Jarome Matthew

Author: jarome

  • How low the importance of children is in our society

    It never ceases to amaze me exactly how low the importance of children is in our society in terms of the priorities of things in our culture, country, political system etc.

    Lately, this painful reminder came during a meeting with our local government adoption agency, who handle children with possible developmental issues that we are considering as we expand our family.
    Apparently, due to ‘privacy of information’ the government cannot obtain any medical information about the mother, and therefore know little to be able to help with a child’s health and future development. Considering the lack of care, and often self abuse that goes on in many cases with biological parents of these children, this means very serious consequences for the future of any child that is without a family (in the area I live in alone, there are thousands – all with developmental disorders that can’t be identified until the children are old enough for this to have caused major problems)

    You could argue that I am ignorant of how the system works, but I like to think I know injustice when I see it.
    Approaching this from a purely materialistic and non-spiritual perspective, as a politician, what could possibly be the incentive for not passing an amendment for the freedom of information act allowing personal privacy to a mother who is a drug addict, on welfare, alcoholic etc. that demands full medical records of that person for the sake of being able to provide the best care to that baby possible? (a mother who uses during pregnancy often causes irreparable damage)
    How do special interest groups, corporate incentives, and all the other groups that politicians actually serve besides themselves, actually benefit from protecting the medical records of a mother who cannot take care of her child? Shouldn’t the rights of that child outweigh the rights of it’s mother? What is the incentive for that not to be the case?

    I understand the low priority of children in a corrupt, un-spiritual system, but what I cannot fathom is as a politician, focusing on the materialistic and business perspective of this issue, a child is a future taxpayer! If we are going to ignore all good and virtuous motivations, for the sake of future income through the total taxes each of us pay in our lifetime, one would think the government would protect a child like a golden asset, growing to provide future millions of dollars to the government! But even THAT is not enough of an incentive for politicians to put priority on the care and education of our children.

    If that doesn’t show absolute and irrepreperable corruption of the ‘modern democracy’ and political system, I don’t know what does. It’s hard to believe anyone is naive enough to have any faith left in this current system. It’s way beyond band aids and solutions, the only thing that can save it now is a total collapse. USA, lead the way!

  • Listen More, Talk Less

    Well, it’s a new year, the first of the three of them (I celebrate the Gregorian new year in December, Chinese new year in February, and Baha’i New Year in March)
    Every year, I commit to making a resolution to listen more, and talk less. Like the good old days when people thought I was on drugs. will this be the year I actually do it? That remains to be seen.
    “Do or do not. There is no try” the wise master Yoda says.
    Yoda, Grand Master of the Jedi Order  This of course includes interrupting less. For those that are a victim of this (ie: most of you that I have ever talked to), it’s only because I don’t trust my own brain enough to remember what I wanted to say by the time you are finished speaking. I do love to talk, I guess you could say I am extremely opinionated. An air hog if you will.

    But my other resolution is to be more compassionate to myself so I can be compassionate to others. Given the above I may not be off to a very good start… Oh well, I can try again next month for Chinese New Year.

    Jim Carey

  • Some old original Christmas songs

    I was going to post these around a week before the holidays and yesterday I looked at the date and was like “Holy Christmas, it’s Dec 21st!” Here they are anyway:

    Under The Mistletoe:
[audio:Under_The_Mistletoe_Emeline.mp3]


    The First Noel - Tekno mix:
[audio:The_First_Noel-Emeline.mp3]

    These songs were composed with the first successful artists I ever worked with, Emeline. We lost Emeline in 2001 after she spent many brave years battling breast cancer.
    Rosie Owens is on backup vocals.

    DISCLAIMER: These are very old songs. They were done over 16 years ago in 1991, back when I was still learning to compose, produce and engineer. They were commissioned by local radio station Z95.3 FM, who are the time were playing Emeline’s music frequently. You can hear evidence of this from the clips on Emeline’s memorial site. You can get more of her music here.
    So these songs are a little embarrassing. But I’m trying to be humble and put them out there anyway. Hope you enjoy them.

    Have a great holiday season visiting with family, good food and good friends.

  • The sweet serenity of snow

    Earlier this week I went skiing for the first time this year, and it was great.
    I realized two things:

    • I love skiing for various reasons, but one of the main ones is how quiet it is
    • I am really out of shape

    I have been working so much this year that I have totally neglected physical activity so I was expecting to be in pain after skiing, but not on the second run, that is an all new low in being out of shape. So now I am exercising every day even though I loath it.

    Have you ever noticed how quiet it is out when it snows? Especially when it is falling from the sky. This is because snow is an excellent sound absorber. I listen to sound all day every day, often the same thing over and over (I probably end up hearing the average song I am producing over 300 times by the time it is done), so it is nice to get up into the mountains where the snow is everywhere because it is so serene. Aside from the odd swish of a ski, or a chunk of snow falling from a tree, it is truly tranquil. A great break from the noise, which I also love, but you need a break once in a while, you know?

    Next blog posting: my original Christmas songs.

  • Obsession with musical perfection

    I wasn’t sure if after working very hard on a number of musical projects this year I would actually have any new completed CD’s this to speak of. But at least there will be one, as I recently finished Elika Mahony’s new CD, Fire And Gold which I will talk about in a later post when it is released.
    (I haven’t linked to her site as it isn’t working yet.)

    When I am completing an album, I become somewhat obsessed with making sure it sounds as good as possible within a reasonable time frame, and since I am not only producing, but mixing, engineering and mastering, there is no shortage of things that need to be monitored in that last chance to make final changes.
    Many correctly argue that a producer or engineer should never master a CD, but so many projects I have worked on have been ruined by improper mastering, I often end up doing it myself, at the request of artists that trust me more than anyone else, because of how important the music becomes to me after spending so much time composing for, producing and mixing. I am still searching for the right mastering engineer.

    There are so many things that can go wrong at the final stages, just mixing so that everything sounds great on ANY stereo system is a challenge on it’s own even when you’ve been doing it for over 17 years.
    I’ll leave the technical details to that to keep things from getting boring here… I get into some of the pre mixing issues that can come up in this post.
    I start to obsess about little things in the music when it’s my last chance to make changes, in my attempt to make sure everything is perfect. Of course it never is, but the majority of listeners will never know.
    It may seem overly revealing for a professional to divulge that, but any producer who says their music is indeed perfect is a liar, because I hear the problems and mistakes in their music that no one else does, and that’s ok. But I do find it shocking that famous producers with 10 times the budget that I have for a production would release music with major oversights like out of tune notes and piercing frequencies. So that makes me feel a little better about any issues that escape me (and I emphasize the word little, as I said, I get obsessed)

    Then again, you could argue that if someone is going to listen to the music at one tenth of the resolution as an mp3 with ear bud headphones coming from a mini jack, the worst quality audio connector on the planet, what is the point? But this is a blog not an essay, so we’ll leave it at ‘because otherwise I couldn’t live with it’

  • The intricacies of modern music production

    Most people have no idea how much is involved in producing music, and that includes the artists and musicians themselves. That’s right, most professional artists don’t really realize what goes on behind the scenes in producing their music. They leave it up to a professional like myself, a producer (if they want it done right).
    The idea of sculpting a bass sound on repeat for 4 hours is just beyond their comprehension, but that is the kind of thing that goes on amongst mixing together many competing elements so it all blends perfectly.

    Today was an example of that in recording the last of the Cello parts for Elika Mahony’s album which will be completed this month. I’ll tell you more about that 3 year project soon.
    It was very cool to hear someone play something I composed on keyboard on the cello, but professional players aren’t fond of working with non professional composers (ie: composers that don’t write out scores for performers to play). Even though I had the parts professionally scored, the timing didn’t match up with the parts I composed because the piano wasn’t played strictly with a metronome. This means that when the parts are scored, it is very difficult to figure out the beats and bars. There are ways around this but they require a lot of work like creating tempo maps which I won’t get into now.

    Basically what it comes down to is that since artists don’t know what’s involved with these kinds of production details, it is hard for them to know how to prepare for them. Generally, if you want to add any instrumentation, music needs to be played perfectly to a click when it is first started, if it isn’t, it will require a lot more time and money.

    It’s all part of the many intricacies of professional music production. It’s hard to believe how much goes into a song sometimes, even for myself. But when it’s done right, it sure sounds amazing. It can capture the heart and stir your very soul.

  • Massive changes in the music industry

    I have been consulting a great deal with people and the artists I work with about the massive changes in the music industry lately. It is long overdue that I make an official blog post about it.
    But how do you sum up what equates to declaring the death of gravity to a physicist in a short blog entry? It’s a challenge, however, now we know enough to confidently make some bold statements about where the music industry is going and I will very briefly summarize them here:

    • The music industry is moving away from corporations and back to the artist/musician where it should be (this is a very good thing for you, the artist, but more rights and control means more work and responsibility)
    • Giving music away for free and digital downloading doesn’t hurt music sales, it is in fact the only way music is purchased, and essentially has been for a long time. (The myth that downloading is hurting sales is propaganda that corporations have spread in attempt to retain control they are losing over the music industry – see first point)
    • Music as an emotional commodity has become about building and selling relationships, NOT selling a product. Build a strong following and fans will support you in all your efforts. This will soon become a philosophy for all business in the near future in my opinion.
    • The Internet now fully into it’s web 2.0 phase is the way that artists can independently build a strong business without corporations or other companies due to it’s many resources. (This is covered in detail in Andrew Dubbers’ free eBook which I blogged about here, and links to some of these can be found in my blogroll/links page
    • Blogging and social networking is one of the most important ways to accomplish the above and embrace the new music industry and start building your audience.

    So these are some pretty drastic changes, I mean, telling artists they need to give their music away in order to sell it when they have been told that is stealing and will cost them sales? Well, I have started to do it myself as mentioned here, and many professionals, industry experts and artists have proven these points to not only be true, but very successful, artists like Jonathan Coultan. He may not be famous enough for you to know him, but he’s an independent artist making a living from his music using these very techniques. There are articles about it all over the internet. Major artists like radiohead have been starting to make changes as well, selling their music by donation, and a lot of people not only think they’re crazy, fellow artists think they are ruining the music industry. But those people haven’t studied the proven facts about where music is going.

    I have been researching this for some time now, particularly for a course I teach at a local college as part of the full time music program. I also offer artists consulting on effectively using these techniques. I don’t have all the answers because no one does yet, things are still changing and progressing. But I can see where things are going, and it is a good thing.

  • Moving closer to a paperless world

    For many years now, I have been trying to move toward a completely paperless world.
    This is hard in a world that loves paper. Many people love paper because it’s tactile and they can feel it and see it. Not me. I hate little pieces of paper all over the place, and trying to organize and make sense of it all. I got a phone many years ago that allows me to write everything in it. All my notes are digital, I can sync the phone to the computer and vice versa, and all these notes can be modified and organized digitally and archived. I can copy and paste, and edit without having to re type things.

    So that is just in terms of notes and general use of paper, it goes far beyond the unnecessary use of trees. I’m not even going to get into purchase receipts, 3 words: tax time nightmare.

    But there is another use of paper that annoys me to no end: Checks. The whole idea of writing, sending and depositing paper checks for business transactions seems to me so 20th century. It is the only reason I use a bank machine. I am even thinking of giving clients incentives to use electronic means of payment, and attaching links (to my now electronic invoices) to pay electronically. I know big businesses won’t go for this in the near future.
    Would you use electronic methods of payment if you got 1% off your bill? I would love to get your feedback on this. Paypal and similar tools are very easy to use, even if you don’t have an account.

    So if you use paypal, please let me know I would love to pay you this way, and I would do it for free!

    Do I want the world to progress faster than it is ready to? Maybe, it’s all about simplifying life for me, is that so wrong?

  • Cool new audio technology

    Lately I’ve been making a lot of dark and intense non music related posts on here. What can I say, we’re living in the middle of the decline of the old world order… So here’s something more music and sound related!

    There is lot’s of great new music and audio software out now, and I need to update in order to use the new version of my multi track host software (It uses multiple ‘plug in’ softwares that run within the main application to expand on it’s capabilities)

    One of the most exciting is the new audio restoration software from iZotope, ‘RX’.
    There has been a lot of amazing audio software that has blown my mind over the last 10 years, but this is something else – it can remove background sounds from audio without destroying the sound you want! Like removing a car beep from an interview, or filling in bits of sound that is missing from a recording! That’s right, it analyzes audio nearby the missing chunk and fills in the missing data. Like science fiction, but it’s real.

    Listen for yourself to the RX Restoration video demo or the audio demos on the right if you have less time.

    This is amazing stuff, and I am adding it to my arsenal in case you or those you love want some miracles worked with your audio.

  • Fun facts about war and poverty

    It’s a good day to start renouncing nationalism, America!

    “… selfish souls, for the promotion of their own interests, have assigned boundaries and outlets and have, day by day, attached more importance to these, until this led to intense enmity, bloodshed and rapacity in subsequent centuries. In the same way this will continue indefinitely, and if this conception of patriotism remains limited within a certain circle, it will be the primary cause of the world’s destruction” – Abdu’l-Baha