Joshua Van Tassel

…of my dehumidifier because it sounds like this right now..

It reminds me of a sick jackal. Not that I’ve ever really heard one, but that’s the sound I’m quite sure it would make.

This one looks cuter then sick, but you get the point.

sounds like this outside -

and part of it looks like this inside (sometimes)

OrbitA studios - shirts optional.

…….for the lack of updates. It’s been a busy week and staying busy which is great.
One thing I really wanted to share is another radiolab podcast experience. They asked listeners to call in and leave a message at the station and tell them about the songs that get stuck in their heads, and also how they get them out. This alone is pretty cool to listen to, random people singing everything from Bach to Alice Cooper, but the really cool part is almost every single person sings the tunes exactly in time and perfectly on pitch. Weeeeeird. The brain is a crazy place that we’ll never really go. Check it out…

This is apparently your brain on music. I’ve got no better explanation, sorry….but people seem to think this guy does

Here’s a couple tunes that I needed to write in the past couple days. I’m not sure if they’re done, but they’re fun and I accept them for who they are, you know?

Also, there’s 3 things that I want to tell you about, shows specifically. I hate to make this an advertisement for myself, but then again, it’s my site right? Anyway -

TONIGHT @ the Tranzac - I’m playing duo with the fantastic Joel Schwartz, 730 pm. He’s bringing two amps, you don’t have to bring any. No cover and good fun on an early Sunday evening.

Monday June 23rd - My good friend David Myles is having his cd release party at Hughes Room and I’ll be playing with him and wearing a tie. He’s Nova Scotia’s finest and we always have a good time.

Tuesday June 24th - Ainsley McNeaney is releasing her cd at the Music Gallery, and on top of having myself and a rhythm section, she literally hired a full orchestra, 40 people playing. That’s almost as many as Broken Social Scene ( no disrespect intended, I think those guys are great). It should be a really good show.

Ok, self promotion done. Speaking of promotion, musicians seemed to have picked up on a new way of advertising their shows, which is by text messaging everyone in their phone’s contact list. I don’t know how I feel about this. There’s SOOO many ways that we get bombarded by advertising with every step we take, and having to deal with it on my telephone seems a little over the top. Thoughts?

I”m working on some new stuff that needs to be done pretty fast for something that could be very good in the near future, but I’ll let you know if it’s for sure soon. These 2 things came out so far today, and they both have potential to do something interesting, I’m just not sure what. I can never tell how much time I need to spend with these ideas before they turn into something more then just ideas, but we’ll hang out today and see how it goes…

So there’s a neat little program google puts out called Analytics which allows you to find out various things about the people visiting your site, ie: how many, where they’re from, how long they hang out, etc. One very neat feature is that if someone comes to your site via google, it’ll show you what they searched to get there. Apparently out there somewhere in internet land, there’s someone who almost every day searches for “tassled hairstyle” and ends up on my little blog. I’ll take it.

One of note was also “bad french” ( my french is indeed terrible, I’m just surprised google knows that….). Lets all give thanks for a moment to those internet deities who keep randomness and lawlessness alive and well in the digital realm. It makes my day far more entertaining.

And what’s that? Where’s the sounds? You’re totally right. Here’s the sounds of a digital camera turning off and on. Not usually interesting you say? Only because you’ve never listened to it. Give me a couple days and I’ll make you something pretty friends.

So stop.die is finally getting new tunes together at a fairly fast pace. We’ve found a good way to work, and we’re going to stick to it and do all we can to get new music out as fast as we can. Here’s the first tune of a batch of crazy new stuff in the works……

….because this is the sound we seem to be hearing every second day lately–

Although we have been getting a lot of these little rain spells, they’re not as apocalyptic as we may think. In Canada, a severe thunderstorm is defined as either having tornadoes, wind gusts of 90 km/h or greater, hail of 2 centimeters in diameter or greater, a rainfall rate greater than 50 millimeters in 1 hour or 75 millimeters in 3 hours.

So, I guess we’re ok, for now at least.

….tune in online to CBC3 at around 11. I’m playing a show with kalimba/piano player/songwriter extrordinaire Laura Barrett and they’ll be broadcasting live. It’s a great band with members of the Hylozoists, and Rebekah Higgs, it should be fun!

The subway announcements kept repeating itself………….The subway announcements kept repeating itself…The subway announcements kept repeating itself…..and that’s how it sounds. Unnerving.