Joshua Van Tassel

Archive for December, 2009

so. loud.

December 07th, 2009 | Category: music,the human voice

(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for things to make more sense.

Loud LOUD loooud noises. There’s so many of them. everywhere. all the time. Walking downtown sometimes is like putting your head into a blender, adding a bunch of chalk boards and nails, some sheet metal, and a couple of screaming babies on an airplane and pressing puree. For me it’s not really about the amount of noises and sounds, sometimes it’s kind of inspiring to hear a thousand things at once. It’s about the volume of some of these things. A street car releasing their sir brakes directly in front of you, the subway screeching to a ear shattering high pitched halt, 5 cabs honking pointlessly at each other, a bus lumbering along at an undesirable speed in the rain, the god damned shrieking hydra air hose of a milk steamer. Living in an urban center has its many benefits, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. My main concern is as someone whose professional career/hopesanddreams are dependent on his hearing, are there things I should be doing to help protect myself from the day to day aural assault? Or am I just becoming a cranky old man at 29? I’m going to try to use the H4 and a little decibel meter over the next week to find out if I’m just being a freak or if its time to wear a space helmet over ear muffs over plugs. Stay tuned.

In other news, my friend and talented musician Trent Reschny has just released a very cool iphone application called iHearIt . Here’s a little decription from the man himself -

“Musicians have always been looking for a better way to learn music by ear – especially to try to recreate those styles and moments we find so inspiring. Before my time, musicians used reel to reel tape recorders to slow music down to half speed. But the recordings always sounded strange because they were an octave too low. I’ve purchased digital boxes to do this, but they were clunky and unintuitive. With iHearIt, you touch the song to start and stop it, zoom in and out by pinching your fingers, and set loops with one touch. And it’s all done on your iPhone. It couldn’t be simpler or more portable.”

Very cool app for sure. For a guy like me whose constantly on the lookout for fresh sounds and ways to manipulate them quickly and easily, this is a perfect tool. Nice work Trent.

And here’s some new music I’m working on. Been in touch with a bunch of friends, hope to have something done for February. should be fun…

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happy

December 04th, 2009 | Category: the human voice

(on facebook? that’s unfortunate. go to www.joshuavt.com to see this post in it’s full form)

Just back from tour and a few unfortunate things have happened lately, so here’s a few things that are good and keeping me from needlessly moping. Like an annoying angry child. Or a cat who you’ve just taken out of the cage after transporting them home from the vet and the tranqs have worn off.

This sound -

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From our favorite really small town in Saskatchewan, Nokomis an old school train passing through the town at night.

This record -

Charles Spearin’s “the happiness project”. Beautiful record of music composed and inspired by speech. Learn more about it here, then go buy it right away.

This video -

I love it.

This website -
I know I’ve said it before, but Christine Bougie has one of the damned finest blogs going. She puts me to shame , mainly because posts are frequent, and actually useful unlike my ramblings and sound showings.

This book -