blue2blue

Absurdism and surrealism, of course, are not just writing whatever comes to the top of one's pointy little head.

I was a big Barthelme fan, too. I think it's worth noting that I never once felt like he was just spewing out nonsense and figuring that was good enough. (Now, In His Own Write... That one does stretch one's patience, no matter how much we may have loved Lennon -- or Lear.)

It's like Joyce... it might strike some folks as nonsense but it's pretty clear that a huge amount of work went into the intricate interconnections that interlace and unify what might at first just seem absurdist ramblings.

What bugs me are folks who read a few paragraphs of Joyce and say, I could do that!

No. No you couldn't.

The only thing that moved me about the song was the riff... and I thought it was kind of cheezy.

And I had a big appetite for psychedelia. (Big Pete Brown fan. But when you read Pete Brown's decidedly out there lyrics for Cream, you certainly get the sense that they're about something, no matter how aggressively arty the construction may be.)

I loved the Beatles work in the Rubber Soul period but, with few exceptions, I didn't have much use for their later work. From Sgt Pepper's on it seems more and more marred by sloppiness and laziness.

But the listener has to feel like there's actually a message or story of some kind there, I think, or he/she probably won't put in any effort at all.

Who wants to waste time with a puzzle if he really thinks there's actually no answer to the puzzle or that it makes no sense? That just feels insulting.

Granted, I think there is a small subsection of listeners who simply don't care about lyrics and don't pay any attention to them. But they're a minority, even if not necessarily a negligible one, and the fact that they don't seem to care about lyrics one way or the other seems to suggest that folks who do write songs where the lyrics matter can simply ignore those for whom they don't.

I prefer lyrics in a foreign language to those in my own that don't make sense.

I have to say, if I think a writer is just stringing together nonsense -- and I have that feeling more than a little -- I feel cheated, like the guy/gal just doesn't care enough to put in the effort.

That said, I don't think the meaning has to come out and hit you over the head.

There are a lot of cryptic lyrics out there that can be fun, interesting, and thought-provoking to take apart and try to make sense of.

But if you do that and you start getting the feeling that you're just being pulled along by the lyrical equivalent of a conversa-bot, who needs that?

People get a guitar from an unfamiliar maker and Google for info on it. The first article up (just now) in Google is a Wikipedia article, then two mentions from vintaxe.com and then there's Harmony Central at return 4...

I bought a Carlos 12 string dread from a pal for $75. It's not a bad sounding guitar but the nut really, really needs to be replaced, since the string spacing is wack, per my thinking. The individual strings of the pairs are way too far apart and the sets of pairs too close together. As a consequence, fretting accruately is difficult. Makes a decent 12 string slide, though. Finger picking accurately is a bit of a pain because of the string spacing (better than the fretting though, as the bridge spacing is ok.) Tone is really pretty OK.

I think it was a rainy day in 7th grade English, when the teacher said, Well, we're all going to try out hand at writing short stories today. Being a big fan of spy stories and sci-fi, I wrote a terse and schematic story about a NATO like alliance attacking an international terrorist conspiracy. If that sounds like the plot of a James Bond/Man from UNCLE type scenario, well, art imitates art. If it sounds like current events... I hear ya. When I first read about Osama bin Laden almost two decades ago, I thought he and al Qaeda sounded just like a James Bond plot...

Anyhow, the rest of the stories must have been really, really bad... because me and one or two others were singled out for praise.

I went out and bought a copy of the then current issue of Writer's Digest, realized there were some markets where a guy could pull some serious bank, and plunged into my new career. I was so serious about it that my folks bought me a typewriter for my 14th birthday. Later I discovered blank verse and drifted into poetry as well. In college, I was part of the poetry scene, did a number of readings, edited a poetry anthology (that got its funding pulled at the last moment due to budget cutbacks) but soon enough realized that the guys playing guitars under the trees in the quad were getting all the cute girls -- including some of the poet girls. It was clear I would have to extend my horizons...

PS... Actually, come to think of it, my real start was a year or two earlier when I scripted and performed a couple of radio-style parody skits into my ultra-primitive battery powered tape recorder. (No capstan. That's how primitive.) I did my own

'mic 'n' mouth' sound FX, too, a la (the coincidentally named) Tom Keith on Prairie Home Companion.

OK, Ken... I usually cut you a lot of slack but I have to say...

... on this front you cheat...

... I mean, you go to all these amazing looking places...

:D

Congrats!

I've owned a couple of inexpensive Angelica 3/4 size classicals. (Assuming it's the same company.) One was $40 (on sale at Sam Ash) and the next (the first got irreparably broken -- but not until after some serious abuse and two neck reglues) cost $50. The first was a better guitar (and kinda sorry I trashed it so badly) but I've put a lot of miles on the second, as well. They're plywood, Chinese made, and probably a pretty reasonable deal for the money. I looked at some Angelicas from another model line, though, and some of them seemed poorly made. I suspect they're bought from different factories. (Although my two 3/4's were almost certainly from the same factory but probably different workers/QC.) I'd buy another for the same money with the same, bang-it-around/go-anywhere/throw-it-bare-in-the-trunk use philosophy.

I own a Carlos 12 string I bought from a pal for $75 back in the mid-90s (don't know what he paid). It's held up pretty well and has a decent, slightly boomy/ringy sound.

My one serious issue with the guitar is the string spacing imposed by the (plastic) nut. The individual strings in the pairs are too far apart [for my tastes], and the spaces between the six pairs are not wide enough -- in other words, the strings aren not 'bunched up' into pairs enough... It's too possible to be fretting and only hit one of the strings in a pair or to misfinger onto the wrong pair.

As a consuence, I mostly use it for slide playing.

Science is a process by which evidence is collected and analyzed systematically in order to develop the most accurate base of knowledge possible at any one time.

Science, of course, is no more infallible than any other human endeavor, but the rigors of the Scientific Method help assure that it is the best explanation for phenomenon that can be supported by evidence at any given point in time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Of course, you are free to ignore the findings of scientists, as many people seem to feel compelled to do by superstition, misunderstanding, or simple ignorance -- but to suggest that you or any other individual knows more or better than those who have applied a systematic and rigorous intellectual methodology to the acquisition and testing of knowledge seems to me an over-reaching so extreme as to immediately deny any credibility whatsoever to the person claiming it.

Talk about ridiculous...

I'm a common sense kind of guy.

Climatologists and other scientists -- who are the experts, here, after all -- have cited large amounts of evidence to support their conclusions. The rest of us, by and large, are not experts and do not have our fingers on the evidence or the expertise to interpret it.

But... if there is a problem with global warming and the evidence seems clear, now, according to climatologists -- whatever its causes -- it only stands to reason that human activities that contribute to that warming may not be the wisest course of action.

Where are you weak?

Conversational restraint.

One of the best engineer/studio owners I worked with asked for payment at the end of every session (at least with us ).

I'd say he was more firm than ruthless with regard to the clock.

If the band kept him waiting (arriving late, being unprepared), they had to pay. That said, he often cut a "discount" at the end of the session for any of a number of reasons... sometimes it was just because we'd all spent ten or fifteen minutes joking around and talking... so I'd say the band's banker seemed to feel that the studio was firm but fair.

There is not enough room at Harmony Central for me to answer this question fully. Some basics could use a good going over certainly. Mr. Knobs recently explained to me that a TS plug will work in a TRS jack for instance. And I have some XLRs around here that are phase reversed. What does that mean? Pin 2 hot? Guessing? I have never sidechained. It's frequency based compression right? Got the hang of the dynamic EQ in my Finalyzer to a fair degree, but sidechain? Wo....that's a plunge. Maybe mostly I've not recognized a sitch where it was needed? Still have yet to make my Adats slave to my sequencers with any benefit. So instead of running the sequencers straight into the board and saving all my tracks for real instruments I put all my stuff thru the whole AD/DA wash. Studying a MOTU miditimepiece AV manual and stressing my Adats currently. Finally, you do NOT want to see me *wield* a soldering iron. My hands tremble, and always have. Just a bit. Got it from my Dad. (Ironic when one considers the delicacy of being a classical violinist. But that's another story)

Hmmm... you might want to put some work in to the ADAT-sequencer slaving thing. (OTOH, if you're simply playing the instrumetns in real time and recording them with no external MIDI, you're probably avoiding a passel of timing steadiness/latency issues.)

But one of the reasons I don't feel too bad about my old late 90s work was that the synths and drum module never went onto ADAT -- I synched the ADATs (via my BRC) to MTC (MIDI Time Clock) and folded them in at mixtime on my analog board. So mostly only vocals and guitars went onto ADAT. (Actually, the synths mostly didn't benefit all that noticeably -- but I always felt the drums from my 20 bit DM5 module sounded a lot fresher going straight into the mix.)

But on the OTHER other hand... putting them all on tape at the front means you don't have to panic if a module dies or you can't get your MIDI rig working right for some reason. (I would, on occasion, on very critical stuff, run each instrument onto its own ADAT track and put that cassette away for safe keeping.)

I was never stiffed by any artists or musicians.

But labels on the other hand... don't start me. (I even got burned by the same people a couple times. You know, first time around it was, well, yeah, the record DID sell 30,000 copies and it IS going into its fourth printing -- but there was just no profit. But somehow I got sucked into doing another project for the same then-well known OC label [NOT Dr. Dream ]... I submitted my bill -- they were poormouthing me so I submitted the bill at FIVE BUCKS AN HOUR -- and I'm STILL waiting to get paid... that was 1985. (And while the label owner said the project -- a compilation of hot [and notso] area bands -- never came out, I later saw a number of the tracks we cut on at least one of their records. [Are you sleeping at night, Ron? Yeah, I figured you were, you freakin' sociopath.])

Thanks, Lee. And it's probably even better since I put the sentences in the right order just now. (I'm an inveterate post-editor, sometimes I'll still be editing one post when there are five or six posts after mine... anyhow, earlier today I must have somehow typed an edited addendum into the right place.

But I think you got the idea, anyhow... and, YEAH... being able to keep ALL the possible keepers and compare them is a heavensent... back in the day, I'd try to get the lead vocals in while we still had enough tracks open to keep a couple takes and possibly comp thing together if necessary (you know, when I wasn't stuck in som EIGHT TRACK studio -- the lot of a punk rock purist in the 80s ).

If you had to pick one specific aspect of studio production / engineering that you feel is your weakest area, what would it be? It can be anything - scoring strings, EQ'ing, use of dynamics processors, getting parts to blend, mic technique, drawing out the best possible performances from talent, etc. Now, what are you going to do about it? Seriously, list what you've been doing or are considering doing to attempt to improve in that specific area. Feel free to quote someone else's post and offer suggestions on how you dealt with / overcame your own problems with that issue if you have a suggestion.

I don't take clients anymore but when I did I think the thing that was hardest for me was gauging how critical to be when wearing the producer hat...

Someone would ask, "What do you think of that vocal?" (for example) and a range of posssible answers would race through my head from "It's the best you've done, today" to "I think we should pack it in and you should go live with the song a while." Those responses sound reasonable, enough, I suppose, but it was knowing when to say what that was difficult.

Because, of course, few things are actually perfect or anywhere close, there are always timing and pitch problems (and that's what makes a singer a singer in a lot of ways)...

If you set the "levels" of criticism too low, someone who's apparently counting on you for feedback is going to get the impression that there are no problems when there are... if you set the level too high, it wrecks their confidence and inhibits them.

I tried to pick up the "moves" of other engineers and producers I worked around who were better with that stuff but it was really the ability to calibrate the level of critical comment. You know, stuff like, "That was great... but I think you can get just a little more out if you just really feel it." But, a lot of times, it seemed like the next take was worse anyway.

Just take a look at the "graphic EQs" in most folks home and car stereos... if you find one in 20 that isn't a "smile curve" I think they've got a gig for you looking for WMD's in a certain developing democracy.

Sad thing is, should you take a "lesson" from their settings and crank your mix the same way, anticipating their heavy hand on the EQ, they're just gonna leave that smile curve up, anyhow...

My favorite coffeehouse has a little sidewalk cafe thing going on and some folks driving by or stopped at the light seem compelled to make sure they share their genius taste in music with the nice folks sipping latte's and reading the NY Times. You NEVER hear any midrange... just trunk-thumping bass and eyeball-itching 8-10K jacked until you can't see straight. Half the time you can't tell if it's hip hop or stoner rock if no one's singing -- and sometimes when they are... the mids are just gone. I'm thinking it may reflect an ever-downward tugging FROWN curve in the driver's hearing... It might serve them right, but unfortunately they seem either oblivious or utterly intent on taking the rest of us with them.

Yes, there are books. The Electronic Musician "DIY Mastering" is a good call. There's the search function here or with Google, which will spit up quite a few articles on mastering. Then, of course, there's lots and lots of practicing and experience, getting good monitors and acoustic treatment for your room, training your ear, and those kinds of things. Or you could do what every other hack does and boost 5k and use a shelving EQ from 13kHz up (rolling off a little bottom end if you are really "conscientious"), run it through a compressor, and then crank a gain optimization program until it's sinfully loud and distorting on the peaks, and then smile and call it an evening. Remember, if louder is better, then loudest is best!

What's that toy mastering suite with all the "retro" looking screen animations?

I read people recommend that all the time -- of course, that is typically followed by a raft of derision from a number of folks. But the ACID and beatbox crowd seem to like it.

I don't normally recommend buying things, even magazines -- but the current, February, ish of Electronic Musician has a moderately detailed article on "DIY mastering" -- I haven't read more than the first page or two but I didn't see anything out of line in what he was writing. It might be four bucks well spent -- or you could wait for that article to make it onto their website in a few months: http://emusician.com/

You're right... the punchline is... socko.

Sorry you're the one who got socked. At least it was only a glancing blow... glad you didn't get stuck for 2 G's.

Yeah... in catching up just now, I realized that a) I'd already posted in this a long time ago and b) I didn't finish reading earlier. I'm gonna go back through and get the nasty details.

And -- actually -- I realized just now that your story was one of the stories I'd heard...

(For some reason, I thought I checked the date on the thread and found it was started today. Go figger.)

I've read this pattern scores of times.

Now, for sure, stuff happens; musicians ARE flaky; kids do get sick; great aunts do die...

But over and over I've read stories like yours... it just seems like these guys keep coming up with one plausible excuse after another.

When they're on the buying end, one imagines, it might just be something as simple as cash flow. (And in the case of people who sell things they don't have yet -- as we must imagine some do -- it seems like cash flow can combine with seller issues on his end, as well.)

But all too often in these stories, it's the good guy looking for a decent deal (not even a "too-good" deal... WC Fields notwithstanding, a lot of folks DO try to cheat an honest man or woman) who ends up holding the bag.

Anyhow, it's a dang shame that folks like this screw it for the millions of legitimiate and responsible sellers and buyers -- but I'm afraid it's all part of the human comedy. It's just that sometimes it ain't so funny...

BTW... if he posts here or you post something about this transaction at the DUC, be prepared for a blast of hostile, "wounded" emails from this guy. He'll say you're just not trusting or caring. He'll say you're jumping to conclusions. He'll say you're accusing him of being dishonest. Yadda yadda yadda... it's all part of the pattern.

Ditto that.

Do NOT throw out your speaker(s). [You can PM me for a shipping address and send them to me shipping-COD, though, if you want. ]

In all likelihood, your hum problem is simply a wire that's come loose.

It's quite possible/likely to be something a reasonably tech-savvy person with a soldering iron can find and fix.