so wiht these non-weekly update posts, i've given them the above name. starting now.
Quick point:
something that i've learned that annoys the crap out of me: when someone shows up late for a class, and not only doesn't bother to blow their nose in class, but sniffs violently in every 30 seconds as if they were inhaling cocaine. Also, this person was talking wiht his 2 friends right by me while other people were talking, even the prof! and class today was super-discussion based.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
weekly update 1-27-2010: Once again I have no clear Title
Hey all. back for my weekly update post. Just wanna start things off by rehashing yesterday's post. Things are gonna be fairly intense for me with workload and such in the comign weeks, essentially between this weekend and the weekend of february 18th, which is mid-sem here at school. The weekends will be filled with papers and other work and that may have bearing on my workload during the week, so dont be alarmed if i either dont post as much in my updates, or dont do one.
Ok, now that that is out of the way, onto the rest of this post. on top of things with that, there;s time when i like philosophy class and times whenn i worry about how i'm gonna do in it. I'm sure i'll do weekk, and i'll definitly have more of a sense of that after the first paper, but still. I did like listening to the discussion this AM though. IT was very interesting hearing how perplexed some people were and how some others were bouncing ideas around with the philosopher we were going over. though i can pretty much assume at least 3 people in that class arent doing the reading and are gonna not do well on their papers. I love all my other classes though, even the most lopsided one of all structurally,Intro to lit. The reason why its like that is we literally have 3 papers to do between now and spring break and after that we dont have any. While this is nice, we're reading Twelfth Night by shakespeare and Milton's PAradise lost before the break. While i'm kind of excited for Twelfth night, cause i've heard its awesome, i'm not looking forward to paradise lost mianly because i think we're only reading sections from it and i've never seemed to be able to like it for what it is when i've read it.
anyway, enoguh abotu classes. Life outside class and stuff is pretty nice, i'm not gonna lie. things are busy but manageable. I'm doing Dance Alloy again this semester (for my aunt who follows this, Dance Alloy is a student led, organzized, etc. dance performance thing where you sing up for a certain dance or 2 with a choreographer and learn the choreography over the semester and then perform at the end of the semester), so that should be fun, even if it takes up 2 hours out of my sundays. One thing i've noticed about myself is that i whine alot when it comes to how busy i'll be tiwht work, dance alloy and stuff. It's kinda of annoying, and i need to cut back on it.
lets see, other than stuff than that, umm. i should give some credit to tunelab.com, a music forum site i've been following for sometime. They've had some good album streams up recently, one of which really grabbed me. Day of Fire is the name of that band, their album "Losing all" came out on tuesday and to be hoenst, its probably the most refreshing slightly emotional rock record i've heard in awhile. The lead singer has gone through a lot in life and its really tackled well on this album in a smart way. This is their third album, and yea good band. I'll put the link to the album stream at the bottom of this post. The other 2 album streams Tunelab has had up recently are good, but nothing really grabbed me about them, particulalry cause one of them starts off good but then just turns into "generic modern-hardrock-about-fun-and-women". I think the reason why i liked the Day of fire record as much as i do is because the lead vocalist has a very gritty voice, and it really works with the instruments. Also, in tunelab's commentary on the record and the band, there had a much more "matter of fact", narrative tone while still mentioning how good the band was. I like that more, cause i've found that Tunelab will almost overpraise any band they put an album stream up for. and maybe its just the guy who writes the commentary on each one (if its a different guy), but for someone like me who is becoming a bit stingy with his rock music taste, the excessive adulation sets up high hopes for someone goin into the stream and half the time the band isn't all that great. frankly, on one of the other streams that went up this week, i got tired of how much effusive energy there was from the band via the quotes in the commentary, and how much of that same effusive energy was coming from the writer. The band is from Vegas, and they're like the anti-vegas, but half of their album is that generic "i'm gonna write a song about how fun yet emotional rock music life is, especially when you have women involved" It's all stuff that is just tired concepts. I want an anti-vegas band that has some intelligence to their lyrics like the more established rock groups, I.e. Disturbed.
There's about an inch of snow outside my window, which makes me happy. another thing i wanna touch on, and i kind of commented on this in my extra post on sunday, is what happened at the "pop it up" dance on Saturday. It was fun and all but the student activities board has been way too lax this year with controlling how much power guest DJs have. While the one on saturday night was a pro one, he sure wasnt acting like one. There were several points where the music was so loud you could barely hear the words, all you could really feel was the beat, which isn't bad, but at the same time, your eardrums are being blasted with music so loud that people in New Zealand (metaphorically speaking) can hear it. That's a bit much and the student activities board needs to clamp down on this if they want people to actually come to the events like that they do, cause if they dont soon, people won't show up. The room these dances are in on campus is about the size of a smallish conference room. That's not big enough to warrant the music being turned up over 9,000 (sorry had to put the Geek reference in there). The past couple fo dances this has been the case, and it was never an issue last year or the year before, when SAB actually "policed" the dances and told the DJ how loud he could get. The past 2 times one of my friends has had to either physically tell the DJ to turn it down or write him a note. but then, when she leaves the room, he'll turn it right back up to the level it was at before she complained. My issue is that she shouldnt have to have complained at all, SAB (which apparently has a new crew of student running it every semester (and apparently the crew for this academic year has the strongest eardrums ever)) should be there close to the DJ to tell him if its too loud. or someone from SAB should at least be there in SAB garb so the students can issue any complaints.
Anyway, that last bit turned into a rant and a half so i'm gonna end this week's update there, cause that pretty much covers everything i wanna comment on.
Link to the Day of Fire album stream: http://tunelab.com/2010/01/25/album-stream-day-of-fire/
see you guys next week.
Ok, now that that is out of the way, onto the rest of this post. on top of things with that, there;s time when i like philosophy class and times whenn i worry about how i'm gonna do in it. I'm sure i'll do weekk, and i'll definitly have more of a sense of that after the first paper, but still. I did like listening to the discussion this AM though. IT was very interesting hearing how perplexed some people were and how some others were bouncing ideas around with the philosopher we were going over. though i can pretty much assume at least 3 people in that class arent doing the reading and are gonna not do well on their papers. I love all my other classes though, even the most lopsided one of all structurally,Intro to lit. The reason why its like that is we literally have 3 papers to do between now and spring break and after that we dont have any. While this is nice, we're reading Twelfth Night by shakespeare and Milton's PAradise lost before the break. While i'm kind of excited for Twelfth night, cause i've heard its awesome, i'm not looking forward to paradise lost mianly because i think we're only reading sections from it and i've never seemed to be able to like it for what it is when i've read it.
anyway, enoguh abotu classes. Life outside class and stuff is pretty nice, i'm not gonna lie. things are busy but manageable. I'm doing Dance Alloy again this semester (for my aunt who follows this, Dance Alloy is a student led, organzized, etc. dance performance thing where you sing up for a certain dance or 2 with a choreographer and learn the choreography over the semester and then perform at the end of the semester), so that should be fun, even if it takes up 2 hours out of my sundays. One thing i've noticed about myself is that i whine alot when it comes to how busy i'll be tiwht work, dance alloy and stuff. It's kinda of annoying, and i need to cut back on it.
lets see, other than stuff than that, umm. i should give some credit to tunelab.com, a music forum site i've been following for sometime. They've had some good album streams up recently, one of which really grabbed me. Day of Fire is the name of that band, their album "Losing all" came out on tuesday and to be hoenst, its probably the most refreshing slightly emotional rock record i've heard in awhile. The lead singer has gone through a lot in life and its really tackled well on this album in a smart way. This is their third album, and yea good band. I'll put the link to the album stream at the bottom of this post. The other 2 album streams Tunelab has had up recently are good, but nothing really grabbed me about them, particulalry cause one of them starts off good but then just turns into "generic modern-hardrock-about-fun-and-women". I think the reason why i liked the Day of fire record as much as i do is because the lead vocalist has a very gritty voice, and it really works with the instruments. Also, in tunelab's commentary on the record and the band, there had a much more "matter of fact", narrative tone while still mentioning how good the band was. I like that more, cause i've found that Tunelab will almost overpraise any band they put an album stream up for. and maybe its just the guy who writes the commentary on each one (if its a different guy), but for someone like me who is becoming a bit stingy with his rock music taste, the excessive adulation sets up high hopes for someone goin into the stream and half the time the band isn't all that great. frankly, on one of the other streams that went up this week, i got tired of how much effusive energy there was from the band via the quotes in the commentary, and how much of that same effusive energy was coming from the writer. The band is from Vegas, and they're like the anti-vegas, but half of their album is that generic "i'm gonna write a song about how fun yet emotional rock music life is, especially when you have women involved" It's all stuff that is just tired concepts. I want an anti-vegas band that has some intelligence to their lyrics like the more established rock groups, I.e. Disturbed.
There's about an inch of snow outside my window, which makes me happy. another thing i wanna touch on, and i kind of commented on this in my extra post on sunday, is what happened at the "pop it up" dance on Saturday. It was fun and all but the student activities board has been way too lax this year with controlling how much power guest DJs have. While the one on saturday night was a pro one, he sure wasnt acting like one. There were several points where the music was so loud you could barely hear the words, all you could really feel was the beat, which isn't bad, but at the same time, your eardrums are being blasted with music so loud that people in New Zealand (metaphorically speaking) can hear it. That's a bit much and the student activities board needs to clamp down on this if they want people to actually come to the events like that they do, cause if they dont soon, people won't show up. The room these dances are in on campus is about the size of a smallish conference room. That's not big enough to warrant the music being turned up over 9,000 (sorry had to put the Geek reference in there). The past couple fo dances this has been the case, and it was never an issue last year or the year before, when SAB actually "policed" the dances and told the DJ how loud he could get. The past 2 times one of my friends has had to either physically tell the DJ to turn it down or write him a note. but then, when she leaves the room, he'll turn it right back up to the level it was at before she complained. My issue is that she shouldnt have to have complained at all, SAB (which apparently has a new crew of student running it every semester (and apparently the crew for this academic year has the strongest eardrums ever)) should be there close to the DJ to tell him if its too loud. or someone from SAB should at least be there in SAB garb so the students can issue any complaints.
Anyway, that last bit turned into a rant and a half so i'm gonna end this week's update there, cause that pretty much covers everything i wanna comment on.
Link to the Day of Fire album stream: http://tunelab.com/2010/01/25/album-stream-day-of-fire/
see you guys next week.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
another additional post: a heads up
Hey all. I'm gonna try and keep things regular with this blog, but things are gonna be ramping up for me in terms of work and extracurriculars in the near future. I'l try and keep this at every wednesday, but dont be alarmed if i dont post for a week or 2
Sunday, January 24, 2010
something i wanna point out
more on this in my weekly update, but i want to say here quickly, just so my point is out there and isnt caught up in the rant part of wednesday's post, that it somethign can be said for the quality of a professional DJ's skill when a version of "bad Romance" by Lady GaGa that i did on a friend's Dj table thing is better and less overmodulated (and not ear shatteringly loud) than the professional DJ's version.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
ignore the timestamps at the bottom of my posts
a very quick addendum. Ignore the timestamps on my posts, theyre set somethign like 6 hours earlier than when i post, or its a randomly generated time.
Does anybody know how to change that
Does anybody know how to change that
weekly update 1-20-2010: Does Anybody else still feel weird writing 2010?
Hey all. I'm back for my weekly update. Things are goign well here wiht classes and everything. Tuesdays are going to be rough though. I have class 8:30-9:50, 10:30-11:50 and 1-2:20 on tuesdays. luckily there's time for a coffee break in between the first 2. so if i need to refill my coffee i can. I'm gonna try and go sans caffeine to my only class, today at 9am. That class, ancient greek philo should be fun and maybe i'll learn alot. bit worried about writing papers on philosophy though.
I'm more or less organized for the year wiht transformers figures to get this year. Though i am running out of space here at school so i'll either have to move some old binders and textbooks that i've saved back home, or move some figures home over the summer and figure out how to display them best there (no shelving unit there). I have 7 stored at home already, and i should actually probably count them as part of my collection, i dont know why i didnt. Then there's the whole thing of itemizing my collection in terms of Figure name, toyline range, price, what parts of it i have, etc. That's gonna be my fun project for the couple days of mid-sem this semester.
On a side-note: does anyone still feel weird writing "10" at the end of anything you put the date on?
I find myself wishing i had gotten a coffeemaker when my folks were out here last semester for parents weekend. then i didnt really need it cause my earliest class was at 10. but this semester, as i said last week. i have an 8:30 class on 2 days and a 9am class on the others. i find myslef downing a lot of coffee from the coffeeshop on campus because of that, and i've gone back to sodas, which i'm trying to cut out. Randomly enough though, it seems the company that does food for us here, Sodexho, has set up a breakfast bar of sorts in LBC (for my aunt who follows me here LBC is a college acronomy for the Boling center which houses, psych, education, history, sociology/ anthropology and the occasional english class) lobby which is very nice of them, so i may be hitting up that place on Tuesday and Thursday mornings instead of the coffeeshop. went to the wrogn room initially for my first class yesterday, that was a bit of a brain fart. i checked my iphone and realized i was in the wrong room and ran upstairs to the right one.
To end this week's update i'll put below the names of my youtube channels.
1) my youtube channels:
Zizzlerizzle8707: Video blogs, transformer reviews, and shout-out videos
Noisemaker888: Lyrical Prose readings.
well, i cant really think of anything else to say other than tonight i have the first meeting of my Greece May Term orientation class. should be interesting.
That's right, i'm going to Greece in May to study the ancietn history. Pretty Awesome. I'll look into seeing if i can do brief updates on here from my iphone once my folks and i figure out how i'm gonna stay in touch other than phone.
I'm more or less organized for the year wiht transformers figures to get this year. Though i am running out of space here at school so i'll either have to move some old binders and textbooks that i've saved back home, or move some figures home over the summer and figure out how to display them best there (no shelving unit there). I have 7 stored at home already, and i should actually probably count them as part of my collection, i dont know why i didnt. Then there's the whole thing of itemizing my collection in terms of Figure name, toyline range, price, what parts of it i have, etc. That's gonna be my fun project for the couple days of mid-sem this semester.
On a side-note: does anyone still feel weird writing "10" at the end of anything you put the date on?
I find myself wishing i had gotten a coffeemaker when my folks were out here last semester for parents weekend. then i didnt really need it cause my earliest class was at 10. but this semester, as i said last week. i have an 8:30 class on 2 days and a 9am class on the others. i find myslef downing a lot of coffee from the coffeeshop on campus because of that, and i've gone back to sodas, which i'm trying to cut out. Randomly enough though, it seems the company that does food for us here, Sodexho, has set up a breakfast bar of sorts in LBC (for my aunt who follows me here LBC is a college acronomy for the Boling center which houses, psych, education, history, sociology/ anthropology and the occasional english class) lobby which is very nice of them, so i may be hitting up that place on Tuesday and Thursday mornings instead of the coffeeshop. went to the wrogn room initially for my first class yesterday, that was a bit of a brain fart. i checked my iphone and realized i was in the wrong room and ran upstairs to the right one.
To end this week's update i'll put below the names of my youtube channels.
1) my youtube channels:
Zizzlerizzle8707: Video blogs, transformer reviews, and shout-out videos
Noisemaker888: Lyrical Prose readings.
well, i cant really think of anything else to say other than tonight i have the first meeting of my Greece May Term orientation class. should be interesting.
That's right, i'm going to Greece in May to study the ancietn history. Pretty Awesome. I'll look into seeing if i can do brief updates on here from my iphone once my folks and i figure out how i'm gonna stay in touch other than phone.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
short pre-weekly update post
Hey all just wanted to post this breif update. I sent an e-mail to the registrar about the issues my freinds and i had with community day having bumped enrollment confirmation up a day last week and the registrar got the most unhelpful, matter of fact, "well this is how we did it, and its worked before, so feel free to give me a suggestion" passive aggressive tone. It really annoys me when people get like that. Now i've e-mailed the registrar back with my thoughts, but I'm beginning to feel that it should be taught in schools that getting an attitude with someone who is offering a suggestion on why something didn't work (for one reason or another) isn't constructive.
Be back for the weekly update tomorrow
Be back for the weekly update tomorrow
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Wekkly post #2: 1-13-10
So yea. i know that title was lame, but it was really the only thing i could think to call this entry cause nothing moved me in terms of a title. Anyway, break's over and classes are in session here at EC again. Today was the first day and wednesdays are gonna be fairly easy for me. Class from 9-10 and then free hours for homework and stuff until 7pm when i have an orientation thing for my may term in Greece.
that class thats on wednesday morngins from 9-10 also meets mondays and fridays, and while its a philosophy class, it seems like it should be manageable. the reading should be fine, even if i have to do it 2 times to understand some of the stuff and theorize on it. There's gonna be a crap ton of papers in the class, but most of them are short reflection papers. I'm a good writer so yea, i just need to use alot of good vocab.
Anyway, all my other classes meet for the first time tomorrow or friday, so yea. I feel good that things are back to relative nromalcy here, but at the same time with the papers i'm gonna have for the above class, my english class and the work i'm gonna have outside of class for Human development (more on that later) i dont think i'll be able to volunteer at boys and Girls club in town this semester, which is a shame, cause i liked doing it the past 2 years and i couldnt last semester cause of classes and stuff. It's a shame cause the kids there were fun when i was working there, in spite of a few issues, though the turnover in terms of staff there is ridiculuous.
In other news, i've got a good view from my room at this time of year, when theres like 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. it just looks so nice. Now that i think about it, i should probably recap things since last post. Not much really interesting happened last week on thursday and friday really. Saturday night my folks and i finished a very good movie called Ghost town. It's got Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear, and i think its labeled as a romatic comedy, but its more of a comedy than romance, though there is that element between Ricky Gervais's character and the main female lead. It's a good movie, you all should check it out. Sunday AM, i left to come back here cause we had enrollment confirmation on Monday (Enroll confirmation for any non Earlham people who read this is literally where the students show up to one fo the buildings on campus, sign something and leave, comfirming theyre herre this semester). The reason why it was on monday was because they felt the need to have Tuesday be a dya where Faculty and students give a series of teach-ins on stuff they want to do or have done recently on campus, in town or back in their hometowns. While i'm sure it was fun for people who went, i had no interest in it, and thought it was poor planning for them to screw over the student body by bumping enrollment comfirmation up a day. What i think they shouldve done is have community day on the first day of the mid-semester long weekend. Oh and the people in charge of enrollment confirmation, did nto give us adequate notification, they literally sent 2 e-mails, one of which was primarily abotu grades being up on the older student database here. In that e-mail they literally just tacked on the enrollment confirmation date change at the bottom of the e-mail and it wasnt even mentioned in the heading of the e-mail. The second e-mail wasnt even sent until the day before, when most of us were either getting here, or packing to get here on monday. They shoulda sent something along the lines of an APB at the end of last semesters and ahad advisors remind their advisees.
I spent most of tueday catchign up with people and wacthing the last 4 espisodes of a anime i got for x-mas (It has a crap ton of set-up and a few filler episodes that aren't good for anything other than character development, but when it ramped up it was good. even if the death of one of the main characters was a bit bleh), and then Donnie Darko and District 9. I highly reccomend district 9 to people that like action/drama. ITs a brilliant video that feels a bit like a documentary at first.
Back to class stuff for this last paragraph, human development is my last non senior psych class and it should be fun. ITs taught by my advisor, who is awesome and the whole premise in the class is we learn a theory or 2 and then in small groups observe a kid in the community around Earlham and do a big group paper on the child and how they apply or dont to the various psych theories. Should be interesting.
Anyway, this post was way longer than intended, so i guess i'll close it out be saying this. go out and rent/ netflix both District 9 and Ghost Town. and I got a new transformer figure in the mail on monday, and he's awesome.
Anyway, thats it for me this week. if something drastic happens, i'll post again. If not, I'll see you readers on the 20th.
that class thats on wednesday morngins from 9-10 also meets mondays and fridays, and while its a philosophy class, it seems like it should be manageable. the reading should be fine, even if i have to do it 2 times to understand some of the stuff and theorize on it. There's gonna be a crap ton of papers in the class, but most of them are short reflection papers. I'm a good writer so yea, i just need to use alot of good vocab.
Anyway, all my other classes meet for the first time tomorrow or friday, so yea. I feel good that things are back to relative nromalcy here, but at the same time with the papers i'm gonna have for the above class, my english class and the work i'm gonna have outside of class for Human development (more on that later) i dont think i'll be able to volunteer at boys and Girls club in town this semester, which is a shame, cause i liked doing it the past 2 years and i couldnt last semester cause of classes and stuff. It's a shame cause the kids there were fun when i was working there, in spite of a few issues, though the turnover in terms of staff there is ridiculuous.
In other news, i've got a good view from my room at this time of year, when theres like 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. it just looks so nice. Now that i think about it, i should probably recap things since last post. Not much really interesting happened last week on thursday and friday really. Saturday night my folks and i finished a very good movie called Ghost town. It's got Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear, and i think its labeled as a romatic comedy, but its more of a comedy than romance, though there is that element between Ricky Gervais's character and the main female lead. It's a good movie, you all should check it out. Sunday AM, i left to come back here cause we had enrollment confirmation on Monday (Enroll confirmation for any non Earlham people who read this is literally where the students show up to one fo the buildings on campus, sign something and leave, comfirming theyre herre this semester). The reason why it was on monday was because they felt the need to have Tuesday be a dya where Faculty and students give a series of teach-ins on stuff they want to do or have done recently on campus, in town or back in their hometowns. While i'm sure it was fun for people who went, i had no interest in it, and thought it was poor planning for them to screw over the student body by bumping enrollment comfirmation up a day. What i think they shouldve done is have community day on the first day of the mid-semester long weekend. Oh and the people in charge of enrollment confirmation, did nto give us adequate notification, they literally sent 2 e-mails, one of which was primarily abotu grades being up on the older student database here. In that e-mail they literally just tacked on the enrollment confirmation date change at the bottom of the e-mail and it wasnt even mentioned in the heading of the e-mail. The second e-mail wasnt even sent until the day before, when most of us were either getting here, or packing to get here on monday. They shoulda sent something along the lines of an APB at the end of last semesters and ahad advisors remind their advisees.
I spent most of tueday catchign up with people and wacthing the last 4 espisodes of a anime i got for x-mas (It has a crap ton of set-up and a few filler episodes that aren't good for anything other than character development, but when it ramped up it was good. even if the death of one of the main characters was a bit bleh), and then Donnie Darko and District 9. I highly reccomend district 9 to people that like action/drama. ITs a brilliant video that feels a bit like a documentary at first.
Back to class stuff for this last paragraph, human development is my last non senior psych class and it should be fun. ITs taught by my advisor, who is awesome and the whole premise in the class is we learn a theory or 2 and then in small groups observe a kid in the community around Earlham and do a big group paper on the child and how they apply or dont to the various psych theories. Should be interesting.
Anyway, this post was way longer than intended, so i guess i'll close it out be saying this. go out and rent/ netflix both District 9 and Ghost Town. and I got a new transformer figure in the mail on monday, and he's awesome.
Anyway, thats it for me this week. if something drastic happens, i'll post again. If not, I'll see you readers on the 20th.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
update concernign this whole blog thing and a rant
so i dont know how exactly to open this post, but i guess i just did.
Anyway, this post is gonna be mainly 2 things. An update about this blogging thing, and a rant bout the new 30 seconds to Mars record.
So onto the update about this blog: I havent been posting frequently on here at all, and i've come to enjoy posting on here, mainly because i can just spew out my thoughts on whatever. So with that being said, i'm gonna try and make these posts a weekly thing, probably every wednesday. at least thats what i'm aiming for.
oh and i'll try and make my posts about everything, not just music, transformers and school.
Now to the mini-rant on the the new 30 seconds to mars record.
If you dont know fo these guys, it's JAred Leto's (yea that Jared leto) musical endeavor. Now i'll be frank, out of the tracks i had on their last album, i really liked thier sound, but then their got labeled as Emo with their song "the Kill" and i really stopped listening to them. Then came clips and the first single from their latest album "This is War". As i'm posting this, i'm fnishing my first listen of it and it's honestly not a bad record, but thats about as much as i can say about ti positively. It's good but it leaves a lot to be desired. At least for me. My biggest issues are as follows:
1a,b, and c) Mr. Leto relies too much on extra bits and bobs on this record. Case in point the overused childrens choir prerecorded vocals, unecessary atmospheric intros, random oh's and whoahs.
Lets tackle these one at a time, first up the Children's choir extra voices. This feature wouldnt be bad if it wasnt overused like it is on this record. The first track is filled with them and as such is a forgettable intro track. The title Track features whatever group Mr. Leto recruited doing all the back-up vocals on the chorus and such. and track 8 "Vox Populi" is seriously hindered by the fact that the group of voices opens the track by singing the chorus 2 times, which as much as Mr. Leto sings the chorus himself. I get that they were trying to go with something new on this record, to break out fo the label that thier last record gave them, but iit is my firm opinion that these extra vocals , which are also used in the current single "kings and Queens" were used too much, as they dominate the majority of the tracks on the album, appearing to drown out the musical prowess of any guitar work done by the group, or any drum work done by Mr. Leto's brother, who is a very good drummer.
1B) the intros. There is an abundance of occasions on this album where any given track (excluding "kings and Queens" and "stranger in a strange land") starts off with a quiet intro that builds up. now this is fine if it is done properly. But i feel Mr. Leto and his group missed the mark with their intros here as most are just progressive slightly industrial build-ups that seemed to have just been tacked onto the beginning of the song.
1c) Mr. Leto has a great vocal range, but he needs to look at modern, non-emo rock bands and realize that nobody is filling their songs with "whoah's" "oh's" and nonsense words at various points. theres at least 2 songs on the album, if not 3 or 4 where the majority of the time that could be spent showcasing any instrumental talent the members of the band have, is filled wiht these random vocals from Mr. Leto and/or the aforemntion pre-recorded choir group, which may i ad doesnt even show up in the video for "Kings and Queens". their voices just enter, and Mr. Leto makes it look like he's summoning their voices, as if he is playing God. Goign along with the main point here though, i feel like there is too much vocal work on here, like Mr. LEto loves the sound of his own singing range too much. This hinders the instrumental parts of the songs, in my opinion
2) the overall feel of the album: there is no cohesivity, you've got a mismash of varying sounds, as if 30 seconds to mars is trying to find their niche. tracks like "Night of the hunter" "stranger in a strange land" are more industrial, whiel tracks like " Kings and Queens", "this is war" and "Closer to the edge" are more hard rock songs. and then you have the slower or mid-tempo songs "L 490" (which is an instrumental, a very underwhelming one), "100 suns" and "hurricane". I feel like the band is trying to hard on Hurricane, as there is the organization of qucik first verse, chorus, long second verse, bridge, chorus, bridge, bridge, bridge. This organization does not work for the song at all. "100 suns" has potential but it's just a forgettable mid-tempo song with little variation in the lyrics until halfway in.
So yea i combined my issues, but i am disapointed wiht this album. not as much as i was with Echoes the fall's debut album though, which is a separate rant.
anyway, sorry for the lengthy post. i'll be back next week.
Anyway, this post is gonna be mainly 2 things. An update about this blogging thing, and a rant bout the new 30 seconds to Mars record.
So onto the update about this blog: I havent been posting frequently on here at all, and i've come to enjoy posting on here, mainly because i can just spew out my thoughts on whatever. So with that being said, i'm gonna try and make these posts a weekly thing, probably every wednesday. at least thats what i'm aiming for.
oh and i'll try and make my posts about everything, not just music, transformers and school.
Now to the mini-rant on the the new 30 seconds to mars record.
If you dont know fo these guys, it's JAred Leto's (yea that Jared leto) musical endeavor. Now i'll be frank, out of the tracks i had on their last album, i really liked thier sound, but then their got labeled as Emo with their song "the Kill" and i really stopped listening to them. Then came clips and the first single from their latest album "This is War". As i'm posting this, i'm fnishing my first listen of it and it's honestly not a bad record, but thats about as much as i can say about ti positively. It's good but it leaves a lot to be desired. At least for me. My biggest issues are as follows:
1a,b, and c) Mr. Leto relies too much on extra bits and bobs on this record. Case in point the overused childrens choir prerecorded vocals, unecessary atmospheric intros, random oh's and whoahs.
Lets tackle these one at a time, first up the Children's choir extra voices. This feature wouldnt be bad if it wasnt overused like it is on this record. The first track is filled with them and as such is a forgettable intro track. The title Track features whatever group Mr. Leto recruited doing all the back-up vocals on the chorus and such. and track 8 "Vox Populi" is seriously hindered by the fact that the group of voices opens the track by singing the chorus 2 times, which as much as Mr. Leto sings the chorus himself. I get that they were trying to go with something new on this record, to break out fo the label that thier last record gave them, but iit is my firm opinion that these extra vocals , which are also used in the current single "kings and Queens" were used too much, as they dominate the majority of the tracks on the album, appearing to drown out the musical prowess of any guitar work done by the group, or any drum work done by Mr. Leto's brother, who is a very good drummer.
1B) the intros. There is an abundance of occasions on this album where any given track (excluding "kings and Queens" and "stranger in a strange land") starts off with a quiet intro that builds up. now this is fine if it is done properly. But i feel Mr. Leto and his group missed the mark with their intros here as most are just progressive slightly industrial build-ups that seemed to have just been tacked onto the beginning of the song.
1c) Mr. Leto has a great vocal range, but he needs to look at modern, non-emo rock bands and realize that nobody is filling their songs with "whoah's" "oh's" and nonsense words at various points. theres at least 2 songs on the album, if not 3 or 4 where the majority of the time that could be spent showcasing any instrumental talent the members of the band have, is filled wiht these random vocals from Mr. Leto and/or the aforemntion pre-recorded choir group, which may i ad doesnt even show up in the video for "Kings and Queens". their voices just enter, and Mr. Leto makes it look like he's summoning their voices, as if he is playing God. Goign along with the main point here though, i feel like there is too much vocal work on here, like Mr. LEto loves the sound of his own singing range too much. This hinders the instrumental parts of the songs, in my opinion
2) the overall feel of the album: there is no cohesivity, you've got a mismash of varying sounds, as if 30 seconds to mars is trying to find their niche. tracks like "Night of the hunter" "stranger in a strange land" are more industrial, whiel tracks like " Kings and Queens", "this is war" and "Closer to the edge" are more hard rock songs. and then you have the slower or mid-tempo songs "L 490" (which is an instrumental, a very underwhelming one), "100 suns" and "hurricane". I feel like the band is trying to hard on Hurricane, as there is the organization of qucik first verse, chorus, long second verse, bridge, chorus, bridge, bridge, bridge. This organization does not work for the song at all. "100 suns" has potential but it's just a forgettable mid-tempo song with little variation in the lyrics until halfway in.
So yea i combined my issues, but i am disapointed wiht this album. not as much as i was with Echoes the fall's debut album though, which is a separate rant.
anyway, sorry for the lengthy post. i'll be back next week.
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