This is a collection of songs about what it's like to collect data about our planet.  It's often an expensive and lonely endeavor.  Typically, people can either collect one snapshot in time at many locations or monitor changes in time at a single point on earth.  Many scientists/engineers, sometimes with the help of robots and animals, have figured out how to observe attributes of the farthest reaches of our planet that others only decades ago have died trying to document or simply traverse.  I sit back, watch, and make use of data that comes in from the comfort of my chair, but have an appreciation for what goes into capturing these fleeting moments, which is what this collection of songs is supposed to convey.  Once again, this is just my bass, audio interface, and laptop.  And the artwork (if you can call it that) is from Stable Diffusion.

Geodata Are Fleeting

Intro/Retrospective

Subtle

People may be getting better at predicting the future and what skills we need to adapt to societal-level changes, but the speed at which things are changing is outpacing our predictions about what will be useful for us to know. These are some songs about examples of things people thought would be useful to know about some decades ago. The photograph was taken during the recent (April 8, 2024) eclipse.

Pointless Preparation

This ambient and segue-type compilation of songs I composed over the past month is the style I've planned on composing in for years. The mood is more a reflection of anxiety about whether I'll become the person I'd like to be, which I would hope sounds better in song form than that would be through conversation. All of the sounds still come from my bass, through an audio interface and recorded with a laptop.

Sunrest

This is a collection of songs devoted to the thing we all experience, but none of us understand: time. Sure, there are theories that couple space and time together and we may think we understand space. But we tend to make up idioms to sum up our movement in the temporal dimension as it relates to experiences we better understand, which is what these songs are supposed to provide a soundtrack to. The cover art was generated by Stable Diffusion again. And as usual, the sounds all come from a combination of my bass, audio interface, and laptop.

Double Down At Half Speed

We get subtle clues about things that people feel like they're sparing us knowledge about, subtle hints if we're paying attention to how something works, and so on.  This album is a collection of songs with subtleties of various sorts (or in the not-so-subtle sense).  Again, all of the sounds you hear are made with my bass and the album cover artwork was made by Stable Diffusion (thanks, AI).

People In Gorilla Costumes Get Ignored

Hint Hint

Tip-Toeing Across A Creaky Floor

We get subtle clues about things that people feel like they're sparing us knowledge about, subtle hints if we're paying attention to how something works, and so on. This album is a collection of songs with subtleties of various sorts (or in the not-so-subtle sense). Again, all of the sounds you hear are made with my bass and the album cover artwork was made by Stable Diffusion (thanks, AI).

Reading The Room

The Moment They Turned

When Dust Hits The Fan

This is a soundtrack to those moments when we feel like we're compelled to either pretend to know what we're doing or fess up to our ignorance/lack of skill.  Sometimes we can't put words to a feeling (often due to a lack of vocabulary but sometimes due to limitations of a particular language).  Sometimes we go through the motions we've been taught, but in a new situation the motions don't work well for.  Sometimes our preconceived notions come out about something we are unfamiliar with because we thought we were more familiar with it (often due to generalizing too much and sometimes having prejudice as a result).  It's all gibberish unless we can admit it.  These songs, once again, are entirely bass layered on bass through my audio interface and laptop.  The album cover art here again was generated by Stable Diffusion, which apparently spouts gibberish just like us.

Am I Right Or Am I Right?

This is a soundtrack to those moments when we feel like we're compelled to either pretend to know what we're doing or fess up to our ignorance/lack of skill. Sometimes we can't put words to a feeling (often due to a lack of vocabulary but sometimes due to limitations of a particular language). Sometimes we go through the motions we've been taught, but in a new situation the motions don't work well for. Sometimes our preconceived notions come out about something we are unfamiliar with because we thought we were more familiar with it (often due to generalizing too much and sometimes having prejudice as a result). It's all gibberish unless we can admit it. These songs, once again, are entirely bass layered on bass through my audio interface and laptop. The album cover art here again was generated by Stable Diffusion, which apparently spouts gibberish just like us.

Stumped But Still Talking

This is a soundtrack to the seemingly likely possibility that we're part of a program (at least of sorts) and the consequences of that for what our lives mean.  If this is all pre-programmed, is there such a thing as chance, or is it all destined to happened anyway (deus de machina-type events in Star Wars being more realistic than they seem)?  Do we ever deserve the things we receive, or was it all just because you and everything around you were programmed to happen that way?  You know, seventh grade philosophy kind of thoughts...  But there's also the meta possibility that we're just replicating the world that was programmed to have us in it with developments in programming of various sorts (not just with computers, but also biology).  Are we progressing towards being able to reincarnate ourselves in what we program, who then achieve the same, and so on?  Or is there a built-in limit so that this is the end of the line for us?  You know, more along the lines of what Hollywood writers like to think about...  Borderline full-of-yourself stuff to think about, in fact...  These songs, once again, are entirely bass layered on bass through my audio interface and laptop.  The album cover art here again was generated by Stable Diffusion.

Meet Your Programmer

Nighttime On The Ocean

Spelunking Submersible Robots

Collecting Samples In A Landscape Where You Are The Alien [Snippet]

Installing GPS Devices Around Greenland

Tide Gauge Maintenance

This is a soundtrack to the patterns we follow and think we see.  These patterns can help us make sense of the world, survive in it, and even make life better, but they can sometimes leads us astray.  We may extrapolate from just one experience and think there's a pattern.  We may be completely wrong and, as a result, form a bad habit of avoidance or repeated participation.  But there are also very real patterns that we need to recognize that help us function.  Patterns we haven't uncovered certainly exist too, whether we know they're there or not.  Patterns are common in music, whether they give us a sense of the inevitable and familiar or they merely ground us while we hear inventive and unfamiliar.  Once again, these songs were made with just my electric bass, audio interface, and laptop.  The artwork was made by Marcela Reyes Ayala.

How Much Reinforcement Does It Take?

Successful Sequence Prediction

This is a soundtrack to the various aspects of what we refer to as culture.  We forged our identities to some extent under this umbrella if we wanted to fit into a community and/or bond with people.  But we also keep some semblance of individualism, which itself may be part of the culture we have.  Our beliefs, practices, and rules may be based on our cultures, but with that, we also get a sense of what doesn't belong instilled in us.  This can be the basis for the most important things in live, like who we want or have (to deal with) in our lives.  Again, these songs are made with only my electric bass, audio interface, and laptop.  The artwork was generated by Stable Diffusion.

Othering

Confused Exoticism

Passing On Tradition

A Religious Experience Or Not

Paradigm Shift

Outlawing Nature

Search For Belonging

Theytriarchal Era

This is a soundtrack to the category of words we all first thought were endearing: onomatopoeias.  Many are commonly used in English (e.g., buzz, beep, giggle, hum,...) but every language I know of has them.  If you want to guess the word in another language, chances are it's pretty close to what it is in the language you speak.  This album is meant to go further than just the sounds the words' pronunciations are meant to convey.  The song titles are in the various languages I've had to speak in my life at some point so the way a song sounds may just be how I think the word feels.  But you may be able to relate.  As usual, I'm just using my bass with sound effects via my laptop.  The artwork is from an AI program that always seems to generate images of sound signals but it's better than the word bubble alternative I had in mind.

גמגום

Guácala

Hop Là

Sigh Taka Taka

Brommen Gonzen

Om Oomph

Swish-Thump

Drone Aww

Quicksand

Qualia

Repeat After Me

Overeducation

Anvil Drop

Abstinence

Leaving Earth

Light Sabers

Sod's Law

-My music is supposed to demonstrate that the bass has range (wider than what is commonly believed and what most genres use the bass for)
-I jumble together indie-, electronic-, post-rock-, ambient-, and jazz-inspired music to create soundtrack/background/instrumental music about various mundane-ish themes
-I'm an ocean scientist so geoscience sometimes seeps into the themes I write songs about

https://ashkenbassic.bandcamp.com/

AshkenBASSic

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