geek is the new cool

My good friend Erik Baldwin and I came up with some excellent stuff in high school. We had a strange effect on one another that basically caused us to both drop 30 or 40 IQ points while simultaneously becoming 300X more creative. And prone to giggles. Ok, when I say it out loud it sounds like hanging out together got us stoned. Interesting.

Anyway, in addition to helping to co-creating Pope Goes with me, we also had a game we used to play. It had no name, so I’ll just call it “word+word”. The game basically consists in the two of us trying to come up with the most unusual/confusing/nonsensical/disparate/unlikely pairs of words that we could think of. It started with the two of us trying to come up with the worst name somebody could possibly have (two of my favorites are Pope Jones and Velvet Astronaut), but quickly evolved into something much more abstract than that.

Fast forward to just recently. Erik just started doing contract work with me at my job. After leaving work after his first day there, I got a text from him, picking up the game as if we’d never stopped playing the game almost 10 years ago. I was almost caught off guard but quickly launched back into it as well.

• Erik Baldwin: Fart king. Trample bricks. Tard sweater.
• Me: Anus Buckle. Sandwich sock. Thursday Elevator. Wait, what are we doing? Am I doing it right?
• Erik Baldwin: Quite right. Cactus loin. Glass braces. Face brain.
• Me: Nostril estuary. Elephant pantsuit. Backwards remembrance. Late apple. Banana helmet.
• Erik Baldwin: Talc belt. Horrid puppy. Whiskey implant. Fence turtle.
• Me: Ooh! Whiskey Implant! That is top tier, man. Vortex sinew. Pork president. razor portal. urine kite. Extrusion bucket. Plentiful affirmative. violent exegesis
• Erik Baldwin: Extrusion bucket! Ew! Porcine hermaphrodite. Plucky ape-man. Irresponsible bite. Turkey patrol. Lean-to inspector.
• Me: lascivious bacon. extemporaneous aqueduct. laconic module.
• Erik Baldwin: Nice… Vacation ranger. Impassable forgery. Cramp glue. Tippy sandwich. 
• Me: Pugnacious boson. Past-tense paint chips.
• Erik Baldwin: Hahahahahahaha boson. Ok. Good game. I caught an express bus, home in 20 minutes. Eff yeah.
• Me: Nice! Well-played.
• Me: One more: ostrich envelope.
• Erik Baldwin: Lololol.
• Me: Intestinal alphabet.
• Erik Baldwin: Cromulent spree
• Me: Oracular jelly.
• Erik Baldwin: YUCK.

Second day of work, I was checking to see when he was coming in, and the game continued:

• Me: when can i expect you in today? angry envelope. existential uterus. pant sleeves. explosion piercing.
• Me: omg, get this one: hate manifold.
• Erik Baldwin: Around 1. I’m on my way to Ballard to catch a bus now. Hate manifold! Aha!
• Me: woooooooooooord. alien grape. word energy. dogfood cape. positron grooming.
• Erik Baldwin: Alien grape. Hahhahahaha. These are all so good. Forensic mischief. Anthropological haberdashery.
• Me: those were both PURE GOLD. omg. cat braid.
• Erik Baldwin: Ahaaaaahahaha. Trapdoor voting booth.
• Me: pancake senator. masturbation hat. automatic baboon. dog rocket. erotic cabinet.
• Erik Baldwin: Best. Ever.
• Me: ok, one more to get it out of my system: peanut butter prince.
• Erik Baldwin: I like reading it as though peanut and butter are not related. But butter and prince are.

I must say it’s a delight to be working with Erik. These exchanges happen pretty regularly throughout the day. I know I used “hate” in one of the ones above, but I’m pretty proud of another one. I walked up to Erik at the office, looked him in the eye and said, “Hate blanket.” Yeah folks, that’s genius at work.

nobody wants to be the Pope’s facebook friend

I punctured my finger on one of the teeth of a rusty hand saw while helping out with yard work at my parents’ place yesterday. I made tetanus jokes for the rest of the afternoon. Turns out that tetanus isn’t a particularly funny topic. Not offensive, mind you, just not funny. Note to self.

I write songs. I love writing songs. Sometimes, I’m more inspired than others. When I am inspired though, I write some great stuff. That’s not conceit. It’s honesty. Hey, sometimes being humble is just dishonest!

But I’ll tell you something. Nothing is more frustrating than inconsistent genius. So, over the last five years or so, I’ve been working at capturing and jamming the elusive Creativity Beast into a cage so that it’ll dance when I throw peanuts at it. My efforts at domesticating it so far have been fruitful, and when money is involved, I’m a bit better at controlling the Beast than other times, but I’m sure that taming the Beast is a life-long quest.

That said, there was a time, back when I was a ne’er do well in love and relationships, and suffice it to say, I had a lot more inspiration regarding songs about relationships and the like. Don’t get me wrong, being married is very inspiring and full of emotional depth, but people don’t seem to like songs about being happy and fulfilled as much as they do about being sad, lonely, or frustrated. Sucks to be happily married, I guess?

Anyway, I wrote a couple of awesome songs during a period of my early adulthood in which I was not having a ton of luck with maintaining a relationship for any considerable period of time. For the first time in my life, I decided to write a song that wasn’t directly about me. It was a hypothetical song about someone else, sweating out what they think is an impending dumping.

Like many of my songs from this period, I never finished it. Every time I listen to my old demo of the idea, I feel the desire to finish it, but then something that actually makes me money ends up getting in the way… well, that or my Xbox.

Anyway, the lyrics are some of my funnier ones. Check ‘em out:

I’m Scared About Tuesday
(Jake Hawken 2005)

Last week when hung out,
we started arguing,
it got me thinking
all about what’s happening.

She left the room
to gain composure down the hall,
my mind started to wander
and I looked up on the wall.

Her calendar was tacked up on the wall
it made me stress a bit,
cuz on next tuesday was a big red X
with my name next to it, so

I’m scared about Tuesday
Just thinkin’ what she’s gonna do, and what she’s gonna say
I’m scared about Tuesday
cuz Tuesday could be the end of my world.

I laid awake and tossed and turned
the next few nights
Had she and I had one too
many pointless fights?

I couldn’t think I couldn’t eat
I couldn’t speak
But I’ve never seen her smile more
than she did for that whole week.

I try to treat her extra special
but I don’t see what the use is
Will she cut me loose?
Don’t see why not, you know she’s got excuses.

I’m scared about Tuesday
Just thinkin’ what she’s gonna do, and what she’s gonna say
I’m scared about Tuesday
cuz Tuesday could be the end of my world.

There was supposed to be a bridge that tells the end of the story (and the end of the story is awesome!) but I never got around to writing it. Maybe I’ll make that one of my summer goals. But you’ll have to wait till then to find out the end of the story.

Here’s the demo I recorded though. Please forgive the ending. I didn’t know where to go with the bridge musically, so I just did a goofy, cheesy little thing. Also, I did this six years ago, with minimal skills and equipment. Enjoy:

the Pope does Tai Chi

A buddy from college and fellow music maker sent me this article today and asked me for my thoughts. Take a second to read the article. It’s short. I’ll wait for you.

What did you think? I’ll tell you what I thought. I found myself starting to go, “Yeah, man! Autotune is crap!” because that’s the popular opinion on the subject and — let’s be honest —- it’s really easy to be lazy and outsource your thinking to the hardworking folks in the faraway kingdom of Conventional Wisdom. But then I came to my senses, thought a little harder and said to myself, “Wait a second. I know better than this. This article is idiotic.”

I’ll explain what I mean by that. First of all, you can’t say Autotune is bad without context for why it’s bad. That’s like saying you think that fish tastes good. That may be so in many cases, but I bet that in the context of ice cream it would become a false statement for you. You like fish in a normal fish context. You don’t like fish on your ice cream. The same thing applies to dislikes. You don’t like Autotune when it’s used to manufacture a performance, but can you really dismiss the technology completely just based on that? Not if you’re being fair.

Let’s step back a little bit though.

They need to add a couple words to the title of the article so that it says, “Autotune is ruining ultra-mainstream radio pop music.” Not music in general. But even with this caveat, it’s still debatable. To be honest, most of the arguments against Autotune are the same as the arguments people tried to make against samplers, synthesizers, and even the advent of stereo recordings (I know, right?) when they were new. Has music been forever ruined by the fact that recordings have a left and a right channel? Did synthesizers or samplers destroy music? Arguments trying to mark an arbitrary point in history after which new music technology became somehow bad are tenuous at best, as those types of arguments are much more likely to be exercises in bad argumentation than they are to be true. Really, to get all preachy about the downfall of society and culture at every new innovation in music creation/production, is a quick way to put yourself down in the history books as a myopic Luddite.

But I don’t want to make an ad hominem dismissal of the point being made, so I’ll humor the passionate anti-Autotune camp. I agree that many of the ways Autotune is used are unpalatable. But if it’s being used blatantly enough that someone with a relatively untrained ear can pick it out and go “o hai! I hear teh Autotunez!” then you are hearing Autotune being used in only a fraction of the ways and places that it is and can be used. I think we can all agree that there’s a big distinction between a terrible song about being excited about Friday in which they think they have us fooled that the girl can carry a tune, and the obvious, overt, loud and proud use of Autotune popularized by the likes of T-Pain. Have you considered a third category? Probably not. How about all of those times when its been used, but used tastefully and you didn’t even notice it? Or how about using it creatively or experimentally? Maybe put it on an instrument track? Have you heard Autotuned drums? I bet that would sound really cool, or at least unique and original.

All I’m saying is that there are more uses for Autotune aside from some Nashville producer using it to make it sound like Taylor Swift isn’t actually the worst singer in music history (even though she actually is). Intonation isn’t the end-all and be-all of singing. It is one aspect of it. If you sing poorly, Autotune correcting your intonation will not “make you sound good” (thus, the reason we can tell that Taylor Swift is a garbage singer).

Yes, a lot of its use is pretty gimmicky and tacky, but so were a lot of music technologies when they were new. Let’s take the extreme example again just to prove the point: stereo. When it was new it was pretty damn gimmicky. It was brand new when the Beatles were recording and they were pressured into using it on their albums so they could be modern and new. Their first 10 albums had been recorded in mono, and were designed to be listened to in mono, but their producers insisted upon mixing it in stereo, and you know what? I hate listening to any of those albums in stereo. The whole “this is new and we don’t really know what we’re doing with it yet” vibe really shines through. But have you ever listened to them in mono? They sound so much better that way.

Now at this point you may be saying, “But Jake, it sounds like you’re agreeing with us now.” Well, I am, but that only strengthens my point, which is this: even though it was gimmicky when it was new, do you ever listen to a recording now and go, “Man, this whole ‘left and right’ business is bulls**t”?? No, you don’t. It was new and gimmicky and seemingly trite when it was new, because every new technology goes through an awkward adolescence. But now you wouldn’t ever want to go back to a time when mono was the only option available to you.

Most of the arguments against Autotune are really arguments against the way that crappy mainstream pop music uses it. As I see it, there are two artistically acceptable ways to use it:

1. To polish up a few scant imperfections in a vocal performance that was actually already a good performance and which actually had good intonation.
2. For stylistic effect and/or creative and/or experimental purposes.

So, in conclusion, you really have nothing to worry about from the likes of Autotune. The fad of using it to try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear will pass, and even if it doesn’t, that’s just “pop” music (which itself is a term which means less and less and takes up a smaller and smaller fraction of the music that’s out there every single day). We really have nothing to fear by embracing new technology. Does a painter complain that he had too many colors to choose from?  Does a carpenter complain that he has too many tools? No. So just shut up, will ya?

I’m always shocked at just how many of my fellow twenty-somethings go straight from stretching a prolonged adolescence out as long as they can, to running full-sprint toward becoming a stodgy, dusty, stubborn, closed-minded curmudgeon. I sometimes feel like my fellow twenty-somethings aspire to become cranky old people as fast as they possibly can. 

Because in the end, if you really hate music that uses autotune, it’s really not that hard to find music that doesn’t use it. Really, I promise. You simply have to reach a teensy bit farther than your radio. Because let’s be honest: the radio hasn’t played much of anything good for several decades, so get off your lazy butt and go find some good music.

I may not have convinced you, but I hope I’ve at least stifled your automatic reflex to pretentiously filibuster your secondhand opinions about the decay of society at each and every opportunity. Because let’s be honest, you’re bound to say something that will make you look stupid later.

So can we all shut up about this now? Thanks.