The Smush Newsletter, Oct 24th, 2001, Vol 1.12
Contact: oskillator@hotmail.com
Back issues available at http://www.mindspring.com/~pfister_/smush/news.html

Table of Contents:
1. We Goofed ......... 16
2. New Smush Music ... 31
3. Classics .......... 91
4. If You Want More .. 118

WE GOOFED
---------
Last week I told you, the loyal smush readers, that when I was a youth my
psychologist, Dr. Sbaitso told me, "Too little data, so I make big" when I
was being silent.  I also said that he would then proceed to insert a
bicycle pump into my rectum and inflate my large intestine.  Well I was
contacted by Dr. Sbaitso.  He sent me tapes of our sessions, and it's now
clear to me that what he was saying was really "Too little data, so I make
*fig*".  I'm really not sure what he meant by that, or what effect then that
that had on my musical development... Except that now I'm gonna have to
write a smush song named "fig".

Also, he didn't inflate my abdomen at all -- it turns out I got that idea
from the game Dig Dug.  Sorry, Dr. Sbaitso.

NEW SMUSH MUSIC
---------------
This week, we found a tape under R.F.s bed with three songs on it... it was
the closest time I've come to crying since I found out that Norman's mother
is dead at the end of Psycho.  In any case, they were of exceptionally high
quality, so I had to make them into official smush songs.  A few minutes of
postprocessing later, they were done!

noo - Attached to this song, we found a note from the one and only R.F.:
      "Since every 'new' musical genre in recent history has been a
      combination of existing genres, I bestow upon the world my greatest
      contribution to music: the acid hoedown."

cma - Each year, millions of people go into comas ... but hey, that's life!
      And until now, there was no cure, but we at Smush have come up with a
      no-fail system that's guaranteed to maybe bring your favorite 
      relative out of a coma!

      How can we possibly make a profit?  The answer's simple: volume!  The
      song applies what was known is Bach's time as "terraced dynamics".
      Back then, comas were unheard of, you see, because there was an
      orchestra on every street corner playing music with terraced dynamics
      to wake anyone who might be considering a coma as an alternative to
      being continually bludgeoned.

      But nowadays the corner orchestra has been replaced by "radio", and
      radio is heavily compressed so as to reduce dynamics -- this makes it
      easier to set the volume so that it's always listenable over the sound
      of traffic.  This is great for those who drive, but they still do it
      to radio signals being sent to hospitals, where some terraced dynamics
      might do some lazy people some good.

      That's why we wrote this song.  Just pull a "melt-my-brain" trick on
      your relative, putting CMA in the tape player instead.  Or use our CD
      instead: no moving parts!

dsf - Yippie kay-ay, muddy funster.  We hired Benny G himself to disfigure
      the saxophone used to compose the sax solo for this song -- we used a
      fresh one for the performance, of course.  It worked so well that we
      composed the rest of the piece using the same damaged instrument...
      the drum line was done using different squeaky sounds and the piano
      was done in much the same way that the soundtrack to The Shining was
      performed.  The string part was hard, considering that the entire
      piece was one long note.

And there was one piece that was done by one Lemon Head instead of R.F:

ire - Making the drum part for this piece was a very involved process.
      First I punched the cheesiest rhythm part I could think of into a
      909.  Then I ran the 909 through the Sidstation filter and tweaked
      the knob assigned to filter cutoff for about five minutes, finding
      the sweet spots... I then started the DAT machine going and
      alternated between the two best frequencies every measure.

      I'd've been willing to make that the whole song, but then I
      remembered the "fire" sample that I'd been trying to make use of for
      the past six months.  It was all downhill from there... once the
      fires were in place, I had to add bass and drums... and... ah well.
      Such is life.

CLASSICS
--------
This smush music is old and new at the same time.

DIE - Back when I was going to school, people would write unpleasant things
      on bathroom walls like "All [demographic group] will die!!".  Every
      time I felt the need to defacate, I was reminded of death's rude
      pervasion onto our meagre existence.  Whenever I saw something like
      that, I would pull out my sharpie and write "EVERYONE DIES SOME DAY"
      below it.  Eventually, the space below just became an
      indistinguishable black blob.  I switched to red ink, and that worked
      for a while, and then blue ink, but it became apparent that I'd need
      to write a song about it.  So I did... and I taped a walkman to the
      wall below the text so people could play the music.

      It was stolen within hours... I guess someone really liked the song!

CLD - Several years ago, Rubbahead and R.F. were hiking across the country
      in a rhythmic ceremonial ritual.  I got a package from Rubbahead
      with a tape and a note that said the following: "We were traveling in
      a PreSchool when we came across a Christians church, with a bunch of
      Children in towels beating on drums. We didn't have our usualy DAT
      setup, but we did have a nifty Sony MyFirstWalkman to record this
      beeting. We taught them sheet musik and gave them our drum composition
      to play! HERE IS IT, THE CHILDREN BEAT FROM REAL CHILDREM!!"