I’m dead tired… it was nice to do nothing and just relax. I’m putting off the parts list / shopping list project for Saturday.

I found this video series by accident… I was searching the Web for something totally unrelated. This guy’s name is Cameron Paul and he apparently had a big hand in creating the dance DJ aesthetic as we know it today. He’s also a native San Franciscan.

Here’s my favorite clip. He gives a no-nonsense intro that I think most people can follow. I like it when people break things down into really simple concepts.

Dig the outfit. He did the official mix of Salt N Pepa’s “Push It” – it was actually a remix of an earlier recording.

… And here’s a quick noise piece that I’m going to use between sections of a larger piece I’m working on. It’ll probably be edited for length.

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Direct link: Here

Calistoga wishes and M&M dreams.

OK, so my break last week was really good. And very much overdue. It allowed me to put things in perspective. What a difference a couple of days off can make.

Report from the Studio Apartment Studio:

1. Channel 3 on my multitrack (Tascam 48) stopped working. I don’t know why. It might have blown when I also blew a channel on my mixer a couple of weeks ago. The only thing I know is that the channel card works fine – swapping cards in slot three has no effect – and that there’s some kind of break or malfunction somewhere between the tape input on the back of the machine and the channel card for channel three. Monitoring the input shows a very faint signal but the VU meter doesn’t budge much beyond -20 dBu.

2. My equipment sounds like shit. It actually sounds worse than when I bought it and I’m losing my mind over how much it’s getting in the way of recording and mixing. My multitrack and my mixer leak bass like a sieve and so much noise seeps in during bounces and mixes. Say what you will about Tascam equipment (and I’ll correct you) but it’s not supposed to perform like this. I’m going to replace all of the electrolytic capacitors in the power supplies of my Tascam M-520, 34b, and 48-OB, and all of the caps on each of the M-520 channel strips and channel cards in the recorders. Maybe even the DX-4D noise reduction units. This may seem like overkill but it’s totally necessary and I can’t wait to see how the performance improves. I can’t deal with “functionally broken” equipment any more. This has to end.

I really didn’t want to deal with more maintenance issues but these things must be addressed. This’ll set me ahead quite far.

I’ll post parts lists and DigiKey parts numbers for my upgrade shopping list after spending an evening at a local coffee shop with my manuals and laptop.

It’s really amazing what I find on YouTube by sheer accident.

I began watching this BBC documentary on Harry Partch. I was hooked when the narrator described Partch’s contempt and disgust for the mainstream and his never-ending search for musical “truth” by way of his inventions, the most significant of them being his 43-tone scale.

Just the fact that this guy was a musical genius, and that he was so totally alienated from society (intellectually and by the fact that he was a gay man in pre-war America), makes this guy incredibly fascinating to me.

I highly recommend you watch this video. It’s in six parts at a total of 50-ish minutes.

Read the full article for the YouTube videos.

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Last week was kind of rough, and as I usually do, I sought refuge in the “studio”.

I’m feeling kind of project-y right now, which is convenient because I discovered four dead tape inputs on my mixer. There were two dead inputs on the mixer when I bought it, and I blew one last weekend (I’ll explain later), and I discovered another today. Huh. That’s pretty irritating, but it’s fixable.

In other news, I’m networking a lot these days and looking for opportunities to collaborate. I may even do an installation piece but we’ll see if I can pony up the cash for materials. I may do some pieces to accompany some spoken word material, which is something I’ve wanted to do for some time now. My eventual goal is to provide sound and audio for experimental films but I’m saving that for when my portfolio is a little more established.

I’ve also been fighting a case of near-burnout. I have numerous projects in the works and it’s hard to balance that with my job and my social life. I’m taking two days off next week and I’ll use that time to rest my head (and ears) and then chart a course for these projects. I would love to be a full-time working artist but there’s years of work and preparation ahead before I get to that point. I began my current career about ten years ago without schooling or formal training and so I expect it’ll take as much work to get to a similar point in a new career. Just when the callouses on my boot strap-pulling fingers began to heal…

To conclude this post, here’s a bunch of cats in an IKEA store:

This loop will be featured – heavily modified – in a piece that I am currently working on.

While out and about on Friday evening I picked up a promotional postcard for “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector”, which begins 10 September at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.

I’m obsessed with Phil Spector because he is / was such an unusual character. The man was a genius and it’s so amazing to me that he got his start in the music business as a teenager. It’s amazing how different the music business was then compared to today: it was still an exploitative industry but the players had (I think) better musical taste and the musicians were typically better and more creative. His tenacity and decisiveness were bold and his work is amazing.

He’s also TOTALLY NUTS, but we’ll overlook that for now.

I looked around the Web for videos on his life and found a film from the 1980s called “Phil Spector: He’s a Rebel”. I’ve been watching this over the past few days and I’m really enjoying it. Here are the videos from the series, split into 10 minute segments as per YouTube’s content length requirements.

(View the full post to see the videos)

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Dated 22 August 2010. I think I was having a really rough day.

1. Popular “experimental”/”lo-fi” music is utter bullshit. The low production quality covers up the complete lack of talent.
2. People will buy anything if they think there is a movement behind it.
3. People don’t buy original music, or music that doesn’t sound like anything they’re familiar with, hence the rise of “Chillwave”, which sounds like every awful 1970s and 1980s smooth pop hit rolled into one painfully self-conscious mess.
4. Don’t pay attention to music media. Its nature is to highlight rising trends and cash in on zeitgeist. Trends in music are created by the lowest common denominator, who want music that doesn’t encourage them to think for themselves.
5. Everyone else is an asshole academic.

Maybe I should take up yoga?

Hey folks, I wanted to give a quick run-down of some techniques I’ve learned these past few months.

I’m spending a lot more time actually recording and mixing these days since my equipment is finally all up and running. Most of the time.

dbx Noise Reduction

Tascam owners, I’m looking at you. dbx noise reduction is a godsend for those of us using narrow format multitracks such as Tascam’s half-inch eight tracks (38, 48, 58, TSR8) and the 388. There are some caveats, though, and also some times when it’s best to bypass noise reduction on a particular track.

How dbx Noise Reduction works
dbx Noise Reduction relies on a compressor and expander to do its thing. The incoming signal – the signal which you want to print to tape – is encoded using compression and some EQ futzing. Common sense in using compressors also applies to using noise reduction: A quick jump in level will cause undesirable gasping/pumping and create undesirable artifacts.

Levels
I try to keep peaks at or below -3 dBu when using noise reduction. This allows noise reduction to work at its best. Pushing levels beyond -3 dBu will cause undesirable gasping/pumping sounds and may add extra high frequency hiss.

To NR or not NR
If you’re unsure about whether to use noise reduction, do a sample take and monitor on the playback head. While the take is running, switch NR on and off and compare the two. You’ll need to adjust the level of the signal before it hits the tape; get the peaks close to 0 or +1 dBu without NR and close to -3 dBu with NR. Folks using two-head decks like the TSR8, the MSR series, and the 388 will have to do a few test takes because these decks lack a separate playback head.

Do NOT use noise reduction with hand percussion!! Shakers, tambourines, claves, etc are notorious for creating transients and will always cause dbx encoding errors before the signal even gets to tape. You’ll notice “thuds” and “pops” on playback. With NR off, try to get the signal to peak around -6 dBu and let the tape’s natural transient-squashing abilities smooth them out for you. The tiny extra bit of hiss will dither the harshness of the instrument and make for a more pleasing sound, anyway.

Bouncing

Don’t Compress
Seriously, don’t compress bounce mixes. Compressing individual source tracks is OK, but don’t compress the whole bounce. Think about how it’s going to sound when those tracks get compressed AGAIN, because they will be compressed again in mixdown and AGAIN in mastering, if you take your mix to a mastering engineer. I learned this after a lot of heartache and after blaming my equipment for the thin, lifeless sound I was getting. Just don’t. Leave that shit turned off.

Monitoring The Bounce
Sort of like how I suggested you try a track with and with noise reduction: When bouncing your tracks down, monitor the new bounced tracks on the repro head and see how they sound. If you adjust the mix at all, you can hear the result instantly.

Don’t Erase The Source Tracks
I hate listening to a mix and realizing that the shaker/bass guitar/Yoko Ono is too loud. If you don’t erase your source tracks you can go back and do the mix over. You’ll need a second recorder to bounce your mix to (I use a half-track 1/4″ deck). Do your mix, shuttle the tape ahead thirty seconds or so, and record the bounced mix onto fresh tape.

Equalization

Cut, Don’t Boost
Cutting frequencies, instead of amplifying them, creates a more natural-sounding effect. I resisted this advice at first but I’m really glad I came around.

Hi-Pass Filter Everything*
You really don’t need anything below 200 Hz except on bass guitar, piano, and percussion (hence the asterisk). EQ this stuff out, especially before sending it to a compressor. Lower-frequency signals will add extra level to your tracks and make compressing difficult, and unless you have a sub-woofer you’re not going to hear all of the low-frequency buildup over each successive track and bounce. Just cut it out at each step.

Other Stuff

I’m leaving this part open for now, and I’ll add to this post later if anything comes up.