Broke Back - Injury Update

With that last post, I didn't think I could leave everyone hanging with respect to my man Fergie. Fergie took a nasty bail at the Grove last Monday and is off his steed for a while. He was getting up onto the step-up bridge and when he got up on the platform, his chain skipped and left him with no speed for the step-down. Needless to say he was heading for a meeting with the landing, but he bailed out nicely BUT landed on the edge of a skid (his back took the brunt). He had to go to the hospital with swelling around his spine (Ferg, you need some armor man!!!), but nothing serious. So it was good to see our buddy not too badly hurt. Just to rub some salt into the wound, Fergie picked up his new bike this week as well, so he hasn't been able to ride it yet! He was looking pretty rough on Thursday, but as of Friday was moving a lot better - we're hoping to see him back on the new whip real soon....

Funny thing about this (not really that there is any humor in Fergies injury), but I broke my collar bone in 2 spots last year at the Trussler dirt jumps (yeah, the spot I mention in the below post -that was the last time I was out there!). Right before I broke my collar bone, I had booked a trip to Whistler (mountain bike mecca of the world) AND just ordered a new set of front forks for my new ride at the time. 2 days after I had broken my collar bone, my forks show up - sound familiar! So I had to wait to ride my new forks, and was never able to ride Whistler (can't wait for this years trip) - so therein lies the humor between the 2 incidents....

collar bone snapped in 2 spots, can you see - #@$%$#!

Mount Bromont is coming up soon, that'll make for a good story - LOL! All the best Ferg, we'll see you out again on the trails soon.... I didn't even get to this weeks Blue Mountain trip, I'll talk about that soon (was a FUN trip in terms of shredding some trails!!)...

a section of the new Canada Cup trail @ Mt. Bromont, QC

Back to the music...

First off, apologies for the delay. Been a bit of a hectic week - Fergie gets injured on Monday at the Grove (lucky no Samsquanches were involved), I was stopped at the border on Tuesday when I was driving through for work, and we ended up hitting Trussler (a spot we haven't hit for almost a year)! So I'm glad to be back here posting again - I'll fill you in on the biking details in my next post, but I want to try and stick with going back and forth between music and mountain biking. This post I'm gonna talk about production - a bit general, but mostly focused on myself.

Music production in general has come a long way in last 10-20 years, especially in the area of home music production. Back in the day, in order to get into music production and recording it would take a small fortune due to the amount of hardware you had to buy in order to make this happen (mixing board, effects racks, amp racks, compressors, patch bays, etc). With the advent of computer software that could model physical hardware, it became possible to have a studio in a box if you will (all you needed for music production was contained on a computer). Now full on production houses didn't make the move to all digital studios as a) they probably already invested in outboard gear and b) analogue stuff typical just sounds better - so they went to a hybrid approach since the computer offered a streamline way of getting things accomplished. Needless to say, the amount of home producers sky rocketed with the introduction of software that worked on home computers (especially combined with the power of midi). We sit today with a huge selection of affordable gear aimed specifically at the home market - the selection of equipment within a certain area can sometimes be mind boggling with the amount of choices available. Some argue this trend, along with the ability to promote and sell via the web, has flooded the market with a lot of unspectacular material. Others would argue it's up the ante for producers, because in order to be noticed now, your stuff has to be really good. Personally, my views fall somewhere in between - but with the amount of work going on out there in home studios, I think it's great there's an outlet for a lot of that material (less control by big labels is always a good thing in my opinion). Now I'm hoping I can find the right outlet for my stuff - lol!

As you've probably already guessed, I have a computer based home studio. My setup is great, and has allowed me to learn a lot as well as make some pretty good tracks (if I don't say so myself - ha!). For the geeks out there my studio is running a Roland VM-3100PRO 20 channel mixer (8 in/8 out from the computer), M-Audio Delta RBUS, KRK Rokit 8's, M-Audio Oxygen 8 midi controller, Behringer BCF2000/BCR2000, Roland JX-3P/JX-8P Synths, Lexicon MPX100 Effects unit, and I have 2 turntables (2 Technics 1200's) with an old Numark scratch mixer! I have it tucked away nicely in my basement - great little studio that I tend to spend hours in!

On the production side of things, I use a program called Ableton Live (although I originally started producing with Cubase). I started using it back when it was version 3, and they are currently up to version 7 - they revolutionized how artists play electronic music live and also the approach to production with something called 'session view'. This essentially allowed to you 'jam' very easily with your material to get creative ideas for where you wanted to go. This coupled with it's simplicity quickly made it a force in the electronic music community (don't get me wrong though, outboard, analogue gear is still very prevalent in the community).

I'm going to leave it at that today - it's 21 degree's out, and my BBQ is calling my name! I'll talk more about my actual approach to production in another post - now you know what I use in terms of equipment and production, I'll get more into how I produce and why (not a formally trained musician at all!). Sorry this was kind of a boring post - starts with the potential of some good, interesting stuff and devolved into a pretty boring talk about production!! Time to throw on the pork tenderloin....

RIP-EN-ZIE

Rip'a what? Yeah, I know. My friends and I tend to use heavy slang (we're still pretty much 16 at heart!), and the above pretty much means tearing up a trail - we actually say rip-en-zie deutch (the full slang version). Anyways, enough of a glimpse into our psyche, yesterday was opening day at the only lift access mountain bike 'hill' in Ontario - Blue Mountain. My friend Colin and I decided to get seasons passes this year since we are hooked on down hill and because Blue is pretty close to us - only about an hour and half drive, so for us there was no question. This is our 3rd season hitting the hill, so we knew the trails really well and could rip pretty much any trail they had on offer (mind you, I'm by no means really fast, but I am able to throw my bike around now pretty good!). So when opening day was coming up, we both decided to take a day off work and pick up our passes and ride till we could no more - wow did we pick a good day to ride....

After an early morning and some Tim Hortons, a hassle free drive on the back roads to Collingwood, Ontario - the home of Blue Mountain. As you can see here to the left, we are almost at the hill and the clouds are just about burnt away by the morning sun - at this point you start getting butterflies in your stomach... a mix of excitement and fear!!

The first thing we did when we arrived was head in and and grab our seasons passes. The little resort town at the bottom of the hill is very Whistler like, but WAY smaller. At this point it was pretty slow, but there was some activity as the place was getting ready for May 2-4 (Victory Day Holiday in Canada, faithfully referred to as May 2-4... no coincidence that there are 24 bottles of beer in a case.....). We hit the bike shop and it was pretty dead so things went fairly smoothly besides some initial bad service at the front desk. We finally had our passes, so we headed back to the van to get suited up for our first runs. Now for those if you not familiar with Down Hill mountain biking, you have to wear various body armor to project yourself from the nasty falls that can occur when hitting the trails (I have been referred to as 'Robocop' by some who have seen me in my armor). After getting suited up and making sure the bikes were good to go, we headed for the lift (those butterflies were now in full effect!) - to our disappointment, not all the trails were open, but that didn't deter us as there was still a tonne of fun to had (to be honest, we checked the bike conditions and trail report on my BlackBerry on our way up - haha!). On our way up we decided to hit one of my favorite trails - Big Sleaze - it was a bit of a pedal from the lift to the trail head, but I didn't mind at all considering the great view and amazing weather. We dropped in and everything was like I remembered, the adrenaline started to kick in right away as there is a nice step rock entrance, so after hitting that smoothly, I was ready to rock (no pun intended!).

You can see Colin just about to enter the little rock chute - we both hit this nice and smooth and continued down to the next section of the trail and I see Colin begin to open up a gap on me. I finally loose him, but heading around a corner I see him pulled to the side - he's saying something to me. As I get closer I realize he's saying 'Do you see it, do you see it', and then I see him point - through the tree's I saw pretty big deer staring right back us. Colin had seen the deer come through the bushes, cross the trail, head into some thicker bush were it stopped to turn and stare us down!! What a start to our ride - reminds you of the other reasons that down hill is so fun, the adrenaline is just a big bonus!! After getting back on the trail, and hitting all the sections we loved last year (nice step, rooty sections that really work your suspension - fun times). After hitting a long log skinny at the bottom section of the hill, we quickly came to notice that the bottom section had been changed. We weren't really too pleased with the changes at the bottom as it required quite a bit of pedaling up hill in order to get back to the gondola - previously you would hit the end of the hill and ride a road back to the gondola, but the road is about to be worked on so they diverted the bottom of the trails in this area. The pedaling was a little more than we had bargained for, but we didn't let that minimize the fun any! After heading up the lift again, we decided to hit another trail on the far section of the hill (these were pretty much the only ones open anyway). This time it was Waterfall (named because you can see parts of a waterfall on throughout the trail, and because of some nice steep sections). This was another fun trail which I rode pretty well on, but Colin again ripped it up - tearing the trail a new one! At this point it was about 1pm and we were getting pretty hungry. All the excitement and the physicality of the sport hit us early and we decided it was time to eat - we used to eat in the village, but you have to take out a small loan to enjoy yourself here (not unlike Whistler as well!!). We grabbed some pita's and headed to a local beach nearby so not to tick off the resort staff (and Colin was adamant that this would be the lunch spot for the year). After we arrived at the spot, I knew why Colin was saying this would be the lunch spot. The place was amazing - it was right on the shores of lake Huron in Georgian bay, what a back drop for lunch!

As you can, not a bad spot to sit down and eat lunch and enjoy a can of liquid courage aka beer. After refueling, we were ready to tackle the hill again until closing at 5. The first trail we wanted to hit was called Squeaker and had a pretty gnarly rock entrance to it with some step pitches. I remember skipping the entrance last year and just riding the rest of the trail as I was pretty intimidated by this section. This year we both rolled up to the entrance and went through it like we've hit it a 100 times - was a great feeling (anytime you hit something for the first time, or conquering it after either falling or skipping it is an unbelievable feeling).

So as you can see from these shots, the entrance was not joke:

That's me on the left and Colin on the right.

After hitting this section, it's open trail for a bit where you can pick up some nice speed before hitting some rooty steep sections which are a blast. Here's a couple of shots from one of the sections I just mentioned...


We hit Squeaker and Waterfall pretty much the whole afternoon. It wasn't till our last time up the hill that we brought along the camera - glad we did as we got some decent shots for the first out (plus, it's the FIRST day out!!).


So, after being up since 8, driving 1.5 hours, riding for 6 hours, and driving another 1.5 hours back that you'd be tired right - down but not out, we called Fergie and made plans to hot the Grove on our way back - needless to say we had another great session at the grove, I hit something I've never hit before there (low road to skinny out, pretty difficult line), and Colin redeemed himself after a nasty bail the night before after exiting high road. Unfortunately Fergie never hit the drop, but I think he's going to soo - we've been razzing him pretty good about it (all in good fun ofcourse), but we know he can do it!!! You all will be the first to know when Fergie gets his wings at the grove - lol!




Once again, Me on the left, Colin on the right.









Here's a couple of pics of Colin finishing off an amazing day of riding (I'm writing this today and am completely drained, never mind sore!!!).

Until next time folks...

Mus-I-C

Finally getting around to another post – the weather has been decent here, so I’ve been out hitting our spot and riding the beginnings of a new bike park at the local skill hill (Chicopee). But, I’ll be leaving the biking world behind me with this post as I want to get into the world of music. Not sure where to start here, so maybe I’ll start with a bit of history of Techno (Detroit techno) and House and then get into an interesting theory concerning minimal techno (interesting to me at least!).

DETROIT TECHNO

Ok, so Detroit Techno or High-Tech Soul as it is sometimes referred to, started (you guessed it) in Detroit with a man by the name of Juan Atkins (aka Cybotron, Model 500, Infiniti). The first track that started the whole thing was “Clear”, a track recorded with Rick Davis under the Cybotron moniker – this has been widely recognized as the first foray into fusing the extra-terrestrial funk of Parliament Funkadelic with the futurist visions of Kraftwerk – so Detroit High-Tech Soul was born.

Detroit at one time was a booming mecca of the US based on the car industry, which thrived there until racial tension reached a head in 1943, and a racial riot broke out. This was due to racial inequality directed at the Black Community. After the riots, Detroit began a slow downward spiral in terms of prosperity and racial integration. The city has suffered through some tough times, but people are slowly changing things for the better. The people of Detroit are strong willed people, if anyone can effect change, it's the people!

Detroit always had a very rich history of musical talent, Motown is one powerful example of this. The arts, music in particuclar, became an outlet for many people during these tense and tough times. This helped to foster the forward thinking artists of yesterday and today as they used art as a means to escape the desolation which was happening around them. Enter Detroit Techno. I’ve heard Techno be referred to as an escape from hardships of Detroit, because when you listen to techno, it truly does take you to another place. Just take for instance the first track considered to be Detroit Techno – Clear – which was recorded by Cybotron, CBYOTRON!! For those of you not down with transformers, Cybotron is the home world of the transformers. Think about that for a second… cybotron, a high-tech world based on robots and electronics (Kraftwerk) – what a better way to take yourself away from an unhealthy environment while taking advantage of the merging world of technology and music?! So Detroit Techno was born. You can see a parallel to what I have talked about above when looking at “the first wave” (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May) of Detroit Techno Artists – a tendency to make music with a jazzy sense but with a high tech soul - that took you somewhere/someplace else. Detroit also has its fair share of house music producers who could stand up to anyone (Moodyman being the first to come to mind). Now I have to mention that Juan Atkins wasn’t really the only pioneer in this area. While he was growing up, him and his friends used to listen to a radio show by The Electrifying Mojo, and this ended up being their outlet for their music. The Belleville Three – Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson & Derrick May found The Electrifying Mojo playing some of their tracks which they were making at the time. Derrick May started Transmat and Kevin Saunderson started KMS and Juan Atkins started Metroplex recordings (check out their discography for a what’s what of early techno). I could go on about the early days for a while, but I think this will do for now (I’ll talk about the history of parties or Raves – I really hate that word – later).

HOUSE

House music. The story of house changes slightly depending on who you talk to. The widely held notion that house was invented in Chicago is pretty well on point. Chicago had a club scene in the early 80’s – after the national attack on Disco, people who still wanted to get together and dance had to look hard for places in order to fulfill this need. There were a few pioneering promoters who started nights at various locations throughout Chicago and one very important club in NY. There were a few staple DJ’s who controlled those events (Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy, Farley Jack Master Funk come to mind). Also to note here though is the Paradise Garage in NY which was another seminal establishment notorious for breaking down the barriers of race and sexuality, abandoning the segregation policies that were the norm for clubs at that time (Mr Larry Levan was the man behind the Paradise Garage). SO here you see the early beginnings of the scene and what it was originally about – getting people together from all backgrounds to listen and dance to this new type of music. Now the name. Big in this scene was a club called The Warehouse, this is where most of the events were held and is widely recognized as THE club in Chicago for this new sound. So, with this new explosion of music and events, DJ’s started to go to record stores to seek out certain types of records which they felt could be used effectively - so people came into record stores asking for tracks that were played at one of the warehouse parties or for stuff they though could be played at warehouse parties. Since most of the activity was at the club called The Warehouse, eventually they shortened Warehouse to just house, so DJ’s came in looking for House records. House was born. This was when Jack came out to play. Jack was basically a type of dance that was on display at these events and was eventually one of the things that house became known for… more on Jack later.

I’m sure I have missed parts of the history of both genre’s, so if you are looking for more info beginnings of techno click here . If you are looking for more info on the early days of house, click here. There is still a tonne to talk about concerning the history, but this give you a little taste of where the music I love comes from and how it evolved. I haven't even begun to talk about the TB-303 or the 909!! I’ll get into other aspects of the music and scene at a later date, but I think this is a good start.

TONE SHIFTING

So, last but not least I want to talk about that theory I mentioned wayyy back when! Tone Shifting. Now, I don’t think this is an accepted scientific theory as of yet, I actually read this on the 313techno mailing list several years ago, and it really struck home with me, so I figured I’d share! Silence plays as big a role if not bigger in terms of how you hear what is being played (I’m specifically talking about minimal dance music in clubs). By this I mean your brain interprets the silence between sounds in a unique way in that it bridges the heard sounds over the silence (pretty much your brain fills in the blanks). You may be thinking, “what the hell is he talking about, go smoke another one”, but if you think about it, it makes sense. Your brain is used to processing sounds at all times, this is instinctual – so your brain is used to hearing sounds throughout music. When the brain finds “space” between sounds it wants to fill the gap – this results in every listener having a unique experience. Now when I say unique experience, I don’t mean the song being played is being heard completely differently than the next person, the heard elements are the same for everyone. What is great here is your interacting with the music in a very unique way, experiencing it slightly different than the next person – makes the whole experience very personal. Now, for those of you that have not been to a club/party where minimal was on the menu, you may think I’m crazy (well that’s debatable!), but I have experienced this myself, so that’s why this rings true with me. I’ve consciously (as well as unconsciously) found myself either filling in gaps with words or other sounds – and makes for a very unique experience. There were times where I could hear lines from other songs or sounds that weren’t there which gave the song a different meaning or feel than when I would listen at home or in a different context. Anyways, without sounding like a complete nut, I thought I would throw that out there for you to digest. Maybe next time you’re in a club or situation where minimal is being played, take a quick second to try and “listen” to the silence, I think you’ll be surprised at what you hear!

Until next time….

Where to start?

So many things to talk about, where to start?! Since the title of the blog is a little obscure to say the least, I think it's best to start with something associated with a 'Samsquanch'!

As you may have already discovered, a 'Samsquanch' is a creature that is something like a Sasquatch, except it targets back woods bike trails (particularly Shore trails built of wood) and is a little more friendly from what I've been told . My friends and I have been building our own trail in a sneaky spot just outside of town. Coincidentally, we have built a shore trail, which we have dubbed 'The Grove'. We're lucky we haven't run into one at our spot.... yet....


That's me on the left (and above left), and Fergie up above (and above left). Colin is by far the best rider of our group, and we have some killer shots of him which I'll share later.




That gives you a good taste of what we have built already. Not bad considering 3 guys pretty much built the whole thing! The shot on the left was taken last year after we had just finished the section you see in the picture, along with a drop and a natural log ride. It's kind of a funny story how we started the spot - Colin scoped the spot (great find!), and he told me about it. We decided the first thing we had to build was a drop, so we went ahead and built a 6-8 foot drop between a couple of trees (picture later). After building the drop we didn't really go back to that spot until we took a new friend to see it (he was from England and we both had an interest in mountain biking, specifically Shore).

I should stop right there and explain what Shore is for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. Shore is short for 'North Shore', which refers to the North Shore of Vancouver, where people built wooden 'bridges' and 'skinnies' in order to create a trail through the forests of the North Shore (to avoid natural obstacles). This soon progressed to where people where building wooden stunts through the downhill trails where everything was in the context of being in the flow of the trail. British Columbia, and the North Shore in particular is widely recognized as being the mountain bike mecca of the world (specifically Whistler). So the world started to recognize the skill and thrill of building and riding these trails, and the sport has been growing ever since!

So, back to the story! Danny was over from England and we went on a couple of rides with him at the local ski hill (which is decent), and we started talking about shore. Colin mentioned that we started building our own trail, so we took Danny out to the spot to show him. At this point we started talking about all the various lines that were possible on our little claimed spot of land! And we finally started building again - and then we brought in out other friend, Fergie, to help out. We ended up working for about 2 months straight to partially finish it and make it ridable - and we had to endure some crazy attacks from mozzies (mosquitoes). They were bad out there as it was pretty much swamp land, but we started to pack it down pretty good with all the work we were doing. We also had some help from another friend named Dave, he pretty much single handedly finished the landing to our drop - props for the hard work Dave!!

The first thing we had to do, of course, was the drop. It was scary enough, not too big, but standing on the wooden platform and looking at the landing was pretty scary - mostly all mental, but it was a sniper landing and run out (to make it that much more scary!). I was just coming back from breaking my right collar bone (more on that later maybe), so we affectionately named the drop 'Collar Bone' after my injury - and naturally I wanted to hit it first! So, I went first. I have been biking for almost 3 years now, and must say that I have taken my fair share of licks in order to learn the sport (maybe some stories on that another day!). So you guessed it, I bailed - I landed the drop fine, but got sketchy on the landing and had a hard time hitting the wooden run out. Luckily for me, I was decked out in some robocop like armor which helped keep me in one piece. I tried 2 more times and failed - bruised but not broken we walked away to try it again another day. In comes the helmet cam! We like to take as much footage as possible of ourselves riding (photo's along with film), so we decided it was a good idea to add a helmet cam to the arsenal - sounds like a good idea right?! Well we had our first session with the helmet cam out at the grove (which you can see parts of here, along with other various biking vids from our group), and on the last run that I was wearing the helmet cam, I followed Colin off the drop and, yip you guessed it, bailed again. Colin was nice enough to leave that footage out of the clip I mentioned earlier, but I ended up with a nice cut on my chin. Now the drop was in my head, and I didn't want anything to do with it. After this bail, we collectively decided to change the drop slightly - it was angled up a bit much and would kick your back tire, so we made it more of a down slope. The whole summer I pretty much avoided it (I learned how to hit a step up/step down which I now think is more difficult), but ended up giving it a go after many attempts to talk me into it! I ended up hitting it no problem this time (a summer of riding downhill did a number for my confidence and riding skills), and continue to hit it no problem - definitely the funnest thing at 'The Grove'.

That's me on the left hitting the drop, and Fergie on the right getting stoked!

So, if it wasn't for a chance meeting with a guy from England, through work (a friend at work connected us because he knew we were both into mountain biking), the chances of us doing what we did, I believe, were small. We probably would've had some stuff out there, but not to the extent of what we have now. Some people have referred to it as Ewok Village, but we just call it our personal play ground!

That's probably way too much for right now, but I'll be back again. Next time I'll probably talk about my other passion, music, electronic music in particular. The Symbolic Studios side of the equation.....