| man it's been a while since I wrote one of these beinning of the summer was great. just slept a lot, hung out with people, and picked up tennis. what a great sport. wish I'd started playing it earlier. I like team sports like soccer and basketball because it takes a collective effort for a team to beat another. you could have a team of amazing players with no team chemistry and lose to a team with decent players but amazing team chemistry. having a go-to player, of course, can help greatly, but if that player is a complete ball hog then the team will not win as often as it would otherwise. but singles tennis is a great sport because it is a showdown: one player against another. nothing anyone else does matters in the slightest. I had a ton of fun hanging out with akira, someone I hadn't really hung out with THAT much even though I've known him since 5th grade, and it was cool to have a friendly competition going on. though I had never actually played before, I finally beat him once and came close several other times. definitely looking forward to playing again in the future, with him and with anyone else who I meet who wants to play. I guess I like tennis cuz I like running a lot too. Both individual sports. You set your limit. Your mind and body have to cooperate and can only work as well as the other one is working. it was weird to go to my brother's graduation. can't believe he's done with high school already. I still think of him as being in like 9th or 10th grade, but here he is, a soon-to-be freshman at georgia state. I hope he likes it. he's commuting from home, so I hope he doesn't become a recluse and that he actually hangs out and talks to people. boris commuted to tech freshman year and I'm pretty sure he met maybe like 10 new people that entire year and doubt he actually hung out with any of them too much outside of class. while my brother definitely is more socially competent than boris, he's not the most outgoing or friendly guy either, so yea. it is pretty ridiculous how living on campus there costs 14k a year. new apartments or not, that's wayyyyy too much to pay just for a place to live while going to college. gonna be weird when i'm finishin up with grad school and my sister's gonna be going to high school. she's kind of emo/punk, so I hope she doesn't do stupid shit in high school. kinda weird to think that it's people who are her age up to about 17 who will be most likely to listen to panda force's stuff. the band, and nate, have had this talk a lot, about how rock is dying, how rap is dying, how indie is dying, and how electro is taking over. but that's really not true... it's just that people OUR age don't really give a crap about music that isn't played at clubs, so it seems like electro is the place to go. there are still plenty of people, unfortunately who like indie, though they tend to be high school seniors and freshmen in college. rap will always be popular as long as there are lower-class (socioeconomically) minorities, and rock, as I said, is more popular in middle school and high school. I feel like when we were rocking out to incubus in middle school, people in college thought it was dumb and listened to electro instead. it's been an interesting time in the studio. everyone's worst characteristics are magnified even worse. though there have been some pleasant surprises. for example, navid has gone from taking the longest to record to taking the least to record. instead of 50 takes, he takes less than 5. I guess it's from all the practice from those 50 takes or something, plus practice outside of shows and stuff. but yea, he's improved a lot and has been on the dot as far as recording. but his tardiness and histendency to disappear/fall asleep/go MIA get really annoying. today, he called me at noon to make sure he was going in at 6:30. I told him I'd call him when nate was available, and that it should be at 6:30. so nate calls me at 6 and says he's running late and to tell navid to head over around 7. but navid never picks up. nate tries to get in touch with him, and navid never picks up. I try again at 9, and he suddenly picks up, says he's at dinner, and then calls me back and says he'll be there at 10. awesome. not as bad as when he went to the marine lab for a weekend without telling us when he was coming back...but yea. so much bullshit. aidan's the same way too. it's not acceptable to be away from your cellphone for more than an hour when you're supposed to be recording...or if you have someone's guitar or bass cab in your car.... matt is weird cuz he's now almost always on time, practices all the time, but yet he's so detached and sometimes, for lack of better words, retarded. more on this: the hardest part so far has been cutting up our songs and transforming them. while most of the changes I have liked, there are some that I have gone completely against and basically ignored. end of the world we fought a lot over the length of things because our producer continued cutting down things more and more. in the end we're all happy now, but there's been a lot of arguing over taking things out and putting things in. it's interesting comparing and contrasting my writing style with aidan's and matt's. synergy is so dam good at this point. it's annoying how aidan doesn't seem to put full effort all the time. when he does, the results are amazing. like in one of our newly finished songs, better osrt of day. the song started off decently. it was mostly just parts that matt had thrown together. and then aidan wrote a sweet vocal line and also a three part harmony section, the only song where me aidan AND matt all sing. and then I added some cool guitar lines (though matt had already written some cool ones) and navid added some sweet drums. that's how every song should be. there are few songs where one person wrote all the parts and actually did a good job. the only one that comes to mind is smoke and mirrors, though matt has modified it since he's gotten much better. |
