Sorry so few updates. My every spare moment has been occupied recording songs for my demo CD. The next one to hit the site will probably either be “One Man”, or “Grasping At Straws”, both of them pop/rock tunes. Unfortunately, I’ve finally come to grips with the fact that, although my singing voice has a pure tone, it’s otherwise very bland. So I’m trying to find alternative vocalists, because for me it’s the song that matters a whole lot more than who sings it.

Expect post of a tune within the next 3 or 4 days. If I can’t get the fast tunes done by that time, I’ll probably throw one of my piano solos up — they are really fast to record 🙂

Garageband, reviews, and my take

EDIT by matthew: Due to comments (read below), and for some reason the insane popularity of this particular page on my weblog, I just want to attach this notice. My opinion on “the day after” my first day reviewing bands on Garageband differs from my opinion today. I still think the average musical quality at Garageband is somewhere between subterranean and ridiculously low, but I still use the site — which, despite my criticism, shows that I still think it’s pretty good despite major flaws. There’s nothing better out there of which I’m aware at the moment. This was my “day after” reaction to doing a lot of GB reviews in a row, and the experience really stunk.

Last night I decided to sign up for Garageband.  I’d heard a bit about it, and as a community of musicians who largely spend a lot of their time reviewing other musicians, it sounded very interesting to me.  I went into this with the mindset that I would try to write positive reviews, get exposed to a lot of really great music by artists who are as yet unknown, and upload my music for peer review.

Critical Mass

 The concept is pretty good, and it seems like GB has the “critical mass” of musicians it needs to keep sustained interest.  Heck, apparently out of the 70,000 “bands” on the site, 12 have been signed, and 1 has gone double platinum.  Yeah, the chances aren’t very good if you look at the numbers, but my goal isn’t to get signed and make mondo money, it is to just get some review on my songs and maybe sell rights to someone to make a bit of spare cash.

 Hey, less likely things have been known to happen 🙂

Garageband reviewing is like earning a Ph.D. in crap.

B.S. = Bachelor of Sh–.
M.S. = Master of Sh–.
Ph.D. = Piled Higher And Deeper.

Well, after four solid hours of doing reviews in order to qualify for my first upload, allow me to share with you a bit about the experience.  The lessons I learned were these:

1. 90% of everything people think is good enough to get peer-reviewed is pure crap.
2. Once again, most of it is utter, complete, and absolute drivel. And crap.
3. It is dreck, muck, slime, useless poorly mastered nasty stuff that half the time is out of tune, and nearly half of the rest of the time is performed or mastered so poorly it’s tough to find anything positive to say about it. It’s crap.
4. If it is mastered well, it tends to have no soul. And that makes it crappy.
5. If it isn’t mastered well, at the 64kbit/sec bitrate that’s the max Garageband will pump out to you on a review (confirmed on a T-1 no less) makes it sound even worse. Crap on steroids.

Have bass, will travel!

Then there are performances themselves.  Ugh.  I listened to a band last night where their bassist had the low E string on his bass tuned nearly a full semitone flat.  Either that, or he was consistently hitting every note wrong on that string.  Another recording sounded as if it had been done with a portable tape recorder, high and tinny and barely-discernable.  And I listened to some kid with an acoustic guitar singing his heart out to a pretty boring tune, but I felt nostalgic listening to a fifteen-year-old pouring his soul into a crappy tune and had to smile.

That’s a small sample.  Not to mention the “funk” song that really should have had the “n” replaced with a “c”, because all the guy could sing about was getting it on with some chick.  He couldn’t sing for beans, but he was obviously extremely enthusiastic about his subject matter.

And I hesitate to mention the beautifully mastered but completely soul-less heavy metal tune with a very talented lead guitarist and incredibly lame drum machine and formulaic background guitars.

Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you about the clip where the drummer, bassist, guitarist, and vocalist seemed to all be fighting over who was the loudest and the most outrageous for the entire tune.

Or maybe I’ve just mentioned all of them 🙂

All told, out of the thirty reviews I completed in my first night on the job (and it really feels like a job), I’d absolutely panned about half of them. 40% of them I gave some pointers on what I felt they could improve about the tune, but mentioned that even with the improvements I probably wouldn’t buy the album because the song just wasn’t interesting.  The remaining three songs had some soul to them, generally had technical issues, but were solid tunes.

Ghetto of musicality

If you’re looking to find high-quality music from unknown bands, Garageband reviewing ain’t the place.  It’s the ghetto of musicality, the spot where wanna-be’s go to try to be heard. [Note: cruising the top-100 list by genre on Garageband is pretty fun, though. It’s generally the next seven hundred or more in the genre that suck. – matthew] I understand the “70,000 to 1” ratio there now.  67,000 of those bands are awful.  So you’re left with 3,000 bands or solo artists that might be pretty good.

Anyway, my reviews on these tunes were heartfelt, honest, and tried to be constructive to offer some input into how the performers could improve the song.  I found something positive to comment about every tune, although normally the negatives outweighed the positives at least 2:1 for each one.  I rated every song honestly, and can truly say there wasn’t a single song the entire night that I’d want to buy, and only one where I considered it “engaging” (Garageband’s highest standard of listenability).  I reviewed pop, pop/rock, heavy metal, alternative, rap (that was fun, I’m not a fan of rap but it was a blast commenting on the musicality of the performers and the performance value), R&B, hip-hop, and funk.  Some songs were definitely mis-categorized.

Rate the Reviewers

An interesting thing happened as I was reviewing, though.  I began getting feedback from the performers.  See, they rate the quality of your review, so that other performers know what kind of reviewer you are.  It is on a scale from one to five, with one meaning “this guy didn’t even listen to the song, cut & pasted nonsense words from other reviews, used profanity, and did not offer constructive criticism”, and five basically meaning “the review quality was excellent, even if I didn’t like what it said”.  The vast majority of my ratings are fives now.

But the ones bug me.

In every case where I received a “one”, I’m utterly certain the artist didn’t rate me honestly or give me the honesty my review deserved.  The only way to get a 1 is if they think you didn’t listen to the song [see comments below which qualify that this is no longer the case as of Nov 2003 – matthew], which was never the case.  30 songs took me FOUR HOURS, because I listened to most of the songs twice so I could give an accurate review on repeat listenability.
Why did I get some 1 ratings?
Well, one of the artists summed it up nicely for me.  He explained:

You don’t know who you are messing with … You’re new here, remember that … Some people here are just kids, you shouldn’t be so acerbic in your reviews.

I checked it out.  His song was another one that was just awful, poor production quality, out-of-tune instruments, and a lead singer who couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket.  He’d also rated my review a “1”, trying to imply that it was a cut & paste review with profanity where I’d obviously not listened to the song and offered no constructive criticism.  Yet I’d explained exactly what was wrong with the tune, even so far as to include the timing of the problems I heard. He was also a bit offended that I’d listened to his tune twice when I didn’t like it at all, simply so that I could offer a more constructive review of whyI didn’t like it.

I have a plausible conclusion, handed me by one of the Garageband artists:

Some artists rate their reviewers down, and are willing to lie to attempt to repair their egos, when they simply don’t agree with the reviewer’s comments.

Fair enough. Now I understand it.  It feels like an abuse of the system from where I sit, however.

The Solution?

Slashdot.org had a similar problem years ago with moderators abusing their positions; they unfairly moderated comments down that were good comments, but didn’t agree with the moderator’s opinion.  This problem was so widespread that the Slashdot editors introduced the concept of “meta-mod”.  A meta-moderator can moderate other people’s moderations as to their accuracy, on a sliding scale between “fair” and “unfair”.  The net effect of this change is very obvious.  These days, negative moderations seem to be largely performed because the opinion posted was a troll, off-topic, flamebait, or redundant — the key indicators that a post should be modded down.  The vast majority of moderations moderate upwards or not at all, and meta-mod keeps the moderators honest.  [according to comments below, Garageband is working to rectify this problem with a less anonymous system that may work as well. I await resolution with baited breath. -matthew]

Who will watch the watchers?

Now, there’s nobody keeping the meta-moderators honest, but since every citizen of the board can meta-mod almost daily, it seems to balance out (as if the bad meta-moderations get thrown out entirely).  
Garageband could benefit from a similar system.  Meta-moderation to ensure that reviewers and artists are being honest with each other, rather than just slamming one another because they disagree over a review, would be a big help to the GB community.

The Challenges

However, I think the community there suffers from another problem: Although they have nearly 300,000 subscribers, there don’t appear to be enough nearly reviewers.  My guess is that people get tired of the abuse, ingratitude, and inept attempts at music they must often review, and just walk away.  I don’t blame them.  Unless you want to pay Garageband.com $20 so you can post a song, you have to review thirty tunes to post one tune.  That’s a lot of listening time, unless you’re one of those people that like to write reviews based only on the first 90 seconds of the song.  I make far more per hour working than saving $20 for the amount of time I spend reviewing.

Saving money, however, is not the reason I review music on Garageband.

When I’m reviewing, I hear the mistakes others make and recognize the same mistakes in my music.  I’m improving my own abilities, while benefitting another artist with feedback so she can improve hers.

That’s the fun of the whole system.

I review; other musicians invite me to listen to them screw up. This helps me gain an ear that can distinguish the good from the bad, particularly since the bad is in such abundance. I learn from their mistakes and avoid them in my own music. I try to give constructive criticism in a helpful way, acknowledging the blood, sweat, and tears poured out into the music because I do the same myself. Sharing that part of the experience, the shared desire to better myself and others… that’s totally fun. That’s really the major thing that can keep me going on a long review session.

Even though I get moderated down as a reviewer for being an honest, though critical, listener. Nothing’s perfect, but my hope is that my explanation of a newbie’s first experience on Garageband is enlightening and leads to some improvement in the experience for future users.

I wrote “Letter From My Lady” for my wife, Christine, in 1995 while I was living in East Los Angeles. I had picked up a second-hand guitar, and recorded the tune on a low-quality portable tape recorder, inside a half-completed spa room underneath the tiny apartment I shared with three skinny white guys.

This version is slightly better quality 🙂 It still has a few errors, but for what it’s worth, you can download the MP3 here.

It’s incredibly simple, and my hope is that its brevity is what keeps it from being dull. Let me know what you think! This will be one of the tracks on my next album, currently untitled, due out toward the end of this year.

If you are visiting from Garageband, please note that this tune is not yet finished! I’ve released it for consumption by family and friends and whomever visits the website, but it’s not up for review on Garageband for a very good reason — it’s still a work-in-progress. Thanks.

I just had a nap during lunch, and for once actually fell fully asleep rather than just resting.
I had the strangest dream.  Maybe I’ll write a song about it one day.  For now, a short story will suffice.

I lived near some indefinite area near the seashore.  It reminded me a great deal of the approach to Seattle — a long bay of brackish water, surrounded by bright green rounded hills cascading from the impressive mountaintops at the periphery of vision.  The water was still and calm, reflecting the pale blue of the slightly hazy sky dappled with puffy clouds.

Perfect.  I kissed my wife goodbye, and left my family to their quiet Saturday afternoon.  I walked out of my quiet bungalow, which was made of redwood logs seated in the midst of a pine forest, and settled into my two-seater sports car which was silently awaiting my approach on the gravel roundabout, and drove to a friend’s house a few miles away.  We were having some drinks and chatting with a dozen other friends in the front room of his small rambler house when a sense of something drove me to the window.

I was facing East.  The bay was out of sight behind me over my left shoulder.  What I could see terrified me.  It was as if the ground was being picked up and folded over itself — an earthquake, a mudslide, I didn’t know what.  I watched the hillside a mile away falling, mansions tumbling end-over-end and smashing as if they were made of toothpicks.  For some reason, I didn’t think to try to get in my car.  I ran outside instead, across the street to stand at the end of a long row of aspen trees.

The strange ground swell/earthquake thing stopped a hundred meters shy of my friends house, but the rumbling wave shuddered underneath the aspens, dropping me to my knees from the power of it.

Maybe it’s a flashback to my fear of earthquakes.  I was in the Northridge earthquake (really close, a town called Sylmar) in 1993, and for years after that I kept a bag next to the front door filled with essential supplies in case I had to leave in a hurry.

BOOM.

That’s what a firework is supposed to sound like.

Big. Freaking. BOOM!!!

Well, this year we decided to take up residence in an abandoned cornfield about three-quarters of a mile from the explosions with some friends. We hauled chairs out of vans, set up some portable lawn chairs, and other than some hidden barbed wire biting our ankles, had a pretty fun time.

We could see the Grantsville fireworks clearly, as well as the Tooele County fireworks we’d planned on seeing. There was a mishap with the Tooele County fireworks about halfway through the show, where two massive blooms never left their canisters and exploded on the ground, apparently showering the onlookers with ash and frightening the techs. They were REALLY big boomers. The rest of the show went very slowly as they tried to recover from a major mishap.

Budget cuts, I say.

Anyway, unfortunately from our distance, the BOOM was just a small popping. However, it was kind of cool, about two seconds before we’d hear the pop of the fireworks with our ears, we could feel it rumble through the ground and hear it rattle our vehicles. That was kind of nifty.

There didn’t seem to be any other major excitement. There were no fires this year, which was kind of unusual for Tooele County. However, since this is Utah, we’ll have a second chance to devastate hundreds of acres of brush on July 24th, the annual “Pioneer Day” here in Utah. It’s a second excuse to shoot off fireworks, and the rest of the nation’s excess firework inventory ends up in this state for this “second chance”.

Anyway, yesterday we kicked it with some friends from around the block, grilled lots of meat (just chicken or turkey for me, thanks), ate a lot of potato salad, made a bunch of lame jokes, and generally had a fun time.

I’ve made a lot of progress on “Grasping At Straws”, a new piece I’m trying to finish. The lyrics just tore at me on the bus ride home Tuesday this week, and since then I’ve been refining them and adding music. I think it’s going to be pretty hot. I’ll start adding new tunes to my site here as I get more material, to build up excitement among my loyal half-dozen readers for the release of my album!

Of course, those six will probably all get free albums anyway, but pimp them out to your friends would you?

Went to the neurological specialist. He didn’t see any nerve damage (good). He ran a quick neurological exam, having me touch my nose with my eyes closed, walk in a straight line, etc. I felt like I was being examined for drunk driving. Results: I’m Fine, healthy as any overweight 30-year-old has a right to be.

But the fact that my right leg didn’t work again this morning when I woke up troubled me. I caught myself before I fell this time, and sat on the bed for a couple of minutes until I felt like it would support my weight. Very weird.

So I have a follow-up MRI scheduled to look at my spinal cord. At this point, the nice thing is that the life-threatening and terribly damaging things have been ruled out. What I’m left with is probably either some sort of residual spinal cord damage from the car accident I was in at 17, or some other non-critical weirdness that maybe we can get to the bottom of.

Maybe the fuzziness on the bus was due to a headache or something. Who knows? Human bodies are weird contraptions. Evolution didn’t work hard to make life rational, just to arrive at a scheme that promoted survival!

I spent some time out on the front lawn swing with Christy, Elijah, and my neighbor, Timini.  Timini is still in the midst of a bout with Lyme’s Disease, although it’s greatly improved for her…

How weird that suddenly I have Lyme’s Disease on the brain.  Anyway…

She referred to Lyme’s Disease as “The New STD” (Sexually Transmitted Disease).  The common perception among doctors is that you have to have actually been bitten by a tick carrying Lyme’s and gotten the “rash” (red ring) in order to have Lyme’s.  Apparently, this is not the case, but it’s not yet fully accepted that Lyme’s is also passed by bodily fluids, and persists for many, many years.  Apparently, the only way to properly test for Lyme’s is the existence of certain antibodies to the bacterial infection.  Timini’s husband, Dan, is also positive for Lyme’s using more sensitive tests than the standard blood or tissue samples.  

My symptoms are somewhat consistent with hers, but not quite.  It’s still quite similar to Multiple Sclerosis, and may actually be one of the root causes of that syndrome and several others.  It causes inflammation of nerve tissues, just like MS, and apparently seems much the same on an MRI.  Yet she complained of “pinprick” sensations on her face and scalp, and terrific shaking, neither of which I’ve experienced.  I’ve gotten the memory loss, difficulty concentrating, eye blurring, difficulty with limbs from time to time, and that stuff.  Of course, I have to wonder how much are legitimate symptoms, and how much I’m just seeing now that I’m looking for it!  It’s kind of weird when you second-guess yourself that way.  Objectively, I know that I had difficulty standing (though I really haven’t had that in four days now), blurriness of vision (same time period), and reduced dexterity in my hand.

So weird, I don’t think it’s really possible to psychoanalyze yourself 🙂

Anyway, if the doctor tomorrow tries to tell me that “it’s all in your head” like the answer Timini got, I swear I’ll tell him he got his medical degree out of a Cracker Jack box and he’s full of crap.  I thought it through last night, and I know what I know — what I suspect, I don’t think I’ll even talk about.

In other news today, Christy was “called” to be “ward chorister” and “ward choir director” for Church last night.  Good old Toby invited us both to come while he “released” her from being Primary President.  If you’re not familiar with those terms, a calling in the LDS church is just a job.  A “ward” is a congregation.  Choristers direct the congregation (song leader or conductor works adequately as well), and I think “choir director” is self-explanatory.  Being “released” from a calling means that you’re laid off from the job.  It’s not a bad context, though.  People get new Church jobs all the time.

Anyway, he wants her to take lessons in playing the Organ as well.  So she’s been busily practicing the piano today to prepare for eventually being the organist.  The local ward really lacks keyboard talent.  I play the piano, but due to my differences of opinion with the Church I doubt they’d want to extend or I would want to accept a calling to play 🙂

Regardless, this will be a fun adventure for her.  Her largest experience in keyboarding was three months of lessons two years ago.  I think she sounded pretty good, but she’s not sure of herself…

I spent some time out on the front lawn swing with Christy, Elijah, and my neighbor, Timini.  Timini is still in the midst of a bout with Lyme’s Disease, although it’s greatly improved for her…

How weird that suddenly I have Lyme’s Disease on the brain.  Anyway…

She referred to Lyme’s Disease as “The New STD” (Sexually Transmitted Disease).  The common perception among doctors is that you have to have actually been bitten by a tick carrying Lyme’s and gotten the “rash” (red ring) in order to have Lyme’s.  Apparently, this is not the case, but it’s not yet fully accepted that Lyme’s is also passed by bodily fluids, and persists for many, many years.  Apparently, the only way to properly test for Lyme’s is the existence of certain antibodies to the bacterial infection.  Timini’s husband, Dan, is also positive for Lyme’s using more sensitive tests than the standard blood or tissue samples.  

My symptoms are somewhat consistent with hers, but not quite.  It’s still quite similar to Multiple Sclerosis, and may actually be one of the root causes of that syndrome and several others.  It causes inflammation of nerve tissues, just like MS, and apparently seems much the same on an MRI.  Yet she complained of “pinprick” sensations on her face and scalp, and terrific shaking, neither of which I’ve experienced.  I’ve gotten the memory loss, difficulty concentrating, eye blurring, difficulty with limbs from time to time, and that stuff.  Of course, I have to wonder how much are legitimate symptoms, and how much I’m just seeing now that I’m looking for it!  It’s kind of weird when you second-guess yourself that way.  Objectively, I know that I had difficulty standing (though I really haven’t had that in four days now), blurriness of vision (same time period), and reduced dexterity in my hand.

So weird, I don’t think it’s really possible to psychoanalyze yourself 🙂

Anyway, if the doctor tomorrow tries to tell me that “it’s all in your head” like the answer Timini got, I swear I’ll tell him he got his medical degree out of a Cracker Jack box and he’s full of crap.  I thought it through last night, and I know what I know — what I suspect, I don’t think I’ll even talk about.

In other news today, Christy was “called” to be “ward chorister” and “ward choir director” for Church last night.  Good old Toby invited us both to come while he “released” her from being Primary President.  If you’re not familiar with those terms, a calling in the LDS church is just a job.  A “ward” is a congregation.  Choristers direct the congregation (song leader or conductor works adequately as well), and I think “choir director” is self-explanatory.  Being “released” from a calling means that you’re laid off from the job.  It’s not a bad context, though.  People get new Church jobs all the time.

Anyway, he wants her to take lessons in playing the Organ as well.  So she’s been busily practicing the piano today to prepare for eventually being the organist.  The local ward really lacks keyboard talent.  I play the piano, but due to my differences of opinion with the Church I doubt they’d want to extend or I would want to accept a calling to play 🙂

Regardless, this will be a fun adventure for her.  Her largest experience in keyboarding was three months of lessons two years ago.  I think she sounded pretty good, but she’s not sure of herself…

Random thoughts of the day follow.  No coherence intended, none promised. Click “read more” below for details.

On SPAM (the Hormel product, not unsolicited email):
“Didn’t SPAM keep the Russian Army alive and well fed in world war II?”
“Alive?  Maybe.  Well Fed?  It would be a good explanation for the Cold War.”

On Trademarks:
“Maybe I should trademark the letter ‘E’.”
“rk.. havn’t you hard? Thr’s alrady a tradmark on that lttr. B carful man.. you don’t wanna gt sud for copyright infringmnt.”

Kuro5hin.org has an excellent article today on “U.S. Sodomy Laws Overturned“.  I for one am against government involvement in consensual activities.  Laws should be like playground basketball games – no harm, no foul.  The government doesn’t take penalty shots, it throws people in jail and fines them, so what laws we have should be really limited.  Glad to see one small step toward rationality, even if the homosexual nature of the case disagrees with my personal outlook.