Drove down to North Bend from Portland today. Normally 3.5-4.5 hours, but this time took 6. Had some traffic, had some fog. Biggest problem---stuck for an hour while the whole southbound side of I-5 was blocked by an accident. Finally managed to drive around it.
My brother and his friend have this semi-pro recording studio. I'm going to try to record one or more of the songs I've written tomorrow. I think we're starting with the Finite Automata Song...
[2004/01/05] Indeed we did. The lyrics below aren't quite in the right order for what we ended up with, but I think all of the lyrics on the recording are there. This recording was made at the studio of Eric Porter and my brother, who uses the 'nym Neal F. Guye. Eric played drums and Neal played bass. The vocals, piano, and synth-strings are all me. The piano, bass, and drums were recorded as one take. The vocals and the strings were then added. Finally, the whole thing was mixed by Neal and burned. Recording this took about 15 hours, including about: 2.5 hours for breakfast, lunch, dinner; 3 hours to record the first track (3 takes); 2 hours to record the vocals and strings; 3 hours for mixdown. The remainder was setup, mainly spent dealing with various SNAFUs. The attached recordings are a high-quality MP3 and a FLAC I expect no one will want, made from the 16-bit 44.1Ksps CD version. If you want the 24-bit 96Ksps version for some wacky reason, let me know.
The Finite Automata Song
Define a machine
With a finite set of states
Taking input from the left
Producing output to the right
With a finite controlDefined by a well-defined machine
I woke up today
From a very scary dream
I dreamt that I was
A non-deterministic finite state machine
And as hard as I tried
I could never even really try to seemTo loose my control and fly away
[chorus]
And as I wandered onward
Through this dark and scary day
That mechanical feeling
Never really seemed to go away
I know there are those
Who say we're all just machinesBut if we're just automata why do we dream?
And as I sit here dreaming
In the darkness of my cube
And thinking of the billion things
I'll never have the time to do
The ticking of my CPU
Is like the ticking of my Japanese watch
Ticking off the nanoseconds'Til that final state where ticking stops
And I know there are those
Who say it's all just a dreamBut if so it is a dream with fine machines
(chorus)
And soon the night is over
And soon the day is through
And soon we lay us down to sleep
And soon we rise anew
And so the circle cycles on
And so on state to state
And so we dream of fine machinesAnd soon it's getting late
And I know there are those
who say it's all just machines
Living in a dark and scary mechanistic dream
I know there are those
Who say it's all just a dreamIf it's just automata why do we dream?
Why do we dream?
I woke up today...
—Bart Massey 1998