Let’s get random, zagga, zagga, zagga, yo…

February 8, 2010, 15:39 -05 by chris
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That N.A.S.A. song with David Byrne and a bunch of MCs makes me happier than it has any right to, in a tropical-flavored World Destruction kinda way. Only, more ‘time and space’ and less ‘Reagan and Thatcher’, of course.

Fun was had at the Editors show at the Showbox last Friday. Being on the guest list is fun, even when it’s because you won a record store contest just like anyone else, and not because you’re in some band or something. Music critics that still insist on rehashing that “hrrrgh! Sounds just like Ian Curtis!” thing are just being lame and losing the plot at this point. For the record, I did not hear anything that sounded like Ian Curtis all evening. While their three full-lengths to date are pretty divergent from each other, it seems that’s more due to production style than the songs themselves; the ‘catalog’ of songs sounds totally cohesive – to the point of struggling to remember which songs are from which album – the way they do them live. The show reaffirmed my “they’re one of those bands that makes more sense after you see them live” theory about ’em. Ran in to Kim and Geoff from C’est La Mort, who I don’t think had seen Garrick since he moved back to town.

Good arranging / editing / get-a-second-opinion-on-what-to-do-with-those-empty-four-and-eight-bar-transition-sections session on P.o.E. on Thursday. Hubristically thought we’d wrap up the song, but instead ended up finding out that there’s more work to be done than we thought… (“The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.” “That’s us, dude!”). But isn’t that always the way with such things?

Last time I checked, I was still an American, but I still do not understand your “American football”. Even the commercials aren’t amusing anymore, but the thing apparently had the highest ratings in over 20 years, so it’s probably only a matter of time before we’re watering our crops with Brawndo.

Please remember to mention me / in tapes you leave behind…

January 11, 2010, 18:33 -05 by chris
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The ‘holiday season’ officially over, it’s time to put away the decorations (a week or two late), turn the ‘guest room’ back into the ‘home studio’, put the extra dishes back in the attic, test out the latest additions to the microphone locker (sort-of vintage-esque-ish C414B-ULS and new el-cheapo CAD ribbon mic), do some tests and perhaps modifications (at least bypass caps and maybe experiment with resistors to make the outputs ‘see’ the specified 600-ohm output, while waiting for the ‘could replace every component in the signal path if need be’ order to show up from Mouser) on a pair of cool-sounding-transformers but that-noise-floor-just-can’t-be-within-spec mic preamps, dust and vacuum, and get back to work on some actual music, finally.

Saw friend Jorge’s Americana / alt-country / honky-tonk band Ruby Dee and the Snakehandlers over New Years’ weekend. Fun was had.

Holding down the fort in “the 206” while most folks I know are heading down to NAMM. Can’t say I’m sad about it.

Still haven’t had time to get out to see Avatar (Pocahontas Dances With FernGully in Space), Sherlock Holmes (plus exploding fireballs and glistening pectoral muscles, minus pipe-smoking and deerstalker hats), or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (aka thin and predictable plot but I’ll see it anyway for the visuals), hoping “Inception” will live up to its own previews once that’s out.

…and managed to sneak in some time for a few quick electric violin overdubs, re-recorded a better take of a was-good-but-a-little-too-peaky-sounding-on-that-one-chord guitar track (I was going for a ‘cutting’ Telecaster / LP-junior / AC30 / Twin tone, but it ended up going way too far to the “icepick to the temples” end of the continuum – lesson learned…), and some string-machine-with-phaser-cause-the-Gary-Numan-kick-still-isn’t-letting-up parts on that song we’re working on that for the life of me I can’t remember the name of right now, because the title isn’t in the lyrics (unless it is), which is making me feel, temporarily at least, like a doddering old fool.

The Sepiachord Companion

November 24, 2009, 18:22 -05 by chris
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The Sepiachord Companion, a new compilation CD featuring tracks from Voltaire, Jill Tracy, Unwoman, One Beer Prophet, Vermillion Lies, and “much, much more” is now shipping from Devil’s Ruin Records.

Featuring mastering by me, and the debut appearance in a commercially-released album’s liner notes for our new assistant engineer and red-book CD authoring consultant (pictured at right operating our custom-modified, all-discrete, Class A mastering console by Baby LeapFrog).

Find out more information about The Sepiachord Companiaon and order a copy at www.sepiachord.com.

Cor! It was a bargain!

October 30, 2009, 12:06 -05 by chris
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Woohoo!

Memory maxed out, individual-out, and digital i/o options, EB16 “SampleVerb” option – looks like everything except the Flash ROM and multimode filter/EQ card onboard.

Thirty-five bucks on Craigslist.

Aw yeah.

“So. Um. Great. But… Uh…why did you buy a circa-1995 hardware sampler?”

Shut up! You don’t understand!

Acquaviva Picena Sound Machine

October 1, 2009, 15:14 -05 by chris
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Tried to convince myself I didn’t need a 1982 Italian divide-down oscillator string machine. Failed. Now it just needs to get to Seattle in one piece.

Tidy up!

September 19, 2009, 20:41 -05 by chris
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Ikea’s great if you need some budget studio furniture with your ten-meatball lunch special. Seen here, the just-picked-up-today “Lustifik” (sp?) shoe rack lying on its side as a mini keyboard stand for the Micron (now I can actually access the top panel of the Yamaha, in case I ever want faster-than-booting-up-the-computer access to crappy ROMpler sounds… hmm, might be handy for practice or working out quick ideas, actually). Tons of other people are using just-happen-to-be-the-right-size Ikea bedside tables and shelves as studio racks, one of the other shoe racks is a galvanized-metal angled shelf that’s great for drum machines and ‘desktop’ modules, there’s a floor-to-ceiling metal poles with shelves in-between closet system I’ve seen used by people with obscenely large synth collections, and the (discontinued and now a hot used-market item among home-studio geeks) “Jerker” desks are great for a computer/synth workstation as long as you get the version with multiple tiers and the optional swing-out side shelves, which are perfect for studio monitors. And that’s before you get into the whole “Ikea hack” thing – regardless, the trick is to go through Ikea with an eye towards using stuff for not-necessarily-intended (re)purposes.

Plowing through your bean field…

September 2, 2009, 19:51 -05 by chris
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Line 6 must be A) Crazy, B) Feeling generous, C) About to come out with something new, or D) All of the above, because they’re giving away Pod Farm free during the month of September if you own an iLok or PodXT / TonePort / GuitarPort-series product – and I have both. Better go get it, before they come to their senses.

Because every track needs to sound like it was recorded through a Pod. Right? Hello? Hey, where’d everybody go?

More Craigslist excitement…

September 2, 2009, 12:39 -05 by chris
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…well, exciting to me, anyway. I’m not sure what it says about me that I can manage to get all excited over scoring a great deal on a classic, vintage…

…MIDI interface. Watch out. Lock up your daughters and throw away the keys, folks, ’cause those edgy rock-n-rollers are back in town – and this time, they’re packin’ another square rackmount box with blinky lights on it that doesn’t actually make any sound or do anything by itself. Hello Seattle! Are you ready to send some actively-buffered continuous controller messages to the MIDI-to-control-voltage interface… to-NITE? Yeeea-uh!