Space Cadet

Uh... Ben was the leader of the others. High ranking others all seem to know something about candidates. And since when had Ben ever let people know what he does or doesn't know without good reason? Knowledge is his power.

What do I mean whenever I say it was overproduced? I guess pro tooled to death would be another way of putting it. Too dense, too many layers, and too slick- no humanity, and no room for the songs to breathe. It has some great songs on it but the arrangements take away from those songs rather than adding to them. They became so obsessed with making sure every little layer was perfect that they lost sight of the big picture (what made the songs work) and erased all of the little flaws that make a recording sound like it came from a time and place and person. Songs that have been played live by the band take on a different energy that was missing from the album. Instead every element was isolated so they never had a chance to figure out what made the songs work. (Old classic albums didn't have the technology to isolate and tinker, they had to play together and record at once, and the results were great- everything had to work together before they recorded it.) And when those slick perfectly polished tracks they had recorded didn't quite work right they would try to make them work by adding layer after layer after layer of stuff instead of stripping the song back and figuring out what ought to be there. I love electronic sounds. I love complex layered things. But those layers need to exist for a reason and these didn't, it was more a matter of I want this sound on here just because I want to use that style in a song sometime (See 'What If'). Listen to how Imogen Heap works for example- hundreds of complex little layers. But they work together. Every sound is there for a reason, the sounds work together, and there are still empty spaces and quiet bits and little pauses that give the music dynamics. There's a bizarre (but good) classical-ish group I heard of recently called Quartetto Gelato. When I saw them on TV once, the four members mainly played a violin, an accordion, a cello, and an oboe. They were commenting in one segment that it seems like an odd mix of instruments at first but it works. It works because there are actually two bowed string instruments and two reed instruments and the sounds of the two pairs blend together then compliment each other. Traditional rock bands work on a similar principal. They all play plucked or strummed string instruments- guitars and bass, and then there's enough going on with the drums to make them sound like they belong. Pianos work well in the mix because they are a hammered string instrument- not too different from plucked. When an electronic effect or two is added, it works by giving the guitars contrast- think old fashioned electric organs in classic rock songs. Everything has a place and a purpose. When you throw in everything and the kitchen sink sonically, it can sound ok but it's not going to add more meaning to the songs. Plus some people's minds are going to reject it because of the meaningless density- which is why X&Y gets such hot and cold reactions from people. It's like if you make swamp water at a soda fountain. There's a point where if you get enough different types of pop in your drink, it doesn't matter which flavors you picked, swamp water will always taste the same. Out of orange pop? Doesn't matter- you won't miss it. Don't want the caffeine from Coke? No problem. It will still taste like swamp water. Want it to be sweeter? Add extra root beer- but it will still be extra sweet swamp water. Coldplay did the same thing with sounds. The Hardest part proves this best if you have an ear for chords. A major chord is made of 3 notes. You change the type of chord by shifting one of those notes- turning major to minor for example. Then you can add notes on top to change the way the chord sounds- adding a 7th note to a minor chord, for example. BUT to sound like a minor 7th chord, you need to be able to hear that 7th note really clearly. The piano version of the Hardest Part sounds so great and so intense because it has some great chords and you can hear them really clearly. Now compare that to the album version- here is a song that works really well as a self contained piano song, but they decided they wanted to take it in a jangly direction. So they layered all these extra guitars and other sounds on top. It works well for the style, but all those layers bury the chords that make the song what it was originally meant to be. You can't even hear the notes that make a certain type of chord what it is. The most an ear can pick up is if a chord is major or minor, not if it's an 11th (one of Chris' favorites) or a 7th, or if the bass note has been changed or if it's a suspended chord. A glance at the different tabs on Ultimate guitar proves me right- every one is quite different in how it's stylized. And when all you can make out is major or minor, songs get boring fast- like when your kid brother who is just learning guitar for the first time plays variations of the same 3 chords for every single song. Everything that makes the structure of the song interesting is lost in the sonic goo because even if you don't know what suspended or 7th means, you know that that chord feels different, and that makes the song sound different and interesting. Hearing the acoustic piano version of the Hardest Part was a revelation for me. I had no idea up to that point that it was structurally as sophisticated as it is. I think it's fair to say neither did the critics. The single version of "What If" is a remix of some sort. I have no idea why I like that version so much more than the album version because there's so much going on that I still can't figure out what changed. I'm guessing a few of those layers were stripped off. Whatever it is, even minor changes in the mix made a big difference. I say "overproduced" because all those extra layers, the ones that take up space without adding much are added at the production and mixing stage after the main body of the song has been recorded, and because that process of picking apart each layer and only choosing ones that are technically perfect is a production process.

^That is a really good theory. I like it. Interesting to know that there's someone in the flash sideways who might know more about what happened to the island. I wonder if the sideways Ben will start running into people he might remember...

It doesn't save me any time. They may be in a heap right next to my bed, but they're too tangled for both legs to work at once.

Good luck. I once heard about an experiment where they let a class of first graders pick a bunch of stock at random every week, and they would consistently do much better than the major stock analysts. :freak: It's kind of a silly game if you're not in it long term. Legalized gambling.

Happy Lost day! Finally caught up after the Olympics. (Yay for sharing tvs with people who never leave :tongue:) Flash sideways: I'm begging to wonder if the choices they make on the island are affecting the outcomes their characters experience off the island somehow. The last supper promos: look at where people are sitting- the ones who accidentally or on purpose followed Locke in the last episode are sitting on his right side, while the ones who are tentatively following Jacob are on his left. In the second picture, Claire switches sides. The island's personality: Did you ever notice how often people referred to the island's personality in the first seasons? That the island willed this or that and then they wondered why it did bad things to them when they followed its supposed orders? It all had a very pantheistic tone to it. Now that we know it was Jacob and Smokey working against each other everything is taking on a very dualistic tone, much in the same order the philosophical shift happened in history. Haven't made up my mind about Jacob yet. The symbolism is sure hard to miss. Did you notice the whole Gethsemane moment when Hurley didn't recognize Jacob and asked him where the food was? Except Jacob isn't alive again...yet. His followers actions sure aren't what I'd associate with a Jesus figure, though. Jacob and Locke may be setting themselves up as opposites, but they sure are both obsessed with controlling people, aren't they? :thinking:

Dude! :shocked2::cool: It may be an old thread, but my day just got a little bit better. :laugh3:

Heh... :embarrassed: Her fault- Cobalt. I thought she was someone else. Whoops. Cold medicine must be getting to me. :freak: Except for one, the trolls were under spoiler tags and therefore must be clicked for viewing. :inquisitive: Meh. So what happened to the putting of stuff in some room? This is boring otherwise. :escaping2:

^Apparently a grand total of 3 over a couple of months is a daily occurrence in some people's minds. :dozey: If it's that annoying it's his fault for reading spoiler tags.

^Ink and pixels, then. :thinking:

How does being insecure make you a jackass? Maybe I didn't remember it exactly right, but the reason I remembered it at all was because I related to it so much in a way- the only person in the world we never really see is ourself. Sure there's mirrors and video and things that give us glimpses, but we can never percieve ourselves the way others do, we can only piece together hints and hope that the people around us aren't leading us astray. It must be 100 times worse if you're in the public eye. Some pesonalities can shrug and get on with it anyway. Some freak out and spend fortunes on stylists and surgery. A few are brave enough to admit they have rough patches and question themselves. I was in the middle of several years of really bad writers block at the time so what he said meant something to me. Eye of the beholder I guess.

The sad thing about this never ending millennium fighting is that when the calandar was changed back in the year one or so, the concept of "zero" hadn't actually been invented yet, so of course there wouldn't have been a year zero.

I wish I could remember where it was from, I think it was in about the same era as this thread's quote, but there was an interview Thom did once where he mentioned Coldplay were part of the reason he got away from using proper singing and that beautiful falsetto voice of his for a while. He said that when he started hearing bands like Travis and Muse and then Coldplay and people were comparing them to him (remember falsetto was still a novelty 10 years ago) his reaction was something along the lines of a shocked "I sound like that?!" He said it psyched him out so much he didn't dare do any real singing like he did in the Bends days but instead started using his voice more like one of the instruments, trying to bury it under everything else or change how it sounded. (The raindrops...the raindrops...) I don't remember exactly what he said, but it made me feel really sorry for him. :embarrassed: I'm glad Nigel helped him find his voice again. :nice:

It can bug me sometimes. I went through a phase where I really hated it, but then I met a large enough number of various actual hipsters who annoyed me so much more than any other group of sorry excuses for human beings I have ever had the misfortune of knowing that I vowed to never be like them if I could help it. They're exactly like the shallow people who only care about what's popular except they're desperately trying not to be by being too cool for it all. But in the end they're still obsessed with image and not much else. Cynicism is so toxic and so contagious. So I try to take all that stuff with a grain of salt now. If it happens it happens. If something is good, it's good no matter who loves it or hates it and I just have to trust my own instincts. (...I just wish they didn't have to put almost every song I like on car commercials about 6 months after I like it. :veryangry2: Or beer... or golf clubs. :bomb: )

Eh. I don't throw mud. Only ink- the pen is mightier and all that.

Why is JK Rowling down at #97? I would have though she'd make the top 20 at least! :thinking: ...but then Piers Morgan is a very strange man... :tongue:

:( Aw, man. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it sounds like the screen suffered some sort of crush injury. There's not a lot you can do about it. Black blobs like that happen when something puts pressure on the crystals in an LCD screen- often a crack. If there's no surface damage then probably one of the back layers of the screen has been hurt. It might be some sort of a spring pushing on it like your friend said, but if the screen is that bad for that long it might still need to be replaced- the polarized layers of the screen that direct the light will have been bent. I'd be looking high and low for any warranty documentation I have if it was under a year old. Even without the reciept, if it was a component inside letting go and damaging the screen (which it sounds like) someone may still honour the warranty.

^He might like it. Beta fish are used to living in little pools of water so they like small spaces. The bigger space might not have been a problem until he was traumatized. If it doesn't work you can always take it out again. :shrug:

^^Something that massive is going to be like that. No worries. ;)

That bowl is too big for him. When we had a class beta fish once, it had a larger bowl like that, but a castle to swim into as well so that the big space didn't traumatize him so much. Maybe he needs some time to get over it? A good hiding place would help.

Aw, here. Have a tissue. *holds box of kleenex* :hug: I have friends who are Twilight fans. I don't hold it against them. They're reasonable people who happen to like it. They are not the people I was talking about. You wrote a fairly well-reasoned and articulate entry there. Plus you are here which means there's a good chance you like music for its own sake. You are clearly not one of the people I was talking about. The people (and their moms) who had no idea what Comic con is but clogged it up anyway standing in line for a day holding 'Team Jacob' banners? And never saw a single thing there but the New Moon panel? The ones who are sending Emilie de Ravin and any blogger who dares mention her name reams of misspelled hate mail because no one is allowed to act with Rob Pattinson but Kirsten Stewart? The ones who have no idea who Lykki Li or Bon Iver are, don't want to, don't really like their music anyway, but will still listen to their New Moon tracks over and over and over because it reminds them of that time Bella was sad... The ones who blindly do whatever the marketers tell them and then some because they need to because it's Twilight? Those are the people I'm talking about. The ones who make it all impossible to ignore. There are plenty of overly fanatic fandoms out there. There's a sort of a voluntary code about how conspicuous in the mainstream fandoms are supposed to be over a period of time. Geeks do it for their own protection- when something gets too far into the mainstream it isn't ours anymore, and besides getting picked on ourselves, we're the ones who are going to take the slack for the crazies among us. (There were plenty of times after the Fellowship of the Ring movie came out I wished I could catapult the Orlando Bloom fans into the sun. They were clueless and embarrassing and the rest of us had to share our conventions with them.) Twihards stumbled into that vein of fandom without knowing anything about it. They went romping into the mainstream blissfully unaware screaming and sobbing at any reporter or journalist who would take their picture. The rest of us heard them before we ever heard about what they were freaking out about. The results were inevitable. And the tone of the books encourages it. They're like weapons-grade emotion bombs. I took a good look at it all before I made any judgments. I've read all the plot summaries, had a good look and think at it all. I'm saying this as a writer- Mrs. Meyer writes like a fanfiction author. Every single thing has been calculated to have the maximum emotional impact with a good dose of wish fufillment on the side. It's not about what would follow naturally in the plot, it's about what gut feelings want to happen next and the readers respond to it on that gut level. Emotion follows books. Therefore the books are on my list. Sorry.

Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Well it certainly hasn't started yet for anyone I know under 30. :tongue: Every time they think they're getting there their life falls apart again.

Same here. At least there's one good thing about being stuck on the same schedule as the local highschools. :thinking: You're not allowed to whine and angst over it until you're 22. :P That's when all the prodigies who made it out of school on time start their big dream jobs while the rest of us slackers continue to toil away. And has he ever posted a picture anywhere to prove it? :sneaky:

Sometimes. A lot of the time their response mirrors the aggression or lack of it in the original response.