“Should Reprise” was the last song I added to The Awakening and the only one I made a final recording of. It’s an instrumental with just two parts—one double-tracked nylon-string guitar and one electric guitar—making it by far the simplest of the EP’s seven tracks.

The song has an interesting genesis. Years ago—perhaps in 2005—I was noodling around on guitar, when out of nowhere I played this very reflective, melancholy guitar line. After playing it for a little while, I noticed that for the vast majority of the riff, notes alternate between the fourth and third strings. I was experimenting a bit with electronic music at the time and thought it would be fun to sequence the riff using a synthesizer, with all the notes from the fourth string played out of the left speaker and all the notes from the right string played out of the right speaker. I was going to call the experiment “Stereo” for obvious reasons, but I accidentally typed “Sterep” when creating the Logic project, and the name stuck. I went ahead and added a ludicrous drum beat and recorded an (unintentionally) out-of-time guitar, and thus “Sterep” was born. Give it a listen, preferably using headphones or speakers that are set relatively far apart; laptop speakers and their ilk obscure the stereo effect.

A couple years later as part of The Awakening, I wrote a song called “Should (Of Course It Matters),” which uses the same basic chords as “Sterep,” though it sounds radically different. Despite those differences, “Sterep” and “Should” were still similar enough that recording “Should” precluded any chance that I could use the “Sterep” guitar line in another recording. After giving it some thought, I decided that reworking “Sterep” into a less electronic reprise of “Should” would let me get the guitar line out there and help the pacing of the record a bit. Instead of electronic drums and synthesizers, I went with a classical guitar line made up of arpeggiated chords. I laid down the original guitar line on top of that and ended up with “Should Reprise.” No worries, this one can be listened to without any sort of special equipment.

I think the natural thing to do is to compare the two, though I can’t say I prefer one over the other. Each is good in its own way and has a distinct feel. If you prefer one or the other, drop me a line with that whys and wherefores.

That’s all for now. It’s possible that I’ll post another track from The Awakening soon, so be on the lookout… same Bat time, same Bat channel.

Since my post earlier this month about shooting film, I’ve explored analog photography a lot more. Last week, I picked up a used Nikon FM2n, which is a jewel of a camera and a legendary mechanical film body in its own right. My primary reason for buying it was for the working internal meter, which removes the only major of burden of using my F2. It’s also a bit less bulky, which is nice. I’ll probably still pull the F2 out every now and again, but shooting with the FM2n is such a joy that it will easily be my primary film body.

Earlier this week, with the guidance of a friend, I developed my first roll of film at home, which also happened to be the first roll I shot with my FM2n. Here are a few of my favorites:

Despite any initial intentions, this blog has become heavily photography-centric, and I find that disappointing. Superficially, the reason may seem obvious: photography is by all observations the hobby I’m most actively pursuing. If the content of this blog is any indication, I’ve all but given up on any musical or poetic endeavors.

Thankfully, that simply isn’t true. While my lyrical and poetic output has slowed from the trickle it was last year to an occasional reverberating drop, my musical work is anything but dead. In fact, I’ve started collecting song ideas and riffs that will hopefully make it onto an EP or full-length album. I’ve been debating even telling anyone about it, as I have a history of working on musical projects—sometimes to the point of completion—and then abruptly abandoning them. While I can’t promise this time will be different, I’m making some changes to my process that will hopefully help avoid that. Right now, there are four or five songs that are coming along nicely, and I hope to write four or five more before I start recording. I have no idea if any of this will actually pan out, but those are the plans.

In the meantime, I’ll try to post a little more music-related content to this site, be it in the form of new recordings of old songs; demos from my last (abandoned) EP The Awakening; or just recommendations for records I really like. I’ll still write plenty of photography-centric posts, but hopefully the additional music-related entries will make the site a tad less one-dimensional.

In any case, those are the plans. All of them are subject to change according to the direction of the winds and the fickleness of my overwrought brain. We shall see.

Via Monoscope, a beautiful short film made for Nike by James Jarvis. Do yourself a favor and watch it full-screen.

Last summer, my dad gave me his old Nikon F2. For most of the 1970s, the F2 was the professional 35mm SLR, so I was pretty excited to be getting it. While waiting for it to arrive, I kept imagining the myriad rolls of high-contrast, black and white photos I would take with it. I could see myself, vintage camera in hand, traveling far and wide to document the plight of modern man. Visions of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Walker Evans abounded.

Of course, in typical Prachi fashion, when the F2 finally arrived, I turned its knobs a bit, looked through the viewfinder for awhile, manually focused on a few items around my apartment, and finally, after a few days, put it in a drawer, where it has remained for all but the briefest moments since.

It’s not that I didn’t like it. The F2, with its all-metal body, leather strap, and chrome and faux-leather trim, was every bit as beautiful as I had imagined. And my vision of traveling the globe to photograph the human condition had lost none of its romance. No, no, my reason for stuffing that lovely machine into a drawer was much simpler than that: I was a big, fat chicken.

The Nikon F2 may be called many things, but “high tech” isn’t one of them. It was released in a time before auto-exposure modes and auto-focusing existed. It doesn’t even need a battery to work properly. It is a fully mechanical, manual focus, manual exposure camera that gives complete control to the photographer. In other words, there is no technology to use as a crutch; if I took bad photos with the F2, the blame would lie solely with me. For whatever silly reasons, I found that really intimidating.

Despite that, I never really gave up on the idea of using the F2. After spending the last few months gradually getting better at using an external light meter and getting accustomed to using manual focus lenses on my D700, I finally took the leap and shot a roll of black and white film a few weeks ago, which a friend helped me develop. Here are a few of the better shots:

Robert Frank? Dorothea Lange? Not even close. Still, there’s something that I love about these shots. The contrast, the grain, the filminess is simply beautiful in a way that digital photos—even those taken with cameras as advanced as my D700—cannot match. Will I be discarding my D700, going all analog? Of course not. But I have resolved to shoot at least one roll of film a month. I may have wasted a year on unfounded fears, but that’s behind me. In my not too distant future: the plight of modern man, in photos. Hey, a guy can dream, right?

As is often the case, I’m a bit frustrated creatively right now. I just haven’t been too excited about the photos that I’ve been taking lately. Last night, as a way to mix things up, I put my Nikkor 28mm ƒ/3.5 AI on my camera and took some photos of my bathroom. The results are below. I’m not really sure how I feel about them, but ah well.

I found this poem in my Moleskine while waiting at a coffee shop for a friend. I must have written it in the first half of last year. I thought it was kind of funny, so I’m posting it.

“Hello”
You’re just as pretty as before
The sun is shining on your blouse
And I’m struggling to find the nerve to speak

“Hello back”
I somehow manage to stammer out
Still trying to recall
My excuse for what I’m doing here

I forgot to mention that last month I won the Tack Sharp podcast’s weekly photo contest for Episode 4!

The rules for the contest were pretty simple: each entrant could enter a single photo, which had to be taken with a 50mm lens of some sort. I entered Your eyes, they turn me, mainly because I was really proud of the photo and wanted more people to see it. Between when I entered and today, the number of Flickr views the photo has had has increased by about 900%, so I definitely got what I wanted out of it. As an added bonus, the two hosts of the podcast praised my work on the air in Episode 6, saying that my photos were “amazing,” which was really rewarding.

Anyway, I just thought I’d mention that here. If you haven’t heard the Tack Sharp podcast, give it a listen. It’s pretty interesting and the hosts keep it fun.

I realized I haven’t posted any photos here since I got my D700. Here are a few of my favorites from the last two months or so. I post to my Flickr photostream regularly, so if you want to see my photos as I post them, that’s a good place to look.

Regarding my previous post about the ideal starter lens, it looks like Nikon agrees with me. With the release of the AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm ƒ/1.8G, Nikon is sending a clear signal that this is the starter prime for DX camera bodies. For $200, you get a lens that’s just as fast as the AF Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8D, but at a much better focal length for cropped sensor cameras. Plus, thanks to its AF-S autofocus motor, D40/D60 owners can use the new lens in autofocus mode, something they could never do with the 50mm ƒ/1.8D.

Prediction: If this lens lives up to Nikkor’s reputation of quality, it’s going to be crazygonuts popular.