes

- A hundo is well worth a viable shot at winning a contest

- To chill the fuck out is the best advice in situations of severe creative loss

- Buzz kicks everyone’s ass every day of the week. Trust it and you will be ok.

That said, I am exceedingly excited for the actual exposition of these pieces. There were 30 in all, apparently, and it is going to be a hell of a time listening to all of that creativity!

I just finished reinstalling buzz. It has been 6 months since I have written anything but glitch and I am starting to seriously reconsider the aaiemcc.

I can honestly say I have no clue how I am going to approach this. This isn’t something I look at with a will to conquer, it is seriously something I fear. Not the people or even the competition of it but the actual act of constructing a piece from 25 samples of someone else’s choosing.

To say that I have this control issue with composition would be missing the mark by a great deal. Remember Schumacher Levy 9? Imagine this island Earth as the mark and you’ll get the drift. I am an absolute control fiend while composing. I have spent hours on 2 bars before. No, this isn’t a ‘look at me; I am dramatic and mysterious with my self obsession’ thing – it is very truly a terrific sense of self criticism and ‘I am so going to fail’ attitude; And that is when I am writing on my own damn volition.

This; This is something else entirely. This is timed. This is my creativity channeled through 25 samples some guy in a diner gave me for $10. This is me stripping myself of the ‘if you don’t like it you just don’t get it’ deal and trying to make something that will appeal, yes, to hippies.

“A panel of musicians, producers, and music journalists will decide the top three overall compositions and winners in the categories of dancinest, shit-in pants, prod (production), still life (x-mas lights) and flywheel. Yes, you read that correctly. Flywheel.”

I’ve got no fucking clue what that means. I wish I where Les Claypool. I wish I had that gusto.