tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60448074344186081392024-03-15T20:10:18.859-05:00Wirebender Audio RantsThis blog will be a continuing inquiry into elements of professional recording and live sound with occasional dips onto conversations about music.T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.comBlogger316125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-12113772400356734852023-12-06T15:07:00.001-06:002023-12-06T15:07:13.982-06:00My Slantmaster 50 Story<p><font size="3">Back in the early 2000s, I was happily working as a college instructor for a music school in St. Paul. I was the school’s Student AES Club faculty advisor and I was having the time of my life working with brilliant, inspiring, energetic young people who were fascinated with all things audio. Back in my early-QSC Audio days, I’d built a pretty cool ABX tester and, later (after I’d left California and the pro audio business), </font><a href="https://wirebenderaudio.blogspot.com/2014/10/test-your-ears-or-shut-your-mouth.html"><font size="3">QSC decided to build a much more sophisticated ABX tester</font></a><font size="3"> and use it to promote the company’s products. That didn’t work out well and the ABX testers were recalled from the company’s sales force and, I’d been told, crushed to bury the evidence that someone at QSC once thought professional audio people gave a crap about audio fidelity and honest listening tests. I’d been that same dumbasss a decade earlier, so they had my sympathy. Because I’m lazy and that wheel had already been built, I’d bothered Pat Quilter often to see if he could find an unwanted ABX test box that hadn’t died in the garbage compactor. </font></p> <a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1UdoZUC61gUu-2FhdqFSqCyacfPLaNZ2p"><font size="3"><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1AdeMr9qHuHqjdAgtT8ysSlE0cU8N-Mz9"><img title="Quilter letter" style="float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="Quilter letter" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1xcZcZf8fjst9Rx1-gTef1HMEG2MYfQ_r" width="165" align="left" height="213" /></a></font></a> <p><font size="3">So, in late 2008 when Pat sent me an email warning me that there was a package coming my way, I thought I knew what would be in it. When it arrived, it seemed almost Amazon-oversized for what I thought would be a 1 rack-space piece. The box was also a lot lighter than I’d expected. I cracked the tape at the top of the box and saw the beige tolex, the leather handle, and the black dust cover and I was confused. I knew Pat was retiring from QSC Audio, so I assumed he’d built a model amp as a memento. When I pulled the amp from the box and saw the <a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1NAl60vXpWBiCgSqXvE9-i9ivVX1f8If8"><img title="Slantmaster back" style="float: right; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="Slantmaster back" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1flJhtDBWwyrLhNA_wTKHCBsq5jNy-4Fd" width="244" align="right" height="184" /></a>Celestion Century 12” I suspected it was more than an empty box demo. I plugged it in, turned it on, and (like everyone I’ve ever show the amp to) said, “Wow!” There is a cool, brief light show from the backlit front panel as the amp powers up that blows everyone away. I spent the rest of the day playing with the amp, which was more guitar playing than I’d done in the past 20-some years. </font></p> <p><font size="3"> <p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--Yp0LAsA9--/f_auto,t_large/v1571546406/frdbeloncpgmtfp50wns.jpg" src="https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--Yp0LAsA9--/f_auto,t_large/v1571546406/frdbeloncpgmtfp50wns.jpg" width="181" align="left" height="181" />I brought it to school the next day to show it off to students, employees and instructors, and anyone who was interested. We used it several times in recording sessions over the next couple of weeks. One to-be-unnamed guitar instructor tried to buy it from me, tried to get me to have Pat build one for him, and coveted it so blatantly that I started storing it in the secured record lab area so that it wouldn’t disappear. Over the next year, I used the Slantmaster dozens of times with all sorts of guitars and guitarists and it was universally loved by everyone who heard it. It is kind of sad to admit that the amp has never been used outside of McNally Smith College or my home studio. It has never seen a live gig other than the MSCM’s auditorium stage a couple of times by players who I trusted not to abuse it. </p> </font></p> <p><font size="3">This is what the Q<a href="https://www.quilterlabs.com/products/slantmaster-50">uilter Labs website has to say about the Slantmaster 50</a>, <em>“Built to celebrate QSC’s 40th anniversary, the Slantmaster 50 used a linear amplifier to deliver 50 ‘hot watts’ to a simply awesome Celestion ‘Century’ neodymium speaker.</em></font></p> <p><em><font size="3">“This was the precursor to Quilter Labs foundation.</font></em></p> <p><em><font size="3">“Only one hundred were made and featured a spring reverb! These are very limited, so if you have one you are lucky!”</font></em></p> <p><font size="3">I have one (#72 of 100) and I am well aware of the fact that I am lucky to do so. I have meant to write something about this amazing gift for nearly 15 years, but a conversation about the Slantmaster in the Facebook “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/quilteramps">Quilter Musical Equipment Owners Group</a>” about the Slantmaster moved me to finally do the work. </font></p> <p><font size="3"><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/patrick-quilter-of-qsc-started-making-guitar-amplifiers-in-the-1960s-picture-id566045317" src="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/patrick-quilter-of-qsc-started-making-guitar-amplifiers-in-the-1960s-picture-id566045317" width="274" align="left" height="183" />The day I started work at QSC Audio Products in Costa Mesa in early 1983 was the day Pat took his first vacation in a decade. Pat and his mother had booked a tour of Europe on the Orient Express and he’d entrusted me with overseeing the initial production of the first Series One amp, the 1400, without a single unit having yet passed through production. There were . . . problems, but the QSC team of that day pulled together and by Monday afternoon we were cranking out 1400s at a pretty decent pace. The Series One and Three amps were the breakthrough products that put QSC on the pro equipment map and for the next 9 years I was a product engineer, test engineer, manufacturing engineer, manufacturing engineering manager, and tech services manager: 5 different jobs, with a couple that lapped-over each other a bit, in 9 years. Pat and I became friends, partially because I was the interface between his working hours (noon to whenever in the evening) and everyone else and me (7AM to 5-or-whenever-PM). We shared an interest in audio electronics, psychoacoustics, music, guitars and guitar amplifiers, electric vehicles, science fiction and fantasy, literature, and the people we worked with. I quit QSC and left California, after giving notice almost 3 years earlier that I would be leaving when I graduated from Cal State Long Beach, because I could never see myself breaking even economically in southern California and for personal reasons. Pat and I have continued to communicate through email for the past 30 years. I keep his Xmas letters in the same envelope as the letter that came with the Slantmaster. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-33177200827995902972023-12-05T23:22:00.001-06:002023-12-05T23:22:37.906-06:00It’s A Smaller World Than I Imagined<p><font size="3">I am working on finishing up, as it is, our basement office after my friend/contractor Dan Jacobson installed an egress window last weekend. That mostly means, so far, me puzzling together the ceiling tile mess the previous owner/nitwit/contractor made when he chopped up the ceiling to install the forced-air HVAC system the repossessing bank hired him to install. (“Wells Fargo, the dumbest bank on the planet.”) Because I don’t know what I’m doing with most of this job, that means a lot of trips to Menards and Ace for materials and, occasional, tools. </font></p> <p><font size="3">Since I’m spending more than the usual amount of time driving, I’m listening to my random playlist of music that I have stored on USB sticks in the pickup or CRV. I probably don’t have more variety on my playlist than most people, but I do have recordings from a lot of unusual artists. Not only do I have music from well-known artists from the 1930s to today, but I have lots of music that I have been personally associated with either as a musician and/or a recording technician since the mid-1970s. If I’d have known I was going to live this long, I’d have hung on to the stuff I recorded with the Tracers and other kid-bands in the 60s, especially my original songs. Sadly, all of that stuff accidentally ended up in a dump somewhere in Omaha when we moved from that city to L.A. in 1983. Still, I have almost 100 hours of music on my USB stick that I can almost guarantee nobody else in the world is playing at any given moment. </font></p> <p><font size="3">Yesterday after a hardware and grocery store run, the playlist landed on Scott Jarrett’s “</font><a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1BR5vx0EmKOoceqUCy20MA"><font size="3">Uneventful Lives</font></a><font size="3">” and, like everything on “</font><a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/6T3OnsCigD2c8I7og8APVr"><font size="3">The Gift of Thirst</font></a><font size="3">,” it’s a song I know pretty well and like a lot (I like everything on that album.). So, I ended up carrying on with the tune when I went into Aldi’s to buy the “software” for dinner last night. I listen to a lot of music that I usually assume nobody but me knows: stuff I’ve/we’ve written or recorded, music friends have recorded, records that I’ve owned for 30-50 years that was either regional or passed through the popular void unnoticed. Some days, it’s kind of a matter of pride to me that all of this great music is probably only being listened to by me at that particular moment. I mean in the whole world of 8 billion babbling nitwits I’m almost guaranteed to be the only person on the planet listening to a particular song at that moment: 1 in 8 billion, 1/8,000,000,000 or 0.0000000125% of the population are listening to what I’m listening to. I know that isn’t true for Scott’s first record, “</font><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4_LhA-1Or4"><font size="3">Without Rhyme or Reason</font></a><font size="3">,” but, like a lot of great music, the two records he made in Hudson, WI didn’t get anywhere near the recognition and appreciation they deserved. </font></p> <p><font size="3">So with “</font><a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1BR5vx0EmKOoceqUCy20MA"><font size="3">Uneventful Lives</font></a><font size="3">” in my head as I left the truck, I walked into Aldi’s singing the random bits of chorus and verses (as usual, I can’t remember any lyrics accurately). About half-way into my shopping trip I was walking toward a woman about my age, pushing a cart in the opposite direction in the same isle. About that time I got to the end of a verse, “So we’ll pirouette away, as the band begins to play. And we’ll drink a toast to husbands and to wives.” And as I passed her she sang, in excellent harmony, “And the sweetness of our uneventful lives.” </font></p> <p><font size="3">Because I am incredibly slow-of-wit, I kept walking and singing to myself, but a big part of me was open-mouth stunned. Nothing like that has ever happened to me. A smarter, quicker guy would have turned around, introduced himself, and asked “Where do you know that song from?” or something equally witty. I did not. In fact, it didn’t occur to me that I should do that until I was loading groceries into the truck. By then, I probably couldn’t have picked her out of a lineup of two people, even if one wasn’t an older woman. So, we’ll likely never know who she is. But . . . damn! It is either one amazingly small world, or Scott’s music landed a lot more places than I knew. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-77896068067316642972023-10-17T16:03:00.002-05:002023-11-12T20:17:43.145-06:00Product Review: Positive Grid Spark Go<p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1AvtjJmB_sugNeVi6pXnsSfaHY3-knksw"><font size="3"><img align="left" alt="Sparkl Go front" border="0" height="182" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1_STlPwfTyAzhkxgAGCnudvtPZcrNGifb" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: left;" title="Sparkl Go front" width="244" /></font></a><font size="3">About a year ago, I reviewed the </font><a href="https://wirebenderaudiorants.wordpress.com/2022/09/19/product-review-positive-grid-spark-mini/" target="_blank"><font size="3">Positive Grid Spark Mini</font></a><font size="3"> and didn’t find it worth keeping. There were a lot of things to like about it, but it seemed like a larger-than-necessary package for such a low volume device. I was looking for an electric guitar amp that could be used in small acoustic guitar jam situations, for home practice sessions, and anything beyond that would be gravy. Positive Grid must have read my mind with the <a href="https://www.positivegrid.com/products/spark-go" target="_blank">Ultra-portable Smart Guitar Amp & Bluetooth® Speaker</a> because it meets all of those requirements and adds a bunch of extras. To be honest and clear, there is nothing in the Go firmware or software that is different from the Mini. The difference is that the Go fits in a pocket of my guitar’s gig bag and does everything the Mini does, maybe better. </font></p> <p><font size="3">I, sadly, didn’t figure this out on my own. I was down enough on the Mini that it wouldn’t have occurred to me to try an even smaller Positive Grid amp. Lucky for me, a much smarter friend brought a Go to my home to show off a couple of weeks ago and I was almost instantly sold. After playing with his for an hour or so, I ordered one from <a href="https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PGSparkGo--positive-grid-spark-go-ultra-portable-smart-guitar-amp-and-bluetooth-speaker" target="_blank">Sweetwater</a> and it arrived a few days later. </font></p> <p><font size="3"><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1in2DprZgxUIBFpw2nElFopXbdhjYCrn_"><img align="right" alt="Spark Go top" border="0" height="184" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1eRsIiDQAmyDVXwcXY78tc18gmkSg0fg-" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: right;" title="Spark Go top" width="228" /></a><font size="3">The controls to the Spark Go are incredibly basic. The top of the amp contains the 1/4” guitar input jack, the guitar volume control (the ring around the input jack), a 3/5mm headphone/aux out/Line out 1/8” jack (using this connector disables the Go’s speaker), Music +/- volume buttons (Bluetooth is the Music input), a Preset select switch and LEDs to indicate which preset you’ve selected (4 are available). </font></font></p> <font size="3"><font size="3"> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1B0zHednVMHSI-KbBmRj-mvkOo5qFmaNL"><img align="left" alt="Spark Go right" border="0" height="164" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1-hDP4pYba-fDIX0XuYFqGDIWoL9dr0CN" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: left;" title="Spark Go right" width="244" /></a>The right side of the amp hosts the remaining USB3 port, a power switch and power LED, and the Bluetooth indicator. The power switch is a little hard to find in good light and almost impossible to find without good lighting. I’m going to paint a white dot on mine. There is a strap button on the left side of the amp. </p> <p><img align="right" alt="Spark Go back" border="0" height="172" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1kqtlmzHAQwE9JhSgfSeMrU3MPe-F7-6y" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: right;" title="Spark Go back" width="244" />There is a rudimentary guitar tuner bult into the preset/Select button setup. Bluetooth setup is pretty obvious and basic. I love the guitar volume control and, since it is an infinite rotary control, it beeps at you when you’re at max volume. The chassis is wrapped in a removeable black rubber-like sleeve that is easy to grip, but does disguise some of the buttons in poor lighting. The back of the amp is brilliantly covered in an even more rubbery base which nicely couples the amp to a floor or table, restricting the speaker disbursement by half (hemispheric) and providing a theoretical 3dB boost over leaving the amp suspended or even on edge. I like to put the amp at my feet when I’m playing with friends (who are mostly on acoustic guitars) and full-up the amp is pretty much a perfect match, volume-wise, with the other instruments in the room. </p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=15hOIBlGhBUa8vSmvz3OUKq5VlV9u8b2B"><img align="left" alt="Software screen" border="0" height="244" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1aJplW9Os7OTXroMvyfYHXUJSot66Hw6R" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: left;" title="Software screen" width="115" /></a>Positive Grid has been fairly aggressive about firmware updates, including the one I downloaded and installed today (10/15/2023, the 2nd update in the month I’ve owned the amp). Updates are installed through the USB3 port via either Windows or Mac OS. So far, all of the updates have been seamless and none have caused problems (imagine that Microsoft and Apple?). The software, either on Android or iOS, is excellent and easy-to-use (essentially Bias 2). As I demonstrated in the Mini review, is insanely flexible, although you can only load 4 presets at a time you can load a lot more than that through “favorites” on the app while playing. You have 33 different amps and 43 different effects to play with and the effects range from (in this order of signal flow and grouped as described): noise gates, compressors (5) and wah (J.J Legendary), drive and overdrive (14), amplifiers (40), modulation (11) and EQ (2), delay (6), and reverb (9). </p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1WRgCSo0D3i_RBIOmN96pPCpPRqrGQ2aY"><img align="left" alt="Spark Go insides" border="0" height="285" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1qHkTnNArCzi5_ceCtxK_-xGD1UdKpPK4" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: left;" title="Spark Go insides" width="394" /></a> </p><p>The part of any amplifier review that matters is “how does it sound?” Obviously, there isn’t a lot of bass from a tiny speaker and a passive radiator, but there is enough to create pleasant, musical guitar tones if you aren’t greedy. I wasn’t impressed with the default sounds, but it didn’t take long for me to come up with 4 that I like a lot and at least a couple dozen in my favorites pile to fall back on for other situations. As a direct-to-recording interface, the latency is close to zero and while I usually need to brighten-up the output (especially distorted amp setups) I’m pretty happy with the Go as my recording electric guitar interface, too. For $120, that is a lot of function for the buck and I’ve really upped my guitar practice time as a result. </p><p><b><i>Postscript: </i></b>This past week I tried using the Go as a guitar interface for recording and online music (<a data-id="https://sonobus.net/" data-type="link" href="https://sonobus.net/">Sonobus</a>) and it was terrific. I'd read some complaints that the sound was dull or artificial, but I didn't find that to be true at all. I have a couple of emulation pedals and I think the Go is at least as good and a lot more flexible. <br /></p> <p></p> </font></font>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-5123763359709694412023-08-27T16:28:00.003-05:002023-10-14T08:29:14.410-05:00The Deaf Leading the Deaf<p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"></font></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnk942qhRgzhoQeczVn2X2RltNJCOzms6PJrkNXyEr968869BUUs3renK2dfQ8yHCcJaaBUmDiyktPT-lvpde3YaB4b97tAZSIbwx6x0bPUyiAIGDaw6FeGRsAzTEttezypAtK0der3vuTiAIczuTpMvhIs4v83Dj8zw0UV3sjAIDnc3gJ0ywO_WDXaw6/s1280/4768-jpg.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnk942qhRgzhoQeczVn2X2RltNJCOzms6PJrkNXyEr968869BUUs3renK2dfQ8yHCcJaaBUmDiyktPT-lvpde3YaB4b97tAZSIbwx6x0bPUyiAIGDaw6FeGRsAzTEttezypAtK0der3vuTiAIczuTpMvhIs4v83Dj8zw0UV3sjAIDnc3gJ0ywO_WDXaw6/s320/4768-jpg.jpg" width="320" /></a></font></div><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">Because I’m a slow learner, I went to a local outdoor concert this past weekend. The headliner is a friend and I know a couple other folks who would be playing earlier in the day.Honestly, I felt a bit of an obligation to be part of the audience for their music. I know that a Red Wing, MN audience isn’t typical of pop music audiences with an average age approaching at least 70, but </font><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing" target="_blank"><font>music “fans” of all ages are sadly similarly hearing-impaired.</font></a><font> Depending on perspective, I was or wasn’t disappointed with the “music.” </font></span><p></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">Over the past couple of decades, I have become less inclined to suffer for someone else’s “art,” in the form of painfully loud, distorted, weirdly-mixed live music. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this, so it might be boring. It struck me, about 3 songs into the set I’d come to see, that live music today is doomed because all ends of the people involved in production and listening are functionally deaf or, worse, don’t care about sound quality at all. My friend is a songwriter and his band is tasteful, talented, and they make an extreme effort to stay out of the vocalist’s way. The soundgoober (the man leaning on the console as if it were a drunk’s crutch) started the show with a severely distorted and loud kick drum and bass guitar blast and took 3 songs to squeeze the vocal a little way into the mix; not enough to understand the lyrics but enough to know there was a vocalist. Worse, it took him 45 minutes of “check, one, check, two” crap to do a musically pointless soundcheck, making the headline show start time 30 minutes late. </font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;">As usual, when I described my disappointment to other people who had seen the show, I was the Lone Ranger of Criticism. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, “About 2 percent of adults aged 45 to 54 have disabling hearing loss. The rate increases to 8.5 percent for adults aged 55 to 64. Nearly 25 percent of those aged 65 to 74 and 50 percent of those who are 75 and older have disabling hearing loss.” I, personally, think that is grossly optimistic, based on my own experience with live and recorded music listeners. Back in the 80s, the Audio Engineering Society invited an otolaryngologist organization to test the Society’s convention participants on a voluntary basis. The outcome was the discovery that practically everyone involved in music recording and, especially, live music was functionally deaf. Today, most or much of the audience is equally hearing damaged. It is not even slightly odd to be in a small music venue with a band blasting deafening volume and some of the audience, even so-called critical listening reviewers, shouting “I can’t hear you!” In their arrogant, self-centered manner, they are clearly willing to damage everyone else in the room because they are disabled. </font></p> <p><font size="4" style="font-family: arial;"><img align="left" alt="Standard NIOSH OSHA" height="255" src="http://www.sengpielaudio.com/NIOSH-OSHA-Standards.gif" style="display: inline; float: left;" width="369" /><font>Check out these two charts, one from OSHA that was established during WWII manufacturing, and the other from NIOSH that more accurately reflects what is currently known about hearing loss from environmental “noise” (aka “music”). In some fairly progressive companies, the first numbers on either chart are used to determine when hearing protection is required for workers in those benevolent work environments. Typical amplified pop concerts subject their audiences to noise levels upwards from 115dBC, which means after about 30S of “music” you are experiencing permanent hearing damage. The music better be damned amazing to give away your hearing in exchange. </font></font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-1263995962472495402023-06-16T16:01:00.001-05:002023-06-16T16:01:24.824-05:00Ego Noise<p><font size="3">This has been a week where two of my blogging interests, <a href="https://geezerwithagrudge.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">motorcycling</a> and blogging, have unfortunately grown together into one large irritation. Last Monday, a parade of nitwit of bikers blubbered past our home at their usual barely-above-a-crawl speed and well-above-a-thunderstorm noise level, proving that there are more than enough reasons to defund the lazy, cowardly couch-potatoes who inhabit our local police and sheriff's departments. If you can’t identify a <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjfuJXok8T_AhUalGoFHT2HD_QQFnoECA4QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F2020-12%2Fdocuments%2Ftamperinganddefeatdevices-enfalert.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2pzDi76iWnylrhK4vvO9XT" target="_blank">national</a>, <a href="https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/169.69" target="_blank">state</a>, and <a href="https://www.republicaneagle.com/opinion/columns/ask-the-chief-vehicles-must-comply-with-noise-ordinances/article_cafc0db9-cad1-50b4-8b2b-1f03038476c1.html" target="_blank">local</a> crime that produces enough noise to drown out a freight train, you are too dumb to be carrying a gun and badge and do not deserve to be wasting public funds pretending to be “law enforcement.”  </font></p> <p><font size="3">A few days later, I went to a downtown outdoor concert and was assaulted by another of the many painful, anti-musical sound systems I’ve suffered in my lifetime. I have an stock of ear plugs in the car, but I shouldn’t have to use them to protect myself in an outdoor concert that drew 75 people max. It took me a few moments to realize that it would only get worse and, as a result, my ears rang all through the next day. </font></p> <p><font size="3">A few days after that, we went to a graduation party for a friend who had been workingm part-time and nights, on her Master’s degree for the last 25 years. Her husband made the event into a “look at me” episode by playing in 3 different bands that were all so loud that nobody could carry on a conversation anywhere in the building. His wife’s celebration was turned into a “I can do stuff too” event for her husband. We all only have a wild hope that she heard, or recognized, at least a few of the many congratulations that were mimed her way. </font></p> <p><font size="3">At the first event, I got into a discussion with a self-admitted deaf guy who argued that the sound system wasn’t as bad as I alleged because he could pick out the three instruments and two voices with some effort. We’re talking about a male and female vocal, acoustic guitar, mandolin, and cajon. If you couldn’t at least make out the existence of those “voices,” the sound would amount to pure cacophony. That is a massively low bar for a sound goober to achieve. At the second event, a musician friend and I decided that a<font size="3">n upside to this nonsense is that as long as live sound is this bad, there is no point in wasting a lot of energy on learning lyrics. As Ms. Day said, “Every song is ‘Louie, Louie’ so why bother learning any other song?” Honestly, as long as the vocals were sorta in the general territory of the key, even the melody was obscured by the noise, the dominating mediocre bass and guitars. </font></font></p> <p><font size="3">A few nights ago, an old friend and his daughter went to a Bastille, Nile Rodgers & CHIC, Duran Duran concert at the Atlanta State Farm Arena. His comment on the show was, "The bands were good. The sound was fairly unintelligible due to extreme loudness. But, I didn't let the sound people steal my joy!" He has been nearly a life-long fan of Rodgers and CHIC and “I didn't let the sound people steal my joy” was the best he could say for his outlay of several hundred dollars for the tickets, the cost of the trip and an overnight stay, and the experience. He also spent a good bit of his life working backstage and FOH with professional sound systems and touring companies. That is how low the bar for live, amplified music has become, at best, we hope the sound system doesn’t ruin the experience for us. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-45034896481895108592023-06-07T12:39:00.001-05:002023-06-07T12:39:38.384-05:001966 Was A Weird Year<p><font size="3">By now it should go without much explanation that I’m not a big Beatles fan. In my decline and fading memory, the one album that I remembered liking was “Revolver.” While pawing around some books about pop music, I stumbled on Robert Rodriguez’s </font><a href="https://www.halleonard.com/product/333110/revolver" target="_blank"><font size="3">Revolver: How the Beatles Re-Imagined Rock 'n' Roll</font></a><em></em><font size="3"> and checked it out from my library. While I was at it, I checked out “Revolver,” too. </font></p> <font size="3"></font> <p><font size="3"><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Product Cover for Revolver How the Beatles Re-Imagined Rock 'n' Roll Book Softcover by Hal Leonard" src="https://halleonard-coverimages.s3.amazonaws.com/wl/00333110-wl.jpg" width="161" align="left" height="242" />First, the book was a huge disappointment. Mostly, it’s 250 pages of fanboy gushing over Beatles trivia. Since the book was published in 2013, I’d had irrational hope that we’d be past that and into something more technically interesting. There is a small middle section about the actual creation and recording of the record. Some bits of that are interesting, especially the revisionism of the revisionism and some of the funny stuff about how the memories of a quartet of stoners and the people around them were notoriously unreliable. The “correction” several people added to Geoff Emerick's George Harrison grudge from <em>Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles</em> was sort of interesting. Before and after that, I could have used some of the Beatle’s 1966 stimulants to stay awake through the book. </font></p> <font size="3"></font> <p><font size="3">History has a nasty habit of dragging us back to reality. Boomers weirdly remember the late 60’s fondly, which makes me suspect they either weren’t there or they we drugged/drunk into oblivion. The crap that was regularly on the late-60’s charts should embarrass my generation into never-again speaking of our musical opinions. Rodriguez regularly puts up US and British record sales chart and consistently 7-8 of 10 songs on those lists are, thankfully, consigned to the sad history of crap music. WLS’s June 1966 playlist put Tommy James’ “Hanky Panky” at the top, followed by “Paperback Writer/Rain” and “Strangers in the Night.” If you ever want to be humbled, musically, poke your birthday into “</font><a href="https://playback.fm/birthday-song" target="_blank"><font size="3">Find the #1 Song on the Day You Were Born</font></a><font size="3">” and get ready to be disgusted. For me, it's “</font><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqW5g2SzUwA" target="_blank"><font size="3">Woody Wood-Pecker</font></a><font size="3">” by Kay Kyser and His Orchestra. Yeah, I know, poetic justice at work. </font></p> <p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Has Britain lost its faith? - Full Fact" src="https://fullfact.org/sites/fullfact.org/files/religion_2.png" width="239" align="left" height="188" /><font size="3">“Revolver” was the record whackjobs liked to smash in the 60s. It came out right after John’s famous opinion on American religion hit the news,  “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I know I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first – rock & roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.” Later, he claimed he was talking about Christianity in England and he probably was and he was pretty obviously right. The chart at left ends in 2011 and, as of 2021, British religious participation <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021" target="_blank">declined another 13.1</a>%. Whatever, that controversy did some serious damage to “Revolver’s” record sales, which is partially why it is mostly a forgotten Beatles record. </font></p> <font size="3"></font> <p><font size="3"><img style="float: right; display: inline;" alt="Revolver (Beatles album) - Wikipedia" 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" width="180" align="right" height="180" />After suffering through the book, I decided to see if any part of my good memories of “Revolver” were valid. The library copy was an analog-to-digital version of the 1966 stereo release. First, John Lennon was notoriously unhappy with his voice and gets some credit for whining about having to actually double-track his vocals,.which inspired EMI engineer Ken Townsend to invent the Automatic Double-Tracking (ADT) device used on practically everything in “Revolver.” After listening to “Revolver,” I’m with John. I was painfully reminded of their Chipmunk voices and the squeaky harmonies. While US engineers like <a href="https://www.aes.org/sections/pnw/dowd.htm" target="_blank">Tom Dowd</a> were knocking stereo recording out of the park in 1966 with records like The Young Rascal’s “</font><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vl3wV8PR5g" target="_blank"><font size="3">What Is the Reason</font></a><font size="3">,” the Brits were still panning vocals hard left and instruments hard right (or the reverse or other weird combinations) and managing to get some bass into the recordings, too. </font></p> <p><font size="3">Considering the privative 4-track recording technology Martin and Emerick were cursed to be using on “Revolver” and the inflated egos (and lazy spoiled boy habits) they were dealing with it isn’t a terrible record. Listening to it pretty much demolished any fond memories I had. Compare “Revolver” to one of my favorite records of the day, Lorraine Ellison’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TOaUxgkLSg" target="_blank">Stay With Me</a>” and get back to me on how great the Beatles were. As much as I appreciated George Martin, Phil Ramone more than topped anything that came out of England for the next decade with his engineering work on this song. And this is exactly why I resented The Beatles in the 60s because the British crap knocked this kind of music off of the charts for almost a decade. </font></p> <font size="3"></font><iframe title="YouTube video player" height="315" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5TOaUxgkLSg" frameborder="0" width="450" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share"></iframe>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-31708046412522920022023-04-02T12:57:00.003-05:002023-04-02T13:13:50.520-05:00Placing Bets<p><font size="3" style="font-family: arial;">The music/audiophile equipment business has been selling snake oil to a gullible portion of the public for at least since Emile Berliner began making 5-inch “gramophone” recordings of chamber orchestras. Connectors and conductors are one of the biggest scams perpetrated on the gullible and wealthy “customers.” Lots of people have spent more energy than I on dispelling the myths and bullshit and I think this paper does it as well as anyone, Mission Engineering’s “<a href="https://missionengineering.com/measuring-guitar-cables/" target="_blank">Measuring Guitar Cables.</a>” I’ve also spent <a href="https://wordpress.com/posts/wirebenderaudiorants.wordpress.com?s=test+your+ears" target="_blank">some energy in my past career</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.com/posts/wirebenderaudiorants.wordpress.com?s=test+your+ears" target="_blank">more recent articles</a> on some of this stuff, but I’d old, tired, and more amused than outraged these days. In fact, for the most part I’m now totally on the side of the con artists. The past 40 years of watching the incredibly stupid folks who call the rest of us “libtards” has convinced me that there is nothing unethical about scalping people who want to be scalped. </font></p> <p><font size="3" style="font-family: arial;">A few nights ago, I was hanging out with a couple of local musicians and one of them began to explain why his <a href="https://musicianshq.com/cheap-vs-expensive-guitar-cables-is-there-a-difference/" target="_blank">$250 guitar cable</a> was better than a regular cable. He is an electrician, by trade, and I’ve found that those guys are typically strong on the NEC and weak on electrical theory and this guy was no exception. He first started off by tossing out a word, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis" target="_blank">hysteresis</a>,” that he clearly did not understand as some kind of quality connected to electrical conductors. Then, he went on to try and tag the “skin effect” to how he imagined that his new, grossly over-priced cable could make a passive electric bass guitar sound like one of his active instruments. </font></p> <p><font size="3" style="font-family: arial;"><i>Pause here while I explain why I am not rich: I am slow-witted. When people say stuff that either blows me away with insight or astounds me in their stupidity I am equally stumped for an unacceptably long time. Sometimes days will pass before I come up with a relevant question or a snappy comeback. As disappointing as I am in print, I am way slower and dumber in person.</i> </font></p> <p><font size="3" style="font-family: arial;">A day later, I realized I could have made some serious money that night. I am not a gambling man (at least not with <i>my money</i>), but this wasn’t a gamble. The next time this comes up in conversation I hope to be ready to bet $1,000 that I can easily setup a test that will prove this dude can’t tell the difference from a $10 Chinese-made cord and his grossly over-priced spread. All it will take is an agreement on what would be “proof” in the test (at least a 75% success rate), a blindfold, a pen and paper, a quiet unbiased witness or two, the two test cables, an instrument (especially a bass), an amplifier, and a dozen cable-swaps and about 15 minutes and I’ll be $1,000 richer. </font></p> <p><font size="3" style="font-family: arial;">In case you care, the <b><i>ONLY</i></b> things that matter in guitar cables are <b>reliability</b> and <b>shielding quality</b>. Reliability is directly connected to the size and quality of the connectors, the ability of the inner conductors to “slip” inside the outer sheath (either with slippery insulation materials or paper/plastic wrapping), and the care the manufacturer takes in assembly. Most shielding, either braided or double-wrapped, provides 100% shielding and, contrary to your high school football coach’s bullshit, 100% is as good as it gets. Avoid aluminum foil shielding because it will become noisy when it is flexed. Long cables are less reliable and more likely to become noisy. Noise is a relative thing with guitars, though. Since they are unbalanced and high impedance, your pickups are likely to be a bigger noise issue than your cables. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-56209221267121793472023-02-19T17:16:00.001-06:002023-02-19T17:16:11.245-06:00Kick Drums and SM58s<p>For the first time in a while, I “experienced” a live sound-reinforced show last Friday night. At Red Wing’s Sheldon Theater, to be specific. I’d volunteered to monitor one of the Big Turn Music Festival venue’s gate and had occasional moments to wander the theater to hear the three acts from that evening. I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised to know I was less-than-impressed with the sound goober’s “work.” In fact, it was about as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAFU" target="_blank">SNAFU</a> as is typical. The goober clearly believed impressing the audience with how much bass (exclusively kick drume) he could shovel into the mix was more important than attempting a musical demonstration. Nothing new there, but it was particularly depressing with the evening’s first act, Tony Cuchetti’s band, because Tony’s powerful voice did not blend well with a kick drum-dominated mix and the other musicians in his band, including the bass player, suffered the same clueless sonic disaster. </p> <p>From my perspective, if the sound is obviously “reinforced, “ the sound goober is a screwup. Obviously, there are types of music where the sound has to be reinforced because the input is garbage and must be manipulated to resemble music: DJs, too much of hip hop, most metal, and almost all of the crap that falls into today’s Top 100, for example. But music and musicians only need subtle assistance from the sound goober to carry their music into the cheap seats. Doing more than that is just a sound goober projecting his/her own insecurities, sort of like the Harley Davidson characters trying to disguise their lack of motorcycling skills with the “loud pipes save lives” nonsense. </p> <p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1I4YWqcbtCY1X15sEi20Z9AuyVcYVQpMq"><img title="No 58s" style="float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="No 58s" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=19C-zY7kfWiXsGY8ehr43yI7B9UN_6uNH" width="320" align="left" height="241" /></a> <p>After my Sheldon shift, I took in a couple of the other venues and, Saturday, returned to tour the lot of the bars, stores, and churches that had volunteered to be in the Big Turn. A big part of the problem with several acts I heard over the two days was the chronic poor choice of vocal mics for every kind of singer. Over the past 50 years, I haven’t been shy about voicing <a href="https://wirebenderaudio.blogspot.com/search?q=sm58" target="_blank">my opinion of Shure’s SM58 workhorse</a>. The mic is a brick, almost impossible to damage with all sorts of abuse, but it has limited musical applications. The mic’s bandwidth, proximity problems, self-noise, and polar pattern severely limits the SM58’s practical application; especially on quality voices. </p> </p> </p> <p>Even more confusing is the fact that most vocalists don’t seem to know or care about the damage this lowfi hammer does to their voices. (If your own tool is an SM58, every voice sounds like a nail?) Why do musicians insist on playing their own instruments through their own amplifiers while appearing to be totally indifferent to the instrument their voice passes through? It’s not like it would be complicated to simply remove the 58 from the stand, clip and all, and replace it with a more suitable mic. If the goober can’t deal with the slight (or major, in the case of a condenser) variation in microphone sensitivity, that will be the least of your problems. </p> <p>The advantage a serious vocalist would have in knowing how to replace the default poor microphone choice with their own well understood and properly selected replacement would be a night-and-day difference in the performance outcome. You could defuse any objections by telling the goober, “My RE20 (for example) has, essentially, the same sensitivity as your SM58, so you won’t need to change the preamp levels. However, I would like to have the vocal EQ set flat and I have selected my own high pass filter values. Thank you.” Or, in the case of a condenser, telling the goober how much gain to take off of the pre.</p> <p>You might have to actually walk to the sound board to verify the goober knows how to do those things, but it would be worth a trip. It is always a good bet to assume incompetence when it comes to sound goobers. If you are pleasantly surprised, say so. One of the reasons bottom-of-the-barrel types end up running live shows is that the job is too often thankless. If no one notices a good job, the techs who know what they’re doing end up doing something else and the ones who don’t end up wreaking every show they touch. </p> <p>Friday night, the one place the 58 did an acceptable job was with the last act’s “vocalist.” He was an atonal screamer whose range began where Tony’s left off. and never approached anything resembling musical. I still couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I wasn’t particularly tempted to put much effort into that task.  </p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-60680920353559989572023-02-13T18:54:00.008-06:002023-02-13T18:54:00.161-06:00Overwhelmed by Talent<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I recently read <em>The Road Home</em>, by Jim Harrison and, during a pause in reading this book, I watched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEgalcH_-b4" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">an interview with Pat Metheny</a>. Every once in awhile, everyone is overwhelmed by someone else's Talent. Jim Harrison was the kind of writer that wannabe writers probably should avoid. He was so supremely talented that reading anyone else for attempting to write seems like a pointless exercise. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Pat Metheny, in this interview, described the first time he was around "a real jazz guitarist," (Something that happened to him long after he had recorded albums with Gary Burton and his own groups and had established Pat as a jazz guitarist. To the rest of us, Pat has always been "a real jazz guitarist," but his standards are obviously higher.) At that moment, Pat realized how far he had yet to travel before he considered himself to be the real thing.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I've owned guitars for more than 60 years and even played them off-and-on for that long, but I haven't described myself as "a musician" since the late 60s. I have been around real musicians for much more than 3/4 of my life and I know what they look, sound, and act like. I'm not like them. I'm a music hobbyist, at best. My knowledge of music theory is shallow, my physical abilities and skill are remedial, my willingness to study and practice music is limited, and my natural talent is nearly non-existent. After 2/3 of a century, I have nothing that resembles "a voice" as a musician. I sound like everybody else, at best, and like the worst too often. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Several years ago, I invited a friend, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/3ioO3E20jTzvVfR2NM1Qka" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Scott Jarrett</a>, to a local jam session when he was visiting us. Scott is a monster on every instrument I've heard him play and he borrowed a mandolin for that jam session. The group was mostly old guys who either picked up music after retirement or restarted playing at that time and the range of "talent" was pretty narrow. And there was Scott. When we left to find lunch, he commented, "There are three things you need to be a musician: a sense of rhythm, some kind of grip on melody and harmony, and an ability to listen. At the least you need one of those. Those guys don't have any of them." To be honest, most of the time the musical output from our little group could best be called "cacophony." You would have to stretch your imagination to find an artistically redeeming moment in an our of our playing. None of us, except Scott and Brian, would be called "musicians" by any real musician. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lots of no-talent writers are beating up the "10,000 hours" theory of how you become an expert, but it's pretty clear from reading their "analysis" that becoming an expert writer/author is a long ways out of their grasp. More likely, they aren't even inspired enough to do the work to become expert writers (like me). They just got where they are the old fashioned way: they inherited enough money to work for free or incredibly cheap. Becoming a "musician" is, as Pat described in his interview, a hard road. Most of us just want to be guitar collectors, not musicians. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-23215790597151744742023-01-20T13:40:00.002-06:002023-01-30T21:04:47.477-06:00Tinnitus and Us<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Survey’s indicate <a href="https://www.hear-it.org/prevalence-tinnitus" target="_blank">about 5% of all American adults</a> admit to experiencing tinnitus. I use that qualifier in my first sentence because many people do not admit to having unintentionally damaged their hearing; especially musicians and audio “professionals” (using the term very tightly tied to the monetary definition of “professional”). Using that conservative number, at least 16 million US citizens are hearing tones (and probably voices for a loony percentage of that group) that don’t exist in the acoustic world. There is a financial reason for not admitting to tinnitus for many people in music, so expecting honesty from a group that is incentivized to lie about hearing deficiencies is irrational. For example, a recording engineer who admits his hearing is damaged badly enough that silent moments in a mix are filled with a variety of unrelated tones needs a younger, more physically capable assistant to be useful. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://the1a.org/segments/the-scientific-method-can-color-sound-help-us-get-things-done/" target="_blank">A great description from Dr. Amy Sarow on NPR’s 1A program</a> from a few days ago, “What’s happening for those with tinnitus, the brain is searching for sound. And if you have some degree of hearing loss, which is the case for 80 to 90% of those with tinnitus, the brain says ‘Humm, something isn’t right here.’ And so it starts to increase the spontaneous firing rate of the nerve [<i>intended to receive a specific frequency content</i>] and this hyperactivity creates the perception of sound where there isn’t any.” Something about that “spontaneous firing rate of the nerve” explanation really struck an audible note with me. [<i>pun intended</i>] For years, I used an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) electronic analogy to explain the noises we hear in tinnitus. That wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t entirely accurate either. And it wasn’t even slightly as elegant as the biological explanation. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One of the problems with that analogy is that it implies that the tinnitus frequency is directly related to the note you are hearing. That isn’t always the case. That spontaneous firing rate is likely to be more of a mechanical value generated by resonances in the nerve than a tone-loss relationship. I used to believe that the tinnitus tones were the frequencies lost by the hearing damage and that is also only sort of true. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img align="left" alt="Noise level and hearing acuity - Tests and applications - Thot Cursus" height="192" src="https://cursus.edu/storage/images/sH9OrV4AV1epKg7Py0oovyKkBh8ghul5RmtnIpUb.jpeg" style="display: inline; float: left;" width="300" /></span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">More importantly, though, it is absolutely useful to understand that the very narrow spectrum of sounds that a typical hearing test provides (see at left) don’t give you much of a picture of potential damage. For example, you might test in the “normal” range at 1000Hz, but be functionally deaf at 1100Hz. Noise-induced hearing damage can be that specific. That mitigates against the value of a traditional, low-tech audiologist’s office test, but it really makes the new over-the counter programmable hearing aids look like the ideal choice for anyone even moderately technical. </span></span></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-65850698628899876252023-01-12T12:45:00.002-06:002023-01-30T21:01:14.859-06:00Jeff Was My Beatles<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">90% of the British Invasion went over or under my head. I was not a Beatles fan, but I liked the Who a lot and Stones fairly well. The rest of that lot was just elevator noise. But Jeff Beck changed my world. And now he’s gone. Since I heard the news, last night, I’ve had my office stereo system on an endless Jeff Beck loop. I own eight of his eighteen albums, plus two Yardbirds records, which amounts to about seven hours of non-stop Jeff Beck. Not nearly enough. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="205" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pLJwWNHYXhE" title="YouTube video player" width="350"></iframe> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Geoffrey (Jeff) Arnold Beck (24 June 1944 - 10 January 2023) was four years older than me and light years beyond me musically from the moment I first noticed his guitar playing in “Jeff’s Boogie” on the 1966 Yardbird’s record (on Epic Records at the time, in “Simulated Stereo”). A friend and I travelled from Dodge City, Kansas to Denver, Colorado in ‘66 to see the Yardbirds. Specifically, to see the guy who played “Jeff’s Boogie.” Sadly, I don’t remember a lot about that show. It was in a fairly small venue, there were a pile of those weird looking <a href="https://www.vintageguitar.com/19030/jordan-boss-tone/" target="_blank">Jordan amps</a> on the stage, we weren’t able to get particularly close to the state, and I didn’t learn a thing from watching Jeff play. He was at least that far over my head when he was 21 and I was 17. I stupidly thought his guitar was fretless, based on his fluid technique and went home to rip the frets out of my Airline electric, rendering it useless. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yNR2HycGHsU" style="height: 245px; width: 298px;" title="YouTube video player" width="450"></iframe> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The second time I saw Jeff in concert was in 1976 at the Music Hall in Omaha’s old Civic Auditorium. He was touring to promote the “Wired” album with the Jan Hammer band; Believe it or not, Billy Joel’s band was the intro act; talk about an odd couple. Mrs. Day and I had front row seats, stage right smack between Hammer’s keyboards and where Jeff stood. There was nothing between me and Jeff except a few feet and I still learned . . . nothing from watching him play. The band I was in at the time covered “Freeway Jam” and often ended our practices with “Scatterbrain.” “Scatterbrain” was slightly past my level of competence, which is why that song did not make it into our setlist, ever. There was a moment when Jeff appeared to be concentrating and I briefly imagined that if I could just get to the point where I could play the song at that speed, I’d have finally caught up to Jeff after a decade of floundering in his wake. Then, he noticed that Hammer was waving a scarf over his head while he played the song’s Lydian scale riff. Jeff walked over to Hammer, had a short conversation, and he laughed and they began to double-time the song (roughly the tempo of this 1976 live recording). At the new impossible pace, he didn’t look even slightly pressured. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Around that time, poor, sad little no-solo-hit-wonder John Lennon was whining about the credit George Martin received for turning their pitiful little bar band into a massive success, “"When people ask me questions about 'What did George Martin really do for you?,' I have only one answer, 'What does he do now?'” What George was doing about that time was Jeff’s “Blow by Blow” and “Wired.” Can anyone remember anything other than “Give Peace a Chance” or “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” from post-Beatles-Johnny? One more reason I do my best to avoid Beatlemania. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="215" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nV9bnaqqfq8" title="YouTube video player" width="350"></iframe> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is a quirk, I know, but vocal music rarely connects to me emotionally. Blow by Blow's "Diamond Dust" is one of the songs that practically reduces me to putty, especially when I'm listening to it on headphones. Pat Metheny's "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" is another song that effects me that strongly. This Rolling Stone interview has Jeff talking about the clarity of sound, purpose, and musicality George Martin brought to the studio and Jeff's music: "<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/jeff-beck-remembers-george-martin-he-gave-me-a-career-229719/2/" target="_blank">Jeff Beck Remembers George Martin: ‘He Gave Me a Career’.</a>" This one of my favorite stories from that interview, "Beck has particularly vivid memories of the album’s last track, the gorgeously orchestrated 'Diamond Dust.' When they first cut the song, Beck thought his band’s version 'sounded a bit lame.' But Martin suggested adding a string section to emphasize the drama in the melody. 'When he finished it, he came wafting in and said, 'This reminds me of a French love movie!'' Beck laughs. 'I said, ‘You’ve just spoiled the whole effect! I might not put it on the album!’ He didn’t realize it was the worst thing he could have said to me. But I thought it was beautiful. George lit a fire under it.”<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In 2011, my daughter Holly (through a connection from her Guitar One column of the time), got a couple of amazing seats at the Minneapolis State Theater for Jeff’s group of the moment. I swear my wife was the only non-guitarist in the audience. Every time I looked away from the stage at the audience everyone around me was fumbling air guitar, totally baffled at every note Jeff played. Me too, of course. Finally, I learned something from watching Jeff play, “There are no picks in his fingers!!” said my hillbilly-self probably out loud to nobody in particular. Holly, of course, had figured that out either before or after the interview and we had a conversation about my big breakthrough. I watched some YouTube and learned even more. Jeff’s biography documentary, <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9477000/" target="_blank">Still on the run: the Jeff Beck story</a></i>, gave me more insight than I needed or wanted to know about his genius. As Jan Hammer said, “Jeff is the guy who took the instrument of guitar into the furthest reaches of guitar universe and nobody ever - nobody even comes close.“</span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=197YBIfaNy6vs-b8in4GgvJP_9kfeYTss"><img align="left" alt="636576898588220374-Jeff-Beck-840394896" border="0" height="244" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1ILyRkdn1EnBKvL0RCk_QDmSjHUtyNz8s" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: left;" title="636576898588220374-Jeff-Beck-840394896" width="151" /></a> <a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1jfQ24gZJgrM8nBN5uerQjtDj5corKbwJ"><img align="right" alt="jeffbeck-arrowhead1" border="0" height="244" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1uBcUjyvDFe5yEEiAb222WWd1Bp0V2vWB" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: right;" title="jeffbeck-arrowhead1" width="177" /></a>I think I’m going miss his smile the most. Not just that he was having a great time on stage, but that “Did you see what I just did?” look that every guitar player within earshot heard, saw, loved, and desperately wished they could do. Even at 78, he was pulling off stuff nobody else in the world could do. Nobody. We’ll never hear anything like Jeff Beck again. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is one of the few moments I wish I could believe in a life-after-death. The world would be far less empty if I could imagine Jeff is still playing guitar somewhere, anywhere. Today, his live version of “Elegy for Dunkirk” seems particularly sad and relevant. When I saw him perform this song live at the <a href="https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/jeff-beck/2011/state-theatre-minneapolis-mn-1bdc65a8.html" target="_blank">State Theater in Minneapolis in 2011</a> (not listed on the setlist, but he did play it), it was heart-stopping then. Today, a part of me wishes my heart had stopped with his. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yoHztn5J-4M" title="YouTube video player" width="450"></iframe></span></span>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-41014755486442885202022-12-29T21:45:00.001-06:002022-12-29T21:45:54.092-06:00My Life in Surf Music<iframe title="YouTube video player" height="315" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pbgC_dH6YB8" frameborder="0" width="450" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe> <p><font size="3">The Ventures were my first roadie gig, when I was 14. They played the Dodge City Civic Auditorium, sponsored by the local Catholic college, St. Mary’s of the Plains, in 1963 or around then. I was in a kid-band at the time and the other 3 guys in the band were a year or two older than me. They all attended the local Catholic high school and had some connections including their parents. Most importantly, they knew the nun in charge of promoting/managing the concert and they got me an invitation to be the volunteer one-man stage “crew.” </font></p> <p><font size="3">I knew how to setup a two-piece guitar amp, I could tune a guitar fairly well and set it on a stand by the amp, and I could plug all that in correctly. Mostly. The auditorium’s sound goober was an old guy named “Sears.” I don’t remember much about him other than the fact that he set out one mic, probably a Shure 55 or something like that and connected up a Shure Vocalmaster PA (two columns and a mixer/power amp tube-type head).  Once he had said “test, test, one,two, three” into the mic and heard himself from both of the columns set at opposite ends of the stage, Sears plopped himself down in a folding metal chair just behind the stage right wing curtain and . . . went to sleep during the first song of the sound check. He didn’t move again till the show was over and the audience applause woke him up. Once my tiny bit of stage-handedness was finished, I climbed up a ladder at the back of the stage left wing to the scaffold plank and sat right over the band, with my legs dangling at least 20’ over their heads. </font></p> <p><font size="3">Sadly, I remember very little about that concert. I remember almost falling off of the scaffold on to the band, bouncing up and down to the opening chords of “Slaughter on 10th Avenue.” <font size="3">Their hit, “Slaughter on 10<sup>th</sup> Avenue” was yet to be released, but they played it in that concert and knocked me out. The year before, my kid band played “Walk Don’t Run” and “Wipeout” on our way to winning a city talent show. I thought I knew all of their music, but they played all sorts of songs I’d never heard before and I was so jazzed to be there, to hear them live, and so pumped to have actually talked  to them before the show that I probably bulk-erased a lot of that night with pure emotion and excitement. </font></font></p> <p><font size="3">Before and after the show, I got to hang out with the band and I remember walking out of the auditorium with the band, after loading their gear into a trailer. I asked Nokie Edwards for an autograph. He said, “Surely,” and took the album from me. Bob Bogle said, “Don’t call that kid Shirley.” First time I ever heard that joke. Not the last, by 100s, though.</font></p> <p><font size="3">When I moved out a year later, my parents threw out that record and a ton of other stuff. After all the times we’ve moved, there is no chance I would still have it under any circumstances. Still, it would be cool to have that record cover and have it framed in my office. </font></p> <p><font size="3">In the late-1980s, I ran Front-of-House for Dick Dale at Anaheim Stadium. The sax player/bandleader, Jack Freeman, for a group I worked with for almost a decade there, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/The-Sum-Fun-Band-265075426981893/" target="_blank">Sum Fun Band</a>, also had a small live sound rig he rented out. Since he was playing sax in Dale’s band that day, Jack hired me to run sound for the show (a pre-baseball game warm-up act outside of the stadium to entertain the tailgaters). Dale notoriously hated sound guys and Jack and a few friends in the business warned me that he might even take a swing at me if I pissed him off. His shows were notoriously loud, past the point of pain and permanent hearing damage and I’d seen him play a couple of times at the Huntington Beach national surf championships. It was a 5-piece band and we had 5 stage monitors to work with and a bunch of QSC power amps to drive them with (thanks to my employer). I put all of the monitors around Dale and drove them as hard as possible with almost nothing in any of the monitors except “the star.” It was so loud the sound pressure moved Dale’s clothes and strands of his scrawny ponytail like a breeze. </font></p> <p><font size="3">After the set, he hunted me down and told me I was the best sound goober he’d ever worked with. Jack was less impressed because he didn’t have any sort of stage monitoring and he and the rest of the band struggled to figure out what was going on. ;-) Not my problem, Dick paid the bills.</font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-86918051359567922182022-11-06T21:13:00.001-06:002022-11-06T21:22:04.782-06:00A Declining Market or Just Laziness?<p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1aBvSTnGBl2q5rf72qGZKptp2YaAaFrnv"><font size="3"><img title="dave's" style="float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="dave's" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1ZHvXkEO2xeh8tjjadoFUCMxvUuxHJh3x" width="323" align="left" height="243" /></font></a><font size="3">At the suggestion (to put it mildly) of a couple of friends, I finally visited </font><a href="https://www.davesguitar.com/pages/about-us" target="_blank"><font size="3">Dave’s Guitar Shop</font></a><font size="3"> in La Crosse, Wisconsin this past week. Weirdly, this small town near the border of Iowa and just across the Mississippi River from Minnesota is known as a “guitar mecca” to lots of guitar collectors. The store deserves that reputation, if for no other reason than not much else about La Crosse is likely to attract national attention. It’s a perfectly nice small city, but not much different from at least 10,000 other similar sized cities. Dave’s Guitar Shop, however, is quite a bit different from other guitar shops. For starters, there are hundreds of guitars and Dave’s is a premier Taylor and PRS dealer along with several other brands. That, alone, is pretty cool. </font></p> <p><font size="3">The reason it has been suggested that I “need to see” this store is that several of my musical friends think my fascination with my two Composite Acoustics carbon fiber guitars is “sick.” I live in a small Minnesota town with a lot of guitar freaks, many of the rich guys who don’t play much but have substantial guitar collections plus there is a community college here that specializes in teaching Guitar Repair and Construction; wood only, of course. One of my local friends died in late August and I helped his widow find homes for his guitar collection and assorted gear over the past couple of months. Even though three of those instruments were high end guitars, it didn’t occur to me that I should play them to see if I had any interest. Several years ago, he swapped a red Composite Acoustics Cargo for my black sunburst Cargo and that turned out to be his favorite guitar to the end of his life. He, still, thought I should own at least one wood acoustic guitar. I made one a few years ago, but gave it to my grandson. </font></p> <p><font size="3">Mrs. Day and I did not travel to La Crosse solely for the purpose of me looking at guitars. That was just a side-benefit of our trip, which was to look at migrating birds (who have yet to arrive in our area). We’re celebrating her 6th cancer-free year after successful treatment by the Mayo Clinic in 2016 and this trip was part of the celebration. After a 120 mile drive and a 2 hour medical exam, Mrs. Day was ready for a nap. I left her and the cat to relax in the hotel and I slipped off to play with guitars at Dave’s. <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1gLstkgmSw6SFJtZjaWRQjdjo_Q40ZS2-"><img title="" style="float: right; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1a_VLUlcTJOqA1Er1tb_DHLZaoLjXy2Ta" width="309" align="right" height="132" /></a>To be honest, I am not a motivated buyer; mostly just curious. I’d just read the last hard-copy Taylor in-house magazine and there were lots of “this guitar just spoke to me” comments from their many owners. I wondered if a guitar could speak to me or make me feel anything different than I already feel about my pair of carbon fiber acoustic guitars. Contrary to my friends’ opinion of my instruments, I’m pretty happy with them. They are definitely capable of more than I can do, they play easily and comfortably, are simple to maintain, and I like the way they look. So sue me. </p> <p><img style="float: right; display: inline;" alt="https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/8j-RBwpuuAw9O3uPhBwcww/o.jpg" src="https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/8j-RBwpuuAw9O3uPhBwcww/o.jpg" width="332" align="right" height="249" />First up, on a Wednesday afternoon, I was not surprised to see that The Gig Store, a live and studio sound equipment place (in the same building) and a drum shop next door to Dave’s, appeared to be closed indefinitely. The retail music business is in rough shape and it is likely to get rougher. Dave’s was open and full of guitars. The entrance is all electric stuff all the time, which was fun but not my reason for being there. </p> <p>The acoustic guitar area is on the south side of the building, through a short and narrow hallway that could easily be mistaken for a shop area. There must have been 100s of acoustic guitars and I played a couple dozen of them. I was most attracted to the <a href="https://www.eastmanguitars.com/acoustic_grand_auditorium" target="_blank">Eastman AC series</a>, with a upper bout sound port and a chamfered edge, Eastman seemed to be at least making some effort to be different than the crowd. Feel-wise, though, all of the acoustic guitars I played had pretty much the same neck, body style and feel, general design, and other than variations on the appearance of the wood they might as well been the same guitar; for my purposes. I really wanted to grab a guitar by the neck and feel that comfortable, natural grip I have with my hot-rodded hand-carved Yamaha V-neck. I had wild hopes that someone would take a chance on doing something inventive with the most important part of any guitar. </p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1MWC4dBmWRp-_n7l-16ASmN7Cd32Px43g"><img title="Guitar necks" style="float: right; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="Guitar necks" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1hPNMmqDCk4XekpSCEd0zTFbEA9oKj78Y" width="244" align="right" height="111" /></a>But, nope. Vintage Martins are a slight V-shape, but too slight for me. In fact, I had to move fairly quickly from a typical round guitar neck to a Martin to feel the <a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1N--nyjUOne6EFoFF_McJvTOQKtugB3HH"><img title="guitar-neck-contours" style="float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="guitar-neck-contours" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1TaN5NF-YLlOLbidRotvlFhR9rNh4j3XI" width="162" align="left" height="113" /></a>difference it is so slight. Somewhere between a “hard V” and this “medium V” is what I’m looking for. And there was nothing like that in Dave’s great big guitar store. Even the lone carbon fiber brand carried in that store, <a href="https://mcphersonguitars.com/product-category/guitars/" target="_blank">McPherson</a>, totally wimps out on the neck shape. They don’t even list neck shape options on their custom build page. If I wanted one, I’d have to build it myself, but at this stage in my life I’m not sure I want one bad enough to mess with it. </p> <p>The music business has undergone some huge changes, mostly for the worse, in the past couple of decades. What has been called “<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/what-moneyball-for-everything-has-done-to-american-culture/ar-AA13xpbt" target="_blank">Moneyball-for-Everything</a>” has done a lot of damage, if you’re interested in any sort of variety or creativity. Like every other area of US culture, the guitar is not the hip instrument it once was and the majority of folks buying (and collecting) guitars are old farts. Old farts are not looking for anything new, unusual, or even odd. They want a ‘55 Strat or Tele or a 40’s Martin or a 60’s Gibson and not much else. Companies not in that collector strata are making instruments similar enough to the old standbys that you can’t tell much difference between a 1950 Gibson or Martin and a 2022 Taylor or the rest of the crowd of wannabes. So, I did not find anything that tripped any sort of trigger or even interest in all of those fine instruments. </p> <p> <p>I did leave that shop wondering how I’d feel when I got home and played my own instruments and the next day I found out. I’m unreasonably satisfied with what I have. </p> </p> </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-6436864830869526612022-10-20T15:34:00.001-05:002022-10-20T15:34:27.976-05:00Talent, Technique, and Tone: How to Hide Them All<p>Back in the mid-70s (as an old friend would say, “When the sun was little-tiny and the moon wasn’t born yet.”), I was a wannabe rock lead guitarist with a lot more confidence than talent and had just moved from rural Nebraska to a city within easy striking and gigging distance from the “Big City”: Omaha, Nebraska and, almost as often, Lincoln, Nebraska and, occasionally, Kansas City and Des Moines. It didn’t take long for me to learn that all of the hot players in town got together fairly regularly at the Saddle Creek Bar for an open mic/jam session and as soon as I figured out where Saddle Creek was I geared up to go into battle. </p> <p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="The Steel Guitar Forum :: View topic - Peavey Pre VT series Artist 240-T" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbb.steelguitarforum.com%2Fuserpix0912%2F5359_fer_sell_001_1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=5eba977578bd096bc8ad9edc5625779365cbe346ca17cea1ff13e233a80186ed&ipo=images" width="169" align="left" height="127" />My amp and gear, at the time, was a 1970s Peavey Artist 100W combo with a Peavey 12” speaker. It was more than enough amp for any gig my band ever did and with an assortment of pedals screwed to a board and a Morley wah, I could handle almost anything on the pop charts at the time. That was considered a “tiny” rig at the time for a rock band guitar player. The Artist was the first amp I ever owned that had a “switched” input setup where I could go from a clean channel to a distorted one with a footswitch. The distortion that amp provided was pretty much fuzz-box quality and, at the time, my tone roll model was probably Carlos Santana. </p> <p>The Saddle Creek jam session was a different setup than I’d expected. The stage backline was a permanent setup. As I remember there were a couple of Fender Twin Reverbs for the guitars, a Rhodes, a drum kit, an Ampeg bass amp of some sort, and 3 or 4 vocal mics; all set up and ready to go. This was 40 years ago, so my memory of the equipment is open to question, but I won’t be far from wrong. As a guitar player, I was “allowed” to bring myself and my guitar, but no pedals and sure-as-hell no amp. What I learned about myself that first time at Saddle Creek was that I sucked. Without the crutch of distortion and sustain to cover up my mediocre right and left hand technique, I sounded embarrassingly mediocre and having to pick every note or cleanly hammer-on or off slowed me down to 1970s country and western music territory. I went home with my tail between my legs, my ego squashed, and my confidence turned into brutal humiliation. Not that anyone I was on stage with or who heard me said anything. They didn’t need to, I said it all to myself. </p> <p><img style="float: right; display: inline;" alt="Fender Harvard 1956 Tweed Price Guide | Reverb" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.reverb.com%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fs--WeD3a0Ao--%2Fa_exif%2Cc_limit%2Ce_unsharp_mask%3A80%2Cf_auto%2Cfl_progressive%2Cg_south%2Ch_1600%2Cq_80%2Cw_1600%2Fv1362768684%2Fa1yvlswkk4vae4o2g1ty.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=b4cce4deee1827bee1b9cfbc86272099ea3b6fbf0e569a9a2b8372ac27e51e1c&ipo=images" width="183" align="right" height="183" />After getting my ass handed to me, I went home and re-evaluated my equipment choices and my playing technique. There were a lot of terrific musicians at the Saddle Creek jam and I desperately wanted to go back and, even more, I did not want to suck in front of my peers. I started practicing on an acoustic guitar, even with the band. We lowered our practice volume drastically to accommodate my acoustic guitar and to protect our hearing. For performances, I sold the Peavey Artist and lucked into a 1950s Fender Harvard, which I immediately “hot-rodded” with a JKL K120 12” speaker, Marshall-style tone controls, and a foot-switched gain-boost circuit (all tube). [<em>Yeah, I know. I destroyed the “collector value” of the amp. I did that sort of thing to a few hundred amps between 1974 and 1984, so get over yourself.]</em> No more pedal board, no fuzz box sound, just a collection of tones produced by my Moonstone guitar, my amp, occasional contributions from the Morley wah pedal, and my fingers. </p> <p>A few months and dozens of gigs later, I went back to Saddle Creek and I didn’t suck. I went back often over the next few years and learned more from that experience than I had from practicing and playing in bands in the previous dozen years. In the process, I also learned a lot about live sound systems, acoustics, electronics, and even audiences. Not only did I improve, as a player, enough to feel reasonably happy with my performance among the great players at the Saddle Creek Bar, but my band’s overall sound improved enough that I would often have other musicians walk right by my little Harvard, on it’s folding stand right behind me on stage, They’d often ask, “How do you get that sound from that amp?” And they’d be pointing at the bass player’s SVT, totally ignoring the little Harvard they’d walked past. </p> <p>And so, sometime around 1976 I discovered “small is better” and I have never found any evidence to the contrary. But I have seen a lot of evidence that big is bad from everyone from the rich and famous to the godawful cacophony produced by wannabe guitar players in cover bands from Texas to Nebraska to California to Colorado to Minnesota and the surrounding territories. When my Nebraska sound company was designing and building sound systems for bands in the late 70s, I’d tell whoever was spending the money “For every 100W Marshall you let on to your stage, you’ll need at least 1,000W of PA system to get the vocals over the guitar.” I haven’t seen any evidence to conflict with that advice, either. </p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-60247676360892604492022-10-13T15:20:00.001-05:002022-10-13T15:20:29.392-05:00The Stuff We Collect<p><font size="3">A good friend died near the end of this past August. He had been a hobby guitarist for most of his 76 years, but got “serious” about the collecting part about 20 years ago. When he retired as a waterfowl habitat Project Engineer from the federal Interior Department, he gave himself a couple of options: go back to school for a math degree or “learn to play lead guitar.” Neither of those skills come naturally to most of us, so it’s not like he was planning on slacking off in his last 20-some years of life. He also biked all of the transcontinental trails, north-south and east-west and maintained several other complicated and skilled hobbies. However, after picking the lead guitar option his approach to that skill set was to start accumulating information, instruments, equipment, and tools. In other words, he approached music as if it were an engineering project. If he had pursued the math degree with the same tactics, he’d have been on the path to a PhD. As a guitar player, he quickly stalled while he concentrated on trying different tools (guitars, amps, pedals, expensive cables and cords, books and DVDs, etc) and gathering resources. </font></p> <p><font size="3">I recently joined a Facebook group that focuses on a particularly unconventional electrical guitar design. I’m considering making one of those instruments as a winter project and started lurking on the FB group to gather information. Upfront, I discovered some of these guys are also far more collectors than guitarists or builders. I was reminded of a conversation with a friend who is an accomplished and well-paid professional musician and who also works at a busy music store as a salesperson. At a party, someone asked him about what kind of equipment professionals use and his response was something like, “I have no idea. If the music store had to rely on musicians to pay the bills, it would have closed a week after it opened. It’s the hobbyists who spend the real money.” </font></p> <p><font size="3">That isn’t the world I came from, but the people who own recording studio equipment that needs fixing and are, mostly, willing to pay for it are professionals. The hobby studio geeks (and Prince) just toss broken stuff in a closet or sell it as-is “for parts” on eBay. That doesn’t even happen with 20-year-old guitar amps in the Music Instrument (MI) world. Hobby musicians have been “the rich guys” for at least 25 years. </font></p> <p><font size="3">In the 1980s, places like L.A., New York Chicago, Austin and Dallas, and a good bit of the southeast-coast clubs stuck bands with pay-to-play gig expenses. Instead paying for entertainment, the clubs realized there were a LOT of bands hoping for a shrinking number of stages and decided to make the bands pay upfront for the privilege of being seen and heard. Usually, the band would get a package (50-100) tickets to sell or give away as “compensation,” but the damage was done. The money went out of music for most players. Obviously, the club owners were right. There are <strong><em>a lot</em></strong> more bands that desperately want to be seen and heard than there are places to be seen and heard. </font></p> <p><font size="3">About the time working musicians were getting kicked in the financial balls, analog and digital recording gear started to get cheap and lots of hobbyists discovered microphones, recording equipment, high quality studio monitors, and the internet soon provided a way for the people with excess cash to find the people who would make equipment to sell them. That also went for guitars, amplifiers, keyboards, drums and percussion, and every other instrument that could make a claim to “professional quality,” vintage value, </font></p> <p><font size="3">In the end, we all find that things are only worth what someone will pay for them and that is a hard, sad lesson to learn when you are disposing of an estate. Turns out, a lot of those cool, high-end odds and ends aren’t worth much. Even the stuff we’ve been told “holds its investment value” doesn’t. Unless you stumble on to one of those weird collector instruments owned by Charlie Christian handed down to Les Paul who gave it to Jimmy Page at a R&R Hall of Fame presentation, your money is always better spent on actual investments. Don’t believe me, <a href="https://dqydj.com/dow-jones-return-calculator/" target="_blank">do your own calculation</a>. </font></p> <p><font size="3">I bought my first guitar, an Airline/Danelectro solid body single-pickup electric, for about $60 in 1963. If I’d have dumped that money into a S&P tracking investment and left it there compounding the interest, I’d have <a href="https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1963" target="_blank">about $19,000 in the investment portfolio right now</a>. Left in the bank accumulating 3% average interest, I’d have about $650. Or I’d have a beat up 80-year-old guitar that would have cost me a few hundred dollars in repairs, strings, and other parts over the years that might be worth $500; if I can find the right sucker and I’m selling at the right moment during the economic swings of instrument value and desirability. Inflation-wise, $60 in 1963 money is $550 in today’s money. For example, I gave my daughter a late-1950’s Danelectro triple-pickup shorthorn 6-string guitar 30 years ago. It has hung on the wall of her office for at least 20 years. There is one on Reverb.com selling for (asking price) of $2,400. My advice to her is “Sell it, if someone will buy it for that.” </font></p> <p><font size="3">As for boutique guitar cables, guitar pedals and effects, and all of the other farkles and toys we buy to distract ourselves from practicing and actually becoming musicians, they will end up in a discount bin at your local Goodwill or Salvation Army store. Nobody wants them and almost nobody knows what they are or why they should want them. It seems like there should be a special place for this kind of stuff to be donated, but even music schools don’t seem to want any of it. Disposing of someone else’s music equipment gives you an interesting perspective on what all that room-filling stuff is worth. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-50754050015134060282022-09-19T17:53:00.003-05:002023-10-17T10:54:41.378-05:00Product Review: Positive Grid Spark Mini<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAP5eW2TJEvUrD1qXwZNkLeuAv99UpAi393zejOGI1qOXv8Y8qQLXKixs2m2qbNDJ_phtXUmS8ESwpowaP8Ovk2Do9QrVNagazFPgv_RdsT9UDozfqTwVAWSCt1lNs2RicPlC19DCHSm4epagYwT-HVqtvlCMEekekp2EOe5ke150qOgAoK-kRFcRj0g/s805/Grid%20Mini.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="805" data-original-width="797" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAP5eW2TJEvUrD1qXwZNkLeuAv99UpAi393zejOGI1qOXv8Y8qQLXKixs2m2qbNDJ_phtXUmS8ESwpowaP8Ovk2Do9QrVNagazFPgv_RdsT9UDozfqTwVAWSCt1lNs2RicPlC19DCHSm4epagYwT-HVqtvlCMEekekp2EOe5ke150qOgAoK-kRFcRj0g/s320/Grid%20Mini.jpg" width="317" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Silly me, I thought the <a href="https://www.positivegrid.com/spark-mini" target="_blank">Positive Grid Spark Mini</a> was a fairly new product, but my resident guitar repair guru and guy-who-will-try-to-fix-anything about town, <a href="https://treestrings.com/" target="_blank">Brian Stewart</a> (<a href="https://treestrings.com/" target="_blank">Tree Strings Music</a>), has already repaired one in his Red Wing shop. I haven’t yet heard what the fault was in that unit. I ordered a white one from Amazon, thinking it might be a fun practice and outdoor jamming amp. I’ve had it about a week and, sadly, the fun is wearing off fast. The good and bad news is that almost everything about this amp is driven by a phone/tablet app, iPhone or Android. The good is that it has hidden power if you’re willing to climb the usual steep software learning curve. The bad is, like most apps, it’s glitchy, unpredictable and often counter-intuitive, almost completely inflexible, and very dumbed-down while pretending to be a product for the sophisticated, discriminating guitarist (the ultimate oxymoron?). A lot of the positive reviews you will find for this amp begin with something like “I’m new to guitar and have only been playing about a few months . . .” It’s easy to like or even love something if you don’t have anything to compare it to. In my case, it’s hard for me to look at any product with the eyes of a newbie. So prepare to be disappointed if you’re hoping for that kind of bubbly, happy-talk review. At 74 and after 50 years in various areas of pro audio and music, there is nothing new about me except for the crap that keeps popping up every time I have a doctor’s appointment. Having spent 20-some years in test and reliability engineering I tend to find more things wrong with software than right. </span></span><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4JOyIUaEGKvRplk6wJlhB8W9Q2tKIg34By1WsbrAMzXPFdX6X-HTavIfFqD_3-7zvNWPM_vRlveZrfDZEAeuqrv1OOuSCkLEETAYCzduIX-JvCmXbF9OHGA4zmBVUyX5YErIzSwC6CKcZuWOqszBTh9wnYkZEB73krXV2OdaQkO1Y2v7YB2HyYGlrffN/s360/Mini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="360" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4JOyIUaEGKvRplk6wJlhB8W9Q2tKIg34By1WsbrAMzXPFdX6X-HTavIfFqD_3-7zvNWPM_vRlveZrfDZEAeuqrv1OOuSCkLEETAYCzduIX-JvCmXbF9OHGA4zmBVUyX5YErIzSwC6CKcZuWOqszBTh9wnYkZEB73krXV2OdaQkO1Y2v7YB2HyYGlrffN/s320/Mini.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">You can’t beat the Mini’s physical controls for simplicity. On the top of the amp chassis, you get 4-position Preset switch (Rhythm, Lead, Solo, and Custom), a Guitar volume, a Music volume control (Bluetooth or Aux In signals), and a guitar input. The back of the chassis has 3.175mm (aka 1/8”) Line Out and Aux Input jacks, a USB-C port for charging the battery and (sometime in the future) a functioning digital audio interface), a Bluetooth “Pair” switch (the Pair switch also fires up a rudimentary guitar tuner), and a power switch. The amp comes with a cute leatherette strap and a pair of buttons to attach the strap on the side. The amp is a 10W Class-D unit that, supposedly produces 90dBSPL at 1m. The cabinet has two 2” speakers and a bottom-facing passive radiator. The 3Ah battery supposedly provides power for 8 hours (on mid-to-low power output) and charges from empty to full in 3 hours. The firmware contains “33 Amp Models, 43 Effects, (Noise Gate, Compressor, Distortion, Modulation/EQ, Delay, Reverb – fixed in that order) and the USB interface is a 44kHz/16 bit A/D. You also get a a free download of PreSonus Studio One Prime recording software with your original purchase. Registering for your software is the closest thing to registering for warranty with Positive Grid. You can buy (for $110) a <a href="https://www.positivegrid.com/spark-control" target="_blank">Spark Control footswitch</a> to either control the presets, turn on and off various virtual pedals, or a combination of those functions. The amp is 146.5 x 123 x 165 mm (5.76 x 4.84 x 6.49 in) and weighs 1.5 kg (3.3 lb).</span></span><p></p> <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As usual, the included paper “Quick Start Guide” is close to useless. Not so typically, Positive Grid hasn’t provided much in the way of useful information on their website, YouTube, or anywhere else. Figuring out the app and the various features of the amp that are only accessed through the app is up to the buyer. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For a beginning guitarist who doesn’t know any other musicians, some of the Mini’s app features are probably fun-to-useful. This “screenshot” is really a compilation of three different screens as typically displayed on a phone.<img align="right" alt="Positive Grid Spark mobile app" height="228" src="https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/reviews/05OfH9IAEyznv8I7O6o5Z9R-2.fit_lim.size_768x.jpg" style="display: inline; float: right;" width="387" /> The middle one is an example of a dumbed-down imitation of a fairly common DAW guitar pedal screen; like the one in Logic Pro. A big difference between the DAW pedal boards and the Spark is that you can’t reshuffle the order of the pedals to suit your purposes. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">After spending considerable time playing with the various pedals I can say “they work.” The compressors in the Comp/Wah section aren’t up to DAW standards, but they are probably as good as most hardware pedals. The “Wah” function, also included in this group, is “Temporarily Disabled.” As usual, I don’t like the distortion (Drive) pedals much, but I rarely do. About half of the Drive pedals are red-flagged, which means you’ll have to spend $20 or more to enable those pedals on your device. So it goes for the Amp models, too. Most of the red-flagged amp models are variations on the mediocre Marshall models. The Mod/EQ models are predictable and not bad. The Delays are ok, except for the absence of a multi-tap delay. The Reverbs are typically pretty good, since digital reverb plug-ins have been fairly well staked-out territory for at least 20 years. I didn’t find a favorite from the verbs, but I didn’t find anything I hated either. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Irritatingly, with my Samsung tablet and the Samsung Music player, anytime I open the Spark app the music player starts playing something from my current playlist through the Spark Mini. Before you start babbling about some “play on Bluetooth connection” toggle in the player, get a grip on yourself. No other Bluetooth device that I own has this behavior: from consumer buds to Shure in-ears to three different Bluetooth speaker systems. It is a glitch in the Spark app and that has been logged by Positive Grid’s customer service and I wasn’t the first to make the complaint. If everything else was excellent this wouldn’t be a deal-breaker, just unpredictably irritating. (If it does this when I first open up the app, will it spontaneously do the same during a gig?) Yes, I could turn off the Music volume, but if I am using it as a backing track at the time it sort of defeats the purpose of that function. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">With that out of the way, my impression of the guitar amp is somewhat positive. I’m not fond of electric guitar distortion in the usual buzz-box fashion, but some of the amp models deliver decent slightly over-driven sounds with the kind of amp EQ and tone you’d expect from what I’m guessing are the amps being modeled. Some of the setups both by other users and Positive Grid are fair-to-decent. I had some high hopes for Pat Metheny style sounds, but the lack of multi-tap delays squashed that. You could just add a pedal delay up front but that would defeat my purpose. I have an old MacBook Pro with MainStage that will do everything this unit does with a ton more effects including my multi-tap delay that I’d rather use with a small wired power speaker than add a pedal that is almost as big as this amp. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And speaking of power, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mini an produce 10W, but the distortion at that output would be objectionable. That goes for the spec’d <a href="mailto:90dBSPL@1m">90dBSPL@1m</a> acoustic output, too. At any volume over a moderately loud voice or a strummed full-size acoustic guitar, the bottom end of this amp clips indecently. It is not a pleasant distortion, either. It is the usual splatting sound of digital clipping. That was the straw that broke the back of my interest in the Positive Grid Spark Mini. There were moments when I thought I was about to find the sweet spot for several of the Presets but “almost there” was as close as I got to something useful. When the amp sounded good, it was too quiet to compete with a couple of acoustic guitars. When it was loud enough to cut through a small instrument crowd, it sounded awful. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For a beginning practice amp the Spark Mini isn’t bad. Most beginners, however, will have a terrible time with the mediocre application software that is an absolute necessity for using the amp. Advanced users will be frustrated with the user-hostile programming of the app and disappointed with the little amp’s small performance. </span></span></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-57596609783910533592022-09-19T09:10:00.001-05:002022-09-19T09:10:55.455-05:00Acoustic Guitar String Comparison<p>This all started when someone from <a href="https://www.cleartonestrings.com/" target="_blank">Cleartone Strings</a> sent me a note on my <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WirebenderAudio/" target="_blank">Wirebender Audio Facebook page</a> asking if I’d be interested in reviewing sets of their acoustic and electric guitar strings. I’m up for free stuff, so I said “sure” and they sent me two pairs of their <a href="https://www.cleartonestrings.com/products/phosphorbronze?variant=42500419911923" target="_blank">Custom Light 11-52 Acoustic Phosphor Bronze Treated Strings</a>. These are not cheap strings at $17.99 a set, but I have been playing <a href="https://www.daddario.com/products/guitar/acoustic-guitar/xs-phosphor-bronze/11-52-custom-light-xs-phosphor-bronze/" target="_blank">D’Addario 11-52 Custom Light Phosphor Bronze Coated Acoustic Guitar Strings</a> for the last couple of years after almost 20 years of almost exclusively playing <img style="float: left; display: inline;" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/814Ce1731lL._AC_SL1425_.jpg" width="158" align="left" height="183" /><a href="https://www.elixirstrings.com/guitar-strings/acoustic-phosphor-bronze-nanoweb-coating" target="_blank">Elixir Nanoweb Phosphor Bronze Lights and Custom Lights</a> and those strings are all in the same price ballpark. All of these strings make similar claims to longevity, also, with a special coating and other process secrets. </p> <p>I have two Composite Acoustics guitars, the OX and a Cargo. I’ve been waffling on how I feel about the D’Addarios on the Cargo since I started using them, but I’ve been really happy with the OX’s tone with those strings. Mostly due to the added “edge” the brighter D’Addarios add to the larger bodied guitar, which isn’t an “effect” the Cargo needs. </p> <p><img style="float: right; display: inline;" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71YTU-Cb23L._AC_SL1500_.jpg" width="196" align="right" height="182" />Before I replaced my current set of D’Addario’s, I examined the strings and, especially, the coating and listened carefully to the sound and measured the output on my Composite Acoustics OX with both the pickup and a Shure KSM 141 microphone. I’m going to make a wild claim here that the CA OX, being a carbon fiber guitar will do a good job of neutrally demonstrating whatever character there might be to guitar strings. I could be wrong, so sue me. </p> <p>The D’Addarios sound clean, relatively bright, and have enough bottom to make the guitar as full as a guitar this size should sound. They were recommended by my local guitar expert, <a href="https://treestrings.com/about-us/" target="_blank">Brian Stewart, Tree Strings Music</a>, and they have been everything he said they would be, including long-lasting and a moderately different sound from my Elixirs. The Elixirs are more mellow, maybe slightly more full than the D’Addarios and that impression is true across the six strings. I have liked these strings for more than 20 years, especially during the years when I rarely played my guitars. Before using the Elixirs, my strings would often be ruined before I had an hour of playing time because of corrosion from being exposed to either the local humidity or the humidifier in my guitar case. </p> <p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81hYNzYE-XL._AC_SL1500_.jpg" width="160" align="left" height="160" />The ClearTone strings were a fail right out of the package. The first thing I noticed about the ClearTone strings was for the first time in the 6 years I’ve owned my CA OX the low E string buzzes like crazy. With the same gauge D’Addarios, the guitar rang clear and clean on all strings. It is only the low E that is rattling and I have no idea what that means, although the whole set feels lighter than the D’Addarios I’d just removed. [<a href="https://treestrings.com/about-us/" target="_blank"><em>Obi-Wan-Brian Kenobi-Stewart</em></a><em> suspects the ClearTones might be round-core, rather than hex-core strings. I guess round-core is a trendy “vintage” design, but it’s also know for being fragile, likely to come apart of the strings aren’t crimped near the tuner post, and to have problems like those I’m experiencing.]</em> It’s nice that the guitar is more easily played, but at the cost of “clear tone” (pun intended) from all strings? Probably not so nice. </p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1bsZjh8B9okZ7JPEc1BdoF6DtIQLDTEOA"><img title="" style="float: right; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1lLiXSXcC-n_LyYoE6O4A58y5pJFYmnkJ" width="196" align="right" height="244" /></a> <p>I was about to yank the ClearTone strings when I thought I saw a section of the wrap pulled apart. When I looked closely, the source of the rattling problem was obvious. The wrap (whatever that is called) at the ball-end of the string is so long (only on the A and low E strings) that it extends slightly past the edge of the saddle. You can sort of see it on the attached picture (at right). That explains why it rattles everywhere, because it is rattling at the freakin’ saddle! If I put a little bit of fingernail pressure behind the saddle, it rings clear. It’s a manufacturing/design problem and a weird one because every other string has shorter wraps, but none of them is consistent in length. </p> </p> <p>Outside of the design problem, the ClearTones are somewhat less bright than the D’Addarios and seem even a little more dull than the Elixers but with considerably less fullness of tone. In fact, I think the ClearTone strings make my guitar sound like it is made out of plastic (which it kind of is). I left them on for a disappointing week and discarded them to return to the D’Addarios. I was disappointed enough with the first experiment that I did not bother to try them on the CA Cargo. </p> Initially, I’d planned on doing a lot of data collection for this review: charts and graphs, screen shots of string amplitude and harmonic content, and maybe even some sustain tests. Honestly, I don’t think any of that would be useful information after what I have experienced with the ClearTone acoustic strings. Your experience may vary, but I’m just not happy enough with the initial experience with these strings to put much more time into them.  <p>I suspect my career as an “influencer” will be short. It’s pretty obvious that advertisers imagine that they are paying for a good review, not an honest one. Magazines have been threatened with and lost advertising revenue when a mediocre product is identified as such. All of my revenue from my blogs comes from the occasional hit my readers make to the advertisements in the blog. I have very little control of the ads (I can only tell Google and Wordpress not to use an ad I find objectionable.) and I kind of like it that way. </p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-28478239823628651962022-09-08T16:02:00.001-05:002022-09-08T16:02:40.461-05:00“You Can’t Hear What I’m Hearing”<iframe title="YouTube video player" height="315" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MburAgg4Y5I" frameborder="0" width="450" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe> <p><font size="3">This scene in the movie “Crazy Heart” is probably my favorite music business scene in any movie ever, including documentaries. Bear, the deaf-and-dumb front-of-house goober, tries to tell Jeff Bridges’ character, Bad, that he can’t believe his lyin’ ears and should trust someone who probably never critically or competently listened to a record in his life. “The mix is good man. You can’t hear what I’m hearin’ out here.” </font></p> <p><font size="3">Instead, Bad does what every musician should do in a live performance; he stops the rehearsal until the goober does what he tells him to do. “Yeah, you’d be surprised. Set it the way I tell you and leave it!” After a short, hilarious wrestling match between the goober and Bad, the show goes on. Of course an even better solution would be to have a bodyguard/assistant standing behind the FOH nitwit smacking him every time he touches a fader. It doesn’t matter how much the assistant knows about music, it will always be more than the FOH goober. </font></p> <p><font size="3">The power of the mix should be on the stage, but usually it isn’t because the musicians are so swollen up with their ego crap they don’t bother to listen to what the audience is suffering through. They smother themselves in a wash of stage monitor noise that buries the FOH sound and allows the worst people on the planet to torture their fans with incompetence. Worse, most musicians are convinced that being loud will cover up flaws, which is beyond stupid. </font></p> <p><font size="3">There are at least two ways (both negative) to take Bear’s reply, though:</font></p> <ol> <li><font size="3">“You can’t hear what I’m hearin’ out here” could be a reflection of Bear’s deafness: “I’m mixing to compensate for decades of severe hearing loss and general stupidity and you’ll never know what I’m hearing.” </font></li> <li><font size="3">Or Bear is pretending the FOH position is important enough to tell Bad “you can’t hear” what he’s doing because what Bear isn’t going to allow it. The goober thinks Bad’s opinion doesn’t matter. In other words, you don’t have permission to “hear what I‘m hearin’ out here.” </font></li> </ol>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-61049794592016347342022-08-21T07:58:00.001-05:002022-08-21T07:58:59.054-05:00I Hated Steve Martin<p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Students blast Steve Martin's King Tut skit as racist" src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnypost.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2017%2F11%2F171121-steve-martin-king-tut-skit-feature.jpg%3Fquality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%26w%3D600%26h%3D400%26crop%3D1&f=1&nofb=1" width="334" align="left" height="223" />Between  1973 and 1978, I absolutely despised Steve Martin. There, I said it and it’s true. Yep, that funny guy on the right side of the pair of “King Tut” era Steve Martin pictures was a guy I regarded as a thief, at best. If he was in a movie, I wouldn’t watch it (I didn’t see “The Jerk” until ‘79 or so.). If he was on SNL or any other television talk show, I ignored it. I hated the man. </p> <p>There was a “good” reason, believe it or not.</p> <p>Sometime in 1978, I stumbled on to a brief article in Rolling Stone where Martin said his friend, John McEuen the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, “came to me in a dream” and provided the inspiration to “King Tut,” which was performed by “Martin and the Toot Uncommons” (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band members) and produced by William McEuen at McEuen’s Aspen Recording Society studio. And that was when I realized I was hating the guy I thought Martin had ripped off; himself. </p> <p>Sometime around 1971, Mrs. Day and I went to a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band concert in Amarillo, Texas. The Amarillo City Auditorium had an intermission break policy, so they could sell concessions. Essentially, we’re talking a 60’s hippy band and a 60’s hippy audience and the Dirt Band’s usual concert was non-stop music for 3 hours and some change. They were not happy about having to take 45 minutes out of the middle of their show so someone else could sell popcorn. They’d apparently heard about this popcorn bullshit in advance and had brought “a friend” who was a comedian. I’m sure they introduced him, but I was probably looking at something sparkly and I don’t have a brain for names in the best of times. The friend’s purpose was to fill the 45 minutes completely enough that we’d all stay in our seats and the popcorn asshole would get frustrated and go home. </p> <p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=190XDidcCMuMGc8HKoOcjXg4SfyayX4vj"><img title="SteveMartin-hippy" style="float: right; display: inline; background-image: none;" border="0" alt="SteveMartin-hippy" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=19zBZqBgRnt6SPbQtl0z-a5w7P1XboUv7" width="177" align="right" height="244" /></a> <p>The friend/comedian more than did the job. He was freakin’ hilarious and a pretty good magician and banjo player, too. He did all the “let’s get small,” “excuuuuse me,” balloon animal, Steve Martin standbys that made the clean-cut guy famous., Then, a few years later the “other guy” appears on television doing exactly the routines and I thought (distrusting straight fuckers as did any hippy of the day) it was a clear cut case of theft. But . . . come on! You tell me, how the hell was I supposed to know the hippy freak on the right would instantly turn into the the geek in the suit at the top of this essay? In fact, I remember the guy I saw in Amarillo as being even more of a long-haired, bearded hippy. Martin is from Waco, Texas and, maybe, it was a “short” (by Texas standards) drive to Amarillo for that night’s gig. </p></p></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-64679919575838987582022-07-01T14:10:00.002-05:002022-07-01T14:19:04.554-05:00Theory vs. Experience: Diffraction<font size="3"><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiTh1mwGzizF4YFBTErtPYcxmV0-Xs6xVedUMQM3Z0_1IFRanauQBdOao5OPVeZBm2K1fjRsu4ghyHV7NOLMWRqmHReJ9h79taupdGTTZuwsqmj_sDjI6A0LMSFJQCrWlzFjdIpYWMvmByvzWdLtULc1dR_c7_KIXsOGJXktY9aYmCpHVQif-es5pYiOg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1280" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiTh1mwGzizF4YFBTErtPYcxmV0-Xs6xVedUMQM3Z0_1IFRanauQBdOao5OPVeZBm2K1fjRsu4ghyHV7NOLMWRqmHReJ9h79taupdGTTZuwsqmj_sDjI6A0LMSFJQCrWlzFjdIpYWMvmByvzWdLtULc1dR_c7_KIXsOGJXktY9aYmCpHVQif-es5pYiOg" width="320" /></a></div>When I taught “Acoustics” and “Room Acoustics” at McNally Smith College, one of my favorite theoretical devices was diffusion. “Theoretical” because almost no one ever wants to spend real money on that acoustical solution after spending really real money on isolation and absorption and cosmetics to hide the practical stuff. The end result has been that while I have built some diffusion products, I have not spent any time enjoying them. I have never had a location/facility or had the opportunity to experience a facility that would have accommodated substantial enough diffusion to have much of an effect. The stupid “convention” of a window between control rooms and performance areas pretty much wipes out any real opportunity to experiment with a diffuse sound field. George Massenburg and Dr. Peter D’Antonio’s Blackbird Studio C design is the posterchild example (at right) for how radical you have to get before diffusion really shows its stuff. It that isn’t an extreme look to you, you are my kind of people. When you look at my discovery that will be described in this essay, remember that Massenburg’s “<a href="https://www.blackbirdstudio.com/studio-c">studio contains slightly more than 100,000 lbs. of wood on the walls</a>.” (That is 50 <strong><em>tons</em></strong> or 45359.24 <strong><em>kilograms</em></strong> of MDF wood!). And the calculations used to create this design came from a “10,000-page Excel spreadsheet based on acoustic diffusion algorithms.”<p></p> <p>My personal moment-with-diffusion came totally as an accident; an incredibly fun, happy accident. I’ve been fooling with some mid-fi recordings friends and I made during the 1st 2 1/4 years of the pandemic through Jamkazam. I’m old, tired, and out-of-practice at tweaking and fine-tuning recordings that have a fair number of timing (thanks to long-distance latency) and pitch issues and it helps for me to get some distance from the tools (mostly Apple’s Logic X) and just listen to what I have so far. That critical listening includes stereo placement and my low-fi tool of choice has been a SoundFreaq Bluetooth speaker that sort of does stereo, but with about 6” of displacement. So, I bought a pair of very cheap, beer-can-sized <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B089FMHP7J?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details">MusiBaby Bluetooth Speakers</a> and hauled them outside to listen while I read. This is definitely not an ad for MusiBaby speakers, but they aren’t as terrible as their $30/each price tag implies. The cool thing about these speakers is, being wireless, I can find a decent placement for them no matter where I am outside. </p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1hpFmOPuLeIglNWdcxq4__yQe4KGJg07f"><img align="left" alt="2022 Diffraction Experiment (1)" border="0" height="186" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=17Msl4LtuNhLINxYgaA83dCTODoApjGur" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: left;" title="2022 Diffraction Experiment (1)" width="246" /></a> </p><p>My favorite outside spot in our yard is pictured at left: sitting in a swingchair, in the shade of a pair of very large maple trees, with a great view of the forest and hills across the street. So, naturally I stuck the speakers on the ground close enough to be able to mostly overwhelm the traffic noise (except for the idiots on Hardlys and deaf bozos driving muffler-free cars and trucks who sonically litter our countryside). I’ve put the speakers on top of the firepit before and on a glass table that is out of sight to the left of this picture. But two days ago, I put the two blue speakers on the patio shelf to the left and right of the firepit. And while I was swinging back and forth, as I often do to keep the mosquitoes confused and working for their blood, I noticed that there was a spot in that motion that was amazingly full sounding. </p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1Uk7Nez7aAN_T7Ty8ZKiiICxfwTxt8Jii"><img align="right" alt="2022 Diffraction Experiment (2)" border="0" height="186" src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=10FaUi_hRIgdsRwl7fRUFWpbRux74QdsC" style="background-image: none; display: inline; float: right;" title="2022 Diffraction Experiment (2)" width="246" /></a> </p><p>You can see by the picture that I wasn’t doing anything particularly scientific in my speaker placement. I didn’t even more a couple of acoustic obstacles because I wasn’t expecting anything from this setup. Once I got into it, I did start messing with speaker placement, listening distance, and a few other things that might have some effect on the “effect” I was hearing. I honestly had to let this settle overnight before I began to figure out some things from the experiment. What I heard was an incredibly coherent and powerful center image from these two tiny speakers. When the speakers were at a reasonable distance from the firepit, close enough to get some reflective reinforcement and far enough for that reinforcement to be diffused, I heard things in my own mixes and other reference (for me) recordings that I can’t consistently pick out in my office “studio” setup, which has absorption in the center but no real diffusion anywhere. </p> <p>I think the takeaway from this accidental demonstration is that the diffusor needs to be substantially larger than the speaker, especially taller, and mass, as always, is our friend in acoustic treatments. Those retaining wall bricks are about 40 pounds each, for example. Massenburg and D’Antonio used MDF in their diffusion design at least partially because of the weight, I’m guessing. MDF is about 49 pounds/square foot and pine, for example, is about 30 pounds/square foot. Not a small thing when you are making something as substantial and Blackbird’s Studio C. It would be interesting to build a floor-to-ceiling retaining wall curved diffusor and see how it sounds in a real studio environment. Just don’t do it anywhere that can’t support a few tons of brick. </p> <p></p> <p></p> </font>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-2685648628622607032022-06-22T15:06:00.001-05:002022-06-22T15:06:44.214-05:00From Whence It All Began<blockquote> <p>Recently, I saw a Facebook post on Pat Metheny’s page where he said, “"The Beatles were huge for me. Without them, I don't know if I even would have become a musician or a guitar player. When their hits started coming out, I was 8 and 9 years old and it had a tremendous impact on me. . .” and he proceeded to play <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYcZ6s3z1jg" target="_blank">“And I Love Her.”</a> Obviously, Pat turns a fairly deplorable song into something very likeable and almost infinitely more complex than the original composition. </p> <p>I have been a Pat Metheny fan since his Gary Burton days and he is in my Top 5 guitarists, some days at the top of that list. I played in bands that had a fair share of Beatles songs for 20 years, but in my mind I was always pandering to the lowest common denominator when I played most of those songs. (I admit to liking “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0zaebtU-CA" target="_blank">Taxman</a>,” “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDJs9dumZI" target="_blank">While My Guitar Gently Weeps</a>,” “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOmmJEnqDlY" target="_blank">Got to Get You into My Life,</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhdOPhTHeoE" target="_blank">Birthday</a>” <em>[for about a decade, the only song I would play when someone requested “The Birthday Song” and one of the Beatles only actual rock songs]</em>). Otherwise, the band often labeled as “the greatest Rock and Roll band ever” mostly left me wishing for silence. </p> <p>I absolutely admire George Martin’s genius in recognizing that 4 moderate talents were visually (and could be made to aurally be) the exact right thing for a crowd of blooming Boomer teenagers to obsess on. His commitment to molding that mess of “talent” into what the Beatles became is historic in R&R history. If Martin hadn’t forced the Goofy Three into dumping a mediocre drummer and accepting a professional musician who rewrote the job of pop drumming forever, they likely would have been a one-hit-wonder; if that. To highlight that point, in 1971 neglected and mostly unsuccessful John Lennon asked “<em>What's he done</em> now?” in regard to George Martin’s post-Beatle career. I have loved that typically clueless moment in John’s feet-in-mouth career for 50 years. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Martin#Discography" target="_blank">Wikipedia’s George Martin discography</a> is only a partial list of Martin’s accomplishments before and after the Beatles. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blow_by_Blow" target="_blank">“Blow by Blow”</a> alone changed as much in pop music and recording history as had most of the Beatles’ output. (There, I said it and I hope that is out of my system forever.)</p> <p>But Pat’s comment started me thinking about my own considerably less creative or interesting original musical path origins. One band is probably most responsible for me giving up on my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EQZ5fZF5SE" target="_blank">Dizzy Gillespie clone trumpet-player pipedreams</a> and that would be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ventures" target="_blank">The Ventures</a>. I’m older than Pat, so there is that, too. I was 12 when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owq7hgzna3E" target="_blank">Walk Don’t Run</a> became a hit in 1960 and had been flailing at the trumpet for 3 years by then. With paper route money, I bought a terrible Sears acoustic guitar and two years later gave up on the trumpet forever. When I was 13, I was in a kid band playing (badly) surf music and Venture’s hits and the summer I turned 14 someone in that band had a connection to the nun (not a typo) who was responsible for bringing the Ventures to the Dodge City, Kansas City Auditorium. Their concert was being promoted and organized by the now-defunct <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_of_the_Plains_College" target="_blank">St. Marys of the Plains Catholic College</a> and two of my bandmates were very Catholic Italians and at least one of them had a good enough connection to the college to get me a “job” as a stage hand for the Ventures’ show. </p> <p>Back in those days, setting up a stage for a rock and roll show was a whole world different than the past 40 years of pop music. The Ventures had three guitar amps and one bass amp, all Fenders, and their instruments, also all Fenders. The auditorium provided the “sound system” for any vocals or dialog, a three or four-channel Bogen tube mixer with about 20W of power and a pair of awful Bogen columns. Worse, it was all being manned by an old man who, I think, was a plumber by day and, later, ran a Suzuki motorcycle shop. As I remember, the “sound check” amounted to him plugging in a mic on a stand and tapping on it. He quickly went sleep next to the mixer before the show even started. Talk about a harbinger of what live sound would become in the future! </p> <p>I carried amps and guitar cases from the loading dock to the stage and did whatever the band wanted me to do and was finished with my part of the job in an easy hour or so. They noodled around a bit with the guitars and amps, but didn’t really do anything resembling a sound check or rehearsal before they headed off to the backstage area to wait for the crowd to show up. With no adults in the room to care about what I did until after the show and load-out, I climbed the ladder to the grid over the stage and found a great seat right over the middle of the band about 20’ up and well out of sight of the audience. In the dark, I dangled my legs over the edge of the waffled grid and hung out in nervous excitement for the band to appear and the curtains to open. </p> <p>Someone from the college walked in front of the curtains and said something like “Ladies and gentlemen, the world famous Ventures!” and the current opened up, the band walked to their instruments, strapped them on, and with a short count-in started with the as-yet-to-be-recorded or released Ventures’ version of Richard Rogers’ opera “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.” When they struck the opening chord, I almost bounced off of the grid and rained down on their unsuspecting heads. Only luck and a good last minute grip kept me from “bringing the house down” before the first verse. As good as this remastered version of their record sounds, in my memory the live performance was 1,000 times better and more powerful. </p> <iframe title="YouTube video player" height="315" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ByJ0jU27rMA" frameborder="0" width="450" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe> <p>Except for the songs they played that night that I’d yet to hear, my band covered almost everything in their catalog from “Walk, Don’t Run” to “Sleepwalk” and all of the surf tunes. Nothing I’d heard in those recordings prepared me for the real, live Beatles . . . I mean Ventures. My life was changed forever and for the next 15 years I was focused on becoming as much like those four guys as possible, except for the greasy hair. Not that I didn’t admire their hair, I was just too lazy to comb mine let alone coat it in Brylcreem. </p> <p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Classic lineup of the Ventures in 1967" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/The_Ventures.png" width="206" align="left" height="139" />After the concert was over and I’d helped load everything back into their vehicle, I remember walking across the parking lot with Nookie Edwards, Bob Bogle, and Don Wilson and asking them to autograph something I’d managed to find that was autographical. The response from Nookie Edwards was, “Surely.” And he reached for whatever I had to sign. </p> <p>Bob Bogle said, “Don’t call the kid Shirley.” And they all broke up. That was the first of a few thousand times I head that joke, but every other time I’ve heard the lines it brings up a fabulous memory of getting to hang out with my childhood idols. For me, the Ventures started it all, first with their records, second with a live performance. Live sound, recorded music, technology and a life-long fascination with audio electronics, and whatever music I have managed to reproduce or create in my limited-talent life as a bass and guitar player. No band, ever, more deserved to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. </p> </blockquote> <iframe title="YouTube video player" height="315" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qE_med6ABQg?start=174" frameborder="0" width="450" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"></iframe>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-22499308210867071042022-04-29T23:11:00.004-05:002022-04-29T23:11:31.722-05:00A Dog's Life<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><em>I began writing this piece on 4/19/2022. I plan to work on it until our close friend, Gypsy dies. It isn’t a journal of those sad days. It is intended to be an obituary of the most amazing non-human life I have ever experienced. Gypsy died on 4/29/2022 at about 12:30PM. In death, as in life, she did her best to be as thoughtful as possible.Posting it to my Wirebender site has a special to a few of my audio friends. One of the more brainless years of "administration" at McNally Smith College of Music the mismanagers decided to forego the spring semester graduation party and ceremony because there "weren't enough students" to make the expense worthwhile (for who?). The Production Department had the usual number of spring graduates so we decided to host our own graduation party at my home in Little Canada. Gypsy was our official greeter and entertainment for that party. <br /></em></span></p><em></em> <p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkqAwN9sxYPJVJEs4RM-8WRIDjmtrVpRVBthaws08PV0mZ75gAsCUoEUrrITZSnQeUs2Vt0U-Oe4XfZsGnkWrzjorSIFNsTZh9nD1O-mNBHiFHhHJCPnOUuBBzHPy-BvPNPyiB1tfk4PPWQtj4QYA3oXmGyxy6vDAIocSRHBxMGmuQz6a2VrAvJF4YYg/s1480/2013%20Xmas%20(2).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1405" data-original-width="1480" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkqAwN9sxYPJVJEs4RM-8WRIDjmtrVpRVBthaws08PV0mZ75gAsCUoEUrrITZSnQeUs2Vt0U-Oe4XfZsGnkWrzjorSIFNsTZh9nD1O-mNBHiFHhHJCPnOUuBBzHPy-BvPNPyiB1tfk4PPWQtj4QYA3oXmGyxy6vDAIocSRHBxMGmuQz6a2VrAvJF4YYg/s320/2013%20Xmas%20(2).JPG" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">This week, as I begin to write this essay, which is very likely to become an obituary, Mrs. Day and I are watching the last days of our 15-year-old best friend, Gypsy, play out. She joined our family, often as the smartest member, a little more than 14 years ago, near Mrs. Day’s birthday in September, 2007. She was a shelter dog and she and a sister had been caged convicts in a puppy mill that the Minneapolis SPCA had raided a few weeks earlier. Gypsy looked like a cross between an Australian Shepherd and a Blue Heeler, so that’s what we described her as her whole life. Her sister appeared to be a classic, black and white spotted Australian Shepherd. Both dogs were being treated well by the adoption agency where Mrs. Day found her and they appeared to be calm, friendly, and intelligent. It could have been a quarter-flip as to which dog we picked, but Mrs. Day really liked the Heeler color and markings. So, we went home with Gypsy (the name Mrs. Day gave her, not the name the shelter had given her). Our previous dog, Puck, who had lived with our daughter’s family for a few years, had died a few days earlier and Mrs. Day was convinced our granddaughter needed a dog to live with. I still hadn’t finished mourning the dog before Puck, a chow mix who had died 5 years earlier. I doubt that I would have ever brought another animal into my life if Mrs. Day weren’t so resolute that we “needed” one. </span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><p>The ride home was a warning of what the next 15 years would be like. Gypsy whined, shivered, and paced frantically in the back seat of the car all the way home. As soon as the car stopped and she jumped out, she was “normal” again. For at least 15,000 miles of our lives, Gypsy put on that same show every time she was in a moving vehicle of any sort. She was terrible to travel with by vehicle. If we’d have wanted to walk from Minnesota to California, Gypsy would have been all for it. </p><p>The first day Gypsy was introduced to our household, she knew she belonged there and did not ever want to leave. We had a cat at the time, Spike. Spike was a neutered male who pretty much thought he owned the house. When we first got him, Puck was already part of our household. Puck accepted that kitten as if they’d known each other their whole lives. Likewise, when Gypsy arrived terrified, shy, and confused. Spike took a good look at her and walked away, back to his usual routine. Until <a href="http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/2013/11/one-man-cat-down.html">the day Spike took off on us</a>, after about a week living in our camper, they were the closest of animal friends. I am not lying here, but I wouldn’t believe it if you told this story to me: Spike would catch and kill rabbits, squirrels, and other wildlife in our Little Canada backyard and deliver them to Gypsy to devour for the cat’s entertainment. I really wish I’d have taken a picture of that behavior. Spike would just drop the dead animal at Gypsy’s feet and she’d make the prey vanish as if it had never existed. Barely a puff of fur left over, at most. When our most recent cat, Doctor Zogar, came into our family, Gypsy gave that nasty little brat the same kind of generous welcome Spike had given her. Gypsy played with both cats as energetically as if they were all kittens from the same mother, but she was always careful not to hurt them. I can’t say that care was repaid with any sort of kindness by Zogar. (Who I always called “Stinker.”) Zogar regularly spiked Gypsy’s nose and tried for eyes occasionally. I never hit Gypsy in anger, ever, but I batted that damn cat across the room fairly often when he hurt my dog. </p><p>Mrs. Day took her for a walk in our Little Canada neighborhood that first afternoon and Gypsy slipped her collar and ran off several blocks from home. Mrs. Day was convinced her $300 “investment” had run off and vanished on the first day, but Gypsy was waiting on the front porch when Mrs. Day came home. For several weeks, Gypsy didn’t want to leave the house and had to be forced out the door into the backyard to relieve herself. If we weren’t quick enough, she had decided the area in front of my office closet was a satisfactory “bathroom.” In a few days, the carpet and floor under the carpet were ruined. </p><p>We had a fenced yard, but she was unhappy inside that fence. So, I bought a “wireless fence containment system”: essentially a transmitter with a shock collar. I sent the collar to the lowest shock setting and walked her around the wireless fence perimeter, which I’d marked with flags. She freaked out at the first shock and we only stayed near the border long enough for the collar to beep after that. We did the same routine the next day, without the shock and she had it figured out. From then on, she was the smartest animal any of us had ever known. She marked out exactly the boundaries of her electronic “fence” and patrolled that area like a military guard. She did discover, much later, if she ran through the border and kept running down to the lake shore she’d either escape the shock or it would be brief enough not to be a problem. She rarely did that, though. </p><p>In December of 2011, I had a full hip replacement. I was determined to be mobile again in time for the 2012 motorcycle safety training season, which would start in mid-May for me. I had even loftier, less realistic goals for before that deadline and I was slowly failing to meet any of those targets thanks to pain and Minnesota winter. By then, Gypsy was a spectacular frisbee dog along with several dozen other amazing tricks and behaviors; including being able to jump into my outstretched arms on command, leap head-high (to me) to snag any object out of my hands in a running, flying leap, and jump on to any reasonable object around 5’ high from a standing start. One of my favorites was called “go ‘round.” On that command, Gypsy would run the perimeter of our yard full blast, which was as fast as I have ever seen any animal run. I’d seen something like that in the sheep dog demonstrations at the fair and Renaissance Fairs. My grandson helped teach her the trick by running ahead of her until she figured out the routine. Then, no one alive could have kept up with her let alone lead her. She was the dog I’d dreamed about when I didn’t even know I liked dogs. (I delivered newspapers as a kid and read water meters for the City of Dallas for 3 years. At the end of those experiences, dogs were never high on my list of interests.)</p><p>So, as I was struggling with maintaining my rehab discipline I kept up our afternoon walks and tried tossing her the frisbee. The problem with the frisbee was that I had initially trained Gypsy to drop the frisbees at my feet. We would sometimes do a kind of relay toss where I’d flip her a frisbee 15’-20’ out and she’d return it on the run, drop it at my feet, and keep running in the same direction where I’d toss her another frisbee. (<em>I wish someone had video recorded us doing those things, but I’m the only person in my family who knows how to use a damn camera.) </em>After the hip surgery, bending over to pickup a frisbee from the ground was close to impossible. Gypsy figured that out on her own and started handing me the frisbees about waist-high. That became a huge, incredibly distracting and enjoyable part of my daily physical therapy and, thanks to my dog, I was back walking 11 miles a day and teaching a full schedule of motorcycle classes in early May of 2012. My dog was my best, most dedicated, most sympathetic physical therapist and I can only hope I never need that kind of help again because she won’t be there to take care of me. </p><p>If you are one of those unperceptive, species-centric goobers who believes that animals do not have a sense of humor, Gypsy would have laughed in your face and you would have to be a complete fool not to know it. She had a wonderful laugh and a smile that was, literally, ear-to-ear. Her joy in running, jumping, wrestling, and performing her many tricks/behaviors was undeniable. On my worst, darkest depressed moments, Gypsy could make me smile and laugh. As happy as she often made me, I don’t think I ever realized how sad I would be at the end of our life together. As I write this, I feel like my head is overfilling with tears and sorrow. It physically hurts as badly as the worst headache I have ever experienced. I can’t imagine being willing to go through this ever again. </p><p>Gypsy had so many tricks (“behaviors” for the politically correct crowd) and she’d taught herself most of them. Speaking of the sense of humor, one of the first things she did was when someone would say “cute face,” she’d cover her face with both paws and act shy. That unmistakable guffaw would often follow that if someone would pet her and talk baby talk at her. She had the most gregarious hand-shake of any animal on the planet. She would raise her right paw even with the top of her head and swing it into your hand to shake. It looked like she was someone almost impossibly happy to meet you. The usual “roll over,” “sit,” “lay down,” “stay,” “speak,” and dozens of other words and actions were almost naturally in her vocabulary. We had to spell words like “walk,” “hike,” “go out,” “outside,” and anything else that might imply going for a walk or she would be whining at the door, looking up at her leash, waiting to go for a walk. Like most dogs of her breed, “heel” was a tough command to obey. She could do it, but she’d much rather take off to the end of her leash and nose about. Early on, she was a plow horse but she learned that obeying “don’t pull” got her a lot more freedom. She also understood “right” and “left” even off of the leash. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PiyPgm-dl3xepzWHcGygd-IQeyTGebhoTIirCTsZ3q0ZNarbi8Ah45eciRJJURxWy9p6k-M8Ojo4C__bqRfc0zGirOS9kwFccMLHU6YeUC8HSo09RDKr_s7BoaxQHEv-jTEHgwR04hBRiIfTlJ6UmxLFzwIJiv_GXS0feNi0mtqDtrbaYozMNRK4eA/s2272/2014-02-18%20CoR%20(34).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1704" data-original-width="2272" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PiyPgm-dl3xepzWHcGygd-IQeyTGebhoTIirCTsZ3q0ZNarbi8Ah45eciRJJURxWy9p6k-M8Ojo4C__bqRfc0zGirOS9kwFccMLHU6YeUC8HSo09RDKr_s7BoaxQHEv-jTEHgwR04hBRiIfTlJ6UmxLFzwIJiv_GXS0feNi0mtqDtrbaYozMNRK4eA/s320/2014-02-18%20CoR%20(34).JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p>While Gypsy might have been the worst traveling companion possible, whining in spectacularly irritating and painful ways non-stop for whatever the length of the car ride, she was the best camp dog imaginable. She was fearlessly protective of Mrs. Day (as seen at left worrying about Mrs. Day on the back of a horse) and kept us aware of everything and everyone who came near our campsites 24-hours/day. She slept at the foot of our camper bed, every night, and always seemed to have one eye open for threats. Once, when she was tried to the bumper of our camper, a coyote had the gall to try and cross the outside edge of our campsite and Gypsy nearly pulled the camper uphill to get at the coyote. The coyote ran away with the knowledge that he’d have been in a fight to the death if Gypsy had gotten loose. People, however, were automatically given a pass unless Mrs. Day seemed nervous. And she was always ready to go for a walk, on a leash or not, and delighted to do it. </p><p>She liked everyone and loved many. For most of her life, she was free to roam our backyard and when delivery people came into the yard to drop off packages, she was always quiet and friendly. Many of them came to like leaving packages at our home because they got to visit with Gypsy. Deer, rabbits, and squirrels, not so much. One of my favorite indoor activities was, when I would spot a squirrel attempting to mangle one of my bird feeders, I’d let Gypsy out into the yard and say “squirrel!” She’d dash into the yard, looking for squirrels, and chasing any who were dumb enough to ignore her into the trees, over the fence, or up the hill into the woods. She loved terrorizing squirrels and rabbits and would not tolerate deer or other large wildlife in her yard. Mrs. Day’s hostas will likely be substantially less lush without their guardian. </p><p>Her will to live is inspiring. As of today, April 25th, she can’t eat or drink anything without throwing it back up. Her energy is a microscopic fraction of what it was a week ago and she was a shadow of herself then. Every morning, she drags herself out of bed and walks to the back door to be let out. (Yes, she has always been smart enough to know where her home is and did not need a fenced yard or tether until the last couple of weeks.) She is mostly operating on habit, since she isn’t ingesting anything she rarely expels anything. It is very much like she doesn’t want to inconvenience us with the process of her dying. If you are one of those who believe dogs are incapable of love, I can’t imagine what I could say to you. Even when she is on her last legs, she would rather sleep on the floor near Mrs. Day than in a comfortable bed in the living room. She has a bed in the bedroom, too, but in these final days she wasn’t to be closer. </p><p>Gypsy died today, 4/29/2022, at about 12:30PM. She had a rough night, mostly waking up and thinking she was alone. She didn’t seem to be in pain. For the 2nd time in the life we’ve known her, she soiled herself last night and when I carried her outside to lie on the deck bench she was still responsive but had no strength at all. She couldn’t even hold her head up and I had to carry her like a baby, supporting her head when I laid her down. We went for our last walk 10 days ago, it that one didn’t last long due to her strength. The day before, we walked almost a mile and she was slow but still moving well at the end of that walk. </p><p>Her will to live throughout all of this miserable week was inspiring and humbling. She did not want to give up and we did not feel that we had the right to make that decision for her. She was struggling out of her bed and staggering to the back door to be let out up to Tuesday evening. Wednesday, I carried her out after she was able to get up but couldn’t walk without falling down. We stood in the backyard for a while, listening to birds and night sounds, but she needed to lean on his leg to stay upright. Thursday, she soiled herself and wet the bed overnight. She was conscious most of yesterday and responded to being touched and our voices, but we think she was in a coma most of the day. </p><p>Last night, we left her in a bed we’d made for her in the living room but about midnight just as I was going to bed she started whining for the first time in a week (Gypsy whined a lot, that was her “voice” for communication, so the silence over this past week has been weird.) and we laid down beside her. That was what she wanted. I carried her into the bedroom where she had a “bed” and she was fine most of the night, but she woke up twice afraid and I comforted her until she was quiet. I honestly think Mrs. Day’s snoring helped keep her calm for most of the night. Me, not so much. </p><p>She seemed to be comfortable on the outside bench and she was there for about 4 hours before I discovered she had kicked off one of the blankets and died. She had been alone for about 5 minutes. I guess she was being considerate to the end. </p><p>Life is short, precious, and painful. And if you are as special as our dog, when you go your loved ones will miss you desperately. </p></span></span><p><br /></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-88017997929975885942022-04-22T18:49:00.001-05:002022-04-22T18:49:28.666-05:00How to Host an Open Mic/Jam Session<font size="3"> <p>Sadly and like most everything else I’ve ever learned and experienced, the “rules” I’m going to list here could be flipped into a “how not to” list. Most everything I’ve learned in my life came the hard way, from doing or experiencing it wrong first. </p> <p>And “open mic” is often a misnomer. Often, it’s just an excuse for a band or wannabe performer to attract a captured audience while holding out the false hope that other musicians might get to play for a bit. Likewise, “jam session” is sometimes a similar con; you invite people to bring their instruments to accompany <em><strong>you</strong></em>. Both of those experiences are rarely repeated by most of us. Con me once, shame on you. Con me twice, shame on me. So the first rule is “tell it like it is.” If you are trying to attract an audience, don’t bullshit musicians into thinking your invitation is about anyone but you playing music and them listening. Once we’re past that, here are some other pointers from someone who has suffered and enjoyed 50 years of open mics and jam sessions. </p> <p>1) Don’t mess with the sign-up order. I don’t care if one of your personal heroes shows up and insists that he/she doesn’t have time to wait his/her turn. People do not react well to favoritism, no matter who the favorite is. I’ve sat for an hour at a really awful open mic, watching the names tick off and my name get closer to the top, and when the floor manager suddenly decides to hop a couple locals over me, I just leave and never come back. For all I know, it was the only time it ever happened, but it happened to me and I am not that desperate for mic-time. </p> <p>2) Use the provided gear. If you can only get “your sound” on your amp, acknowledge the fact that you suck and can only pretend to be a musician if you are so loud no one can tell how bad you are. There is a ton of value in having to make do in these situations. Almost 50 years ago, I thought I was a hot shot, gun-slinging lead guitarist because that had been my role in the last 3-4 bands I’d been in. I wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t great by any standard. Some friends introduced me to the Saddle Creek Bar in Omaha and the almost-famous jam session that club hosted every Monday night. The next week, I brought my guitar, amp and pedals and was told that I had to plug into the amps on stage and that my pedals were unwelcome. I suspect I whined a bit, but I plugged into a nice blackface Fender Vibrolux and proceeded to demonstrate how sloppy my technique was. My rig at the time was a Peavey Artist amp and a half-dozen distortion, gain, dynamics, and modulation pedals and I needed all of that to disguise that I rarely picked a note. My playing consisted of hammer-ons and pull-offs with an occasional picked harmonic and I counted on my very distorted over-driven rig to disguise my lazy technique. I quickly found a 50’s Fender Harvard amp, tweeked it a bit and replaced the boring CTS stock 10” with a K120 JBL and started working on my technique without electronic assistance. [<em>I played that rig live and in the studio for the next 20 years before I sold it to an LA studio player on my way out of California.</em>] After a few weeks of practice, I went back to Saddle Creek and held my own. I kept going back until I kinda was a hot shot, gun-slinging lead guitarist. </p> <p>3) If you are the host or the host band, constantly remind yourself that the job is is more about being an MC than being a performer. Sure, get the ball rolling with 2 or 3 tunes and invite people to sign up while you’re playing. If the night starts to slow down, you can always get back up to close out the evening. But don’t be a stage hog, you’re just turning the night into a gig for you or your band and letting everyone else know that you imagine yourself to be a star. </p> <p>4) For open mics, use a freakin’ signup sheet and put it somewhere everyone can see it. Ideally, use a chalkboard or whiteboard so the names can been seen by everyone from a distance. A white board is especially useful if you start attracting a lot of players; you can switch colors as you get near the end of the list and have to start over from the top. Holding on to the list so that you can pretend to be Ed Sullivan (ask your grandparents) and pick the talent is bullshit and the kind of control freak thing you need to not do if you want a big turnout. </p> <p>5) For open mics, it is critically important that you put a time limit on stage time; say 3 songs or 10 minutes <em><strong>MAX </strong></em>per performer. You can always start your list over and give everyone another 3 or 10, but if you don’t set time limits Murphy’s Law of Musicians says “The worst performer will always hog the stage the longest.” Don’t torture your audience or drive out actual musicians by letting some total goober fumble around for 20 minutes jabbering about “how I wrote this song.” Put a damn time with a big display on the stage so nobody can pretend not to know when their time is up. If you have to, get a stage hook and drag them outta there. </p> <p>For jam sessions, I’ve found that one or two songs per performer is the most fair way to decide what the group will be playing. Usually, jam session players naturally arrange themselves in a circle, which is perfect for determining who is next in line. Just pick a direction for the player rotation and everyone gets to either choose and perform a song with the rest playing along or “pass.” Don’t try to bully or con someone into playing and singing when they don’t want to do it. They might change their mind on the next time around. Some people just want to play along and not have to lead anything, so let them. A really asshole move is to pick a song and try to con someone else into singing it. If they wanted to sing your song, they’d have picked it for themselves. Put your big kids’ pants on and either play or get out of the way. </p> <p>6) Watch your volume. Regardless of whether it is an acoustic or electric situation, music is a group activity (unless you’re a solo act) and trying to be the loudest guy in the room is another asshole move. Blend in with the rest of the players. If you are doing something unusually good, they’ll quiet down to hear you better. If you suck, you’re better off being ignored. That goes for your audience, too. If you’re any good, they listen and if you aren’t volume won’t change their minds. </p> <p>7) Most important, have fun, be nice, and let music do what it does best: create a community between players and the audience. </p> </font>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-91973029601982291642022-04-18T15:00:00.001-05:002022-04-18T15:00:49.644-05:00“Just Good Enough”<p><font size="3">A friend who is desperate to get back to making live music has, almost unwillingly, become interested in dealing with the sound of the live shows he’s trying to promote. He is a drummer and not in any way technically inclined. [<em>I know. That does sound like the perfect candidate for a front of house technician</em>.] <font size="3">A few nights ago, we had an hour telephone conversation about his last gig, which I attended for a few moments, and his questions about what went wrong with the sound. </font></font></p> <p><font size="3"><font size="3">The short answer was “everything.” </font></font></p> <p><font size="3"><font size="3">First, there was no sound check because, as usual, the musicians spent so much time fiddling with the usual unimportant crap. There was no time to do anything more than jabber “test, test, one, two, three” into each of the four microphones to ensure they made noise before the small audience got bored (which they did anyway) and started yelling at each other (aka “bar talk”). Two, one of the three players, the keyboard player, has a very high opinion of himself and is absolutely certain the audience would rather hear him pound on his keyboard than hear the vocalist or any other sound in the room. Three, there were as many as five guys who felt the need to mindlessly tweak the EQ on the mic channels, boosting the bass and low-mids 6-12dB to add “power” to their weak performances and mediocre tone. [<em>Yeah, I’m being a bitch. Bring it on.</em>] The end result was a booming mess filling the room with volume and no music and an audience that paid as much attention to the musicians and music as they did the ceiling fans. </font></font></p> <p><font size="3">In the process of describing what should have happened, my friend and I ended up recounting the few decent musical performances we’ve experienced in our cumulative 80 years as musicians and audience members and (in my case) production experiences. As a member of the audience, I can count them on the fingers of my two hands and, it’s possible, I might have some change left over. As a musician, I am probably being egotistical in saying I might have participated in twice that many decent sounding shows (out of several hundred shows that went off of the rails). As a technician, I’m back to the 10-fingers-with-change. The problem with live music is that almost everyone settles for “good enough” because doing it right takes “too much effort.” It does take a lot of effort and, based on popular music history and trends, it might not be worth it. If only a miniscule portion of the audience cares, why bother? </font></p> <p><font size="3">Of course, that argument pretty much drives everything to be mediocre. If that is your goal, you have set a highly achievable target for yourself. </font></p> <p><font size="3">50 years ago and beyond, the only people who had an amplification system for anything other than electric guitar or bass were professionals working major venues. You did not often see or hear PA systems in night clubs, bars, restaurants, or small concert venues. You didn’t need to, either. There were two reasons for that: 1) musicians were less arrogant, they didn’t need the ego reinforcement that demanding attention by being the loudest noise in the room and 2) audiences hadn’t been exposed this this kind of abuse so they were less hearing-impaired. And, more importantly, everyone from the musicians to the audience to the bar tenders and service staff were more polite. </font></p> <p><font size="3">More than 40 years ago, my studio partner and I were asked to record a local Lincoln, Nebraska “world/jazz/folk” band, The Spencer Ward Quintet, at a local nightclub. It was going to be the band’s last performance before the band members not only left the group but they left the area in five very different directions. That put some unusual pressure on getting it right the first time. The club had an oversized pa system and my partner had designed a very high fidelity sound system that he had been developing over the past several years, but I wanted as little interference from the sound system as possible which meant minimal sound pressure and maximum directionality from that system. I decided to go with my JBL 4311 studio monitors as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_of_house" target="_blank">FOH</a> system and nothing but the room acoustics and stage volume from the mostly acoustic instruments for ‘”monitoring.” The band was mostly willing to try my approach and other than the bass player the instruments on stage were all acoustic: guitar, vibes, percussion, violin, and electric bass. Naturally, keeping the bass volume under control proved to be the most difficult problem through out the evening. </font></p> <p><font size="3">The audience and club more than cooperated, too. Throughout the concert, the audience (which was mostly area musicians) were almost dead quiet. During the first break, as the band members were shedding their instruments and leaving the stage, I was almost injured by a jet engine sound in my phones. I pulled the phones off and looked around, assuming something somewhere in my signal path had self-destructed, but the noise was in the room and lots of people were laughing. Turned out, the bar tenders had decided not to make any blended mixed drinks while the band was on stage and had collected every blender they could get their hands on, prepared the drinks in the blenders, and the moment the music and applause stopped hit the power switches on at least a dozen blenders. They kept refilling and emptying the blenders until the band walked back on to the stage. Then, the club went silent for the next set. Considering the limits of our technology and the fact that the only remaining copy I had of the recording was a cassette (dubbed to CD more than a decade later), I am not ashamed of this recording. </font></p> <p><font size="3">After the concert was concluded, Dan and I must have had a dozen local musicians ask how we got “that amazing sound” from the house sound system? The house system had been stacked along a wall on the stage behind the band. I used it as a rough bass trap, but it was never powered up during the concert. Everyone who asked about the system walked right past the 4311s sitting on box newel posts at each front corner of the stage. Looking back, I was lucky no one knocked them off of the posts since they were clearly invisible. </font></p> <p><font size="3">What that proved to me was that volume is more of a problem than helpful and audiences will respond to what you expect from them. I have preached that lesson dozens of times over the last 40 years and, occasionally, someone listens and the result is always better than their previous practice. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6044807434418608139.post-20344409546594221242022-04-18T09:57:00.001-05:002022-04-18T09:57:17.519-05:00Missing the Analog Point<p><font size="3">For the last couple of days, I’ve been enjoying <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Short-Nights-Shadow-Catcher-Photographs/dp/0544102762">Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis</a></em>, by Timothy Egan. It is a story about the most famous photographer of the American Indian in our history. But it is also a story about a man and his art, photography, at the beginning of that technology. When I was a kid, for a little while I was a photography geek in school. I had a few cameras, stuff that I’d found in pawn shops, from 120/620 Kodak film and a huge and beat-up Kodak Vollenda expandable camera to assorted low cost 35mm cameras. I wasn’t particularly good with the cameras (no change from today), but I was fascinated with the developing process and was fairly competent at that for a while. Music drug me away from photography pretty quickly and until digital cameras made taking pictures easy and cheap I pretty much gave up the habit. </font></p> <p><img style="float: left; display: inline;" alt="Edward Curtis and "The North American Indian": An Exploration of Truth and Objectivity - Photography Ethics Centre" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5952326f9f7456d52fa3475c/1614178665547-SOLGK4R6W3MPNPDWAI7H/Picture+1.png" width="257" align="left" height="191" /><font size="3"><em>Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher</em> has a lot of detailed descriptions of the chemistry and experimental quality of the developing process that reminded me of the analog recording processes and equipment that I grew up working with and wrestled with for more than 40 years. The book made me wonder if modern analog camera fans are as clueless about the technology they use as are modern analog recording freaks? Edward Curtis was a wizard in the darkroom, creating his own developing emulsions, processes, and creating effects with chemicals, development time and temperatures, and other techniques. <a href="https://www.edwardscurtis.com/">His gallery in McCloud, California</a> is a national treasure as was his art. Most modern analog photographers bypass the darkroom, for good reason. The chemicals are often toxic, at best, and the processes are tedious, hazardous, and unpredictable. Sending your roll of film into a company that owns and maintains the automated processing equipment is the surest, easiest, safest way to get pictures developed. It also eliminates at least half of the art of being a photographer. </font></p> <p><font size="3">The analog recording process, at its best, is a similar mess of technologies, lots of subjective judgement, experience, tedious technologies that require constant (expensive) maintenance, and ridiculous quantities of patience. Like analog photography, the results of all of those qualities can be emulated relatively simply and predictably with digital technologies with little-to-no downside. I am not saying that those emulations are perfect and I am absolutely not arguing that an analog master can not do things in that format that might be impossible to duplicate in the digital world. I am saying that if you aren’t a master of the technology, you’re probably bullshitting yourself if you think plowing money into obsolete equipment and media is going to magically buy you something you couldn’t do better with digital equipment. </font></p>T.W. Dayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04078254371483458356noreply@blogger.com0