Sci-fi winter

I'm planning on reading science-fiction and science-fiction only this winter. So far, people have recommended I check out "The Player of Games" by Iain M. Banks and "Inverted World" by Christopher Priest.

I'm pretty much stumbling in the dark with this stuff-- can anyone recommend anything else for the list?

Ideally, I'd like to be on the road to becoming the next host of this show by February:

Speaker as fixed EQ

I was making digital copies of dictaphone tapes this afternoon, and while doing so came to the conclusion that I prefer the sound of the tapes through the recorder's internal speaker over the sound of the tapes directly.

So, to get more of the sound I wanted into the computer, I set a 57 an inch or so off the speaker's center and pressed record-- it's a much closer copy of what I want than simply running the headphone output into a mixer.


Have any of you tried this? Do you have a favorite mic for the job? I haven't done much experimenting (and don't have the biggest mic closet in the world), but if this is something you've done or do often and can recommend a set-up, let me know-- I'd love to hear about/try it!

Vacation!

I was lucky enough to have the day off today and spent most of it riding my bike around the suburban time capsule known as Dyker Heights.

Here are some of clips from the day, set to the (almost 10 year old!) Cosine song "Ballad of the Pit Boss":

What did you do on your Labor Day? Finally sleep in? Go to the beach one last time? Forget that you had the day off and drive to work by accident?

Knitting the News

I'm studying for my Programming for Interactivity class, which mostly means collecting examples of projects using the programming environment(?)language(?) Processing, a longtime crush of mine. In the midst of this, I happened upon a knitting project called News Knitter that uses Processing, somehow, to create visual representations of the news, translate these to a knitting machine and then make sweaters, comme ca:

 

 This reminds me, of course, of the less high-tech (though still knitting-machine based) work of Lisa Anne Auerbach's sweater/skirts, which are often news-related:

 There are a few great things about machine-knitted sweaters, and the most obvious being that they don't take as long to make, and you can pretty easily (if you're computer-savvy) create complex patterns that would be difficult to hand-knit, if not impossible. In both of these projects, that ease and speed are used to create complex and context-based sweaters that will be not only out of fashion but literally out of date in a relatively short period of time, memorializing and creating a lasting physical record of contemporary events.

The News Knitters also make more abstract representations of news visualization, which may withstand the test of time slightly better, and are taking names in the hopes that they might offer the sweaters for sale someday.

 All of this ties in very nicely with my interest in the idea of our everyday life objects forming our own personal living archives, and my very real desire to never ever ever get rid of the awesomely comfortable and nearly worn out t-shirt I was wearing when Pete & I first met.

Do your hand-made projects end up representing specific times and places for you? Do you think of your drawer of hand-knit socks as an archive of your progress as a knitter or as a person? Is it totally unreasonable to save clothing when it's no longer wearable for sentimental/archival reasons?

Ludwig Phase II-- how much is too much?

I apologize for the recent spat of "this costs too much!" posts, but there's a Ludwig Phase II on eBay right now with a STARTING BID of $1,8000 (w/ $100 shipping). That's more than double of what it should sell for.


As everyone knows, the Phase II is pretty cool-- it's a phaser, fuzz box and VCF all rolled up in one, with an expression pedal and street cred built right in. It's the famous "Diamond Sea" sound.

Here's Thurston using his on Letterman in 1995:



Question: if you had something either financially or practically irreplaceable that was an important part of your sound, would you take it out of the studio in order to use it live (as Thee Oh Sees do with their Space Echo), or is using something inferior but close-sounding good enough?

New Mexicoe crowd photos

Tuesday's show at Union Hall was a complete success! Thanks to everyone who braved the storm and cheered us on.

Being 2009, most everyone there had a camera phone, and a couple of attendees have forwarded us shots from the night (Shannon Pet Cemetery took the ones in this post). If you were there and took pictures, pass them our way!

In the meantime, here's a snippet of our cover of John Martyn's "Over the Hill":

New Mexicoe, Union Hall, 8/18/09. from Scott McDowell on Vimeo.

$750 fuzzbox clone

This is a Univox Super-Fuzz clone that Big City Music is selling. For $750.


To a certain extent, I can understand the gear sluttery that leads to spending $750 on a fuzzbox: you're not buying a sound at that point-- you're getting the prestige that comes from owning a rare thing. And if you don't want it build one yourself, if you don't want to source the parts, etc., paying a bit of a premium for one can make sense. But for a clone-- say, buying a Beano instead of an actual Rangemaster-- it seems excessive to me.

What are the outer reaches of what you'd spend on a piece of gear that you want but probably won't be able to find? Would you be willing to spend pretty much the same amount on a more readily-available clone? Also, does having a Mudhoney EP named after that thing raise or lower its value to you?

If it works...

(I'd hoped to add a video for "Starry Eyes" to this post, but apparently there isn't a good one to be found. If you can point me in that direction, though, please do).

The Mummies at Maxwells

This was a dream show for Jess and I--so much so that we almost bowed out of our participation in the new Iran-Contras record to attend the gig--which we missed by doing the right thing and flying out to Portland:




Yes, we made the right decision-- any Contras recording session is amazing, the new record(s) is/are great, etc., but were you there? Can we talk to you and relive the night through your stories?

Dinosaur Flash

I have had the same digital camera (a Cannon S50) for the past six years. It's bulky by today's standards, and is by no means a High Definition machine (5.0 megapixels!), but it's reliable and I like the quality of pictures and videos it takes, grainy artifacts and all.

But one thing I've always wished it did was store more pictures. Don't laugh, but it only recently dawned on me that I could solve this problem by just picking up a new, larger memory card.

Until earlier today, I had two Flash memory options-- a 32MB one and a "big" 128MB one, both of which are hilarious numbers to say out loud now (who uses megabytes anymore? I have a pen with a built-in 1GB USB stick), but in their day they got the job done.


So imagine my excitement when I found an 8GB Compact Flash card this morning! What a ridiculous upgrade! Now if only my battery would hold more than 20 minutes worth of charge...

Open thread: what turn-of-the-century pieces of technology do you have and should have upgraded from years ago but, for whatever reason, can't get rid of (first generation iPod, anyone)?

Poisoned by food

I was sick yesterday. Really sick, in a gross way. All signs point to food poisoning, and most of those signs point to the cheap knock-off jar of peanut butter I bought on Wednesday:


Super A is a grocery store near where I work-- I don't know if it's a national chain, but either way, AVOID SUPER A PEANUT BUTTER. It will fuck you up.

On a related note, because of this, I missed last night's Handmade Music night at 3rd Ward, which promised to be the best one yet. Did you go? Have any stories to share?? I apologize to the people I said I would meet there who I did not get in touch with beforehand. I hope you had a good enough time for the both of us.

Doepfer A-118 Noise module

Here are a couple of videos of patches centered around the newest module in our synthesizer, the Doepfer A-118 Noise (& Random Voltage). It's a pretty simple machine-- two "tone" sources (white noise and blendable red-and-blue colored noise) with a random voltage output (which mimics the colored noise settings)). A lot of fun and much more useful than I thought it would be (I almost always have the Noise Generator on our Rogue switched off).

What should we get next? I'm leaning towards the A-134-2 Dual VC Crossfader, but am open to suggestions. In the meantime, on to the videos:

Kip verification

I was leaving a comment on a Matrixsynth post and had to type the following before I could submit it:


I know I'm not exactly breaking ground by saying this, but Winger was the worst!



They were the first band about which I can remember thinking, "I really don't like what they're doing."

Open thread: what then-contemporary group(s) did you not like when you were growing up?

BLUE on FOX

If you're like me, you prefer talk shows that have a desk on their set, because 9 times out of 10, there's a microphone on that desk and if the interview is boring you can always play "name that mic."

Johnny Carson had a Shure SM33, Leno uses a Shure KSM27 Neumann TLM 103 (edited-- new show, new mic) and Letterman, who used to have an RCA 77-D (it was stolen!), now has a Heil PR-40. Conan had a... I want to say an Audio Technica 4040?


And then there's Glenn Beck, whose show I have not watched and would recommend you avoid as well (instead, listen to "Coast to Coast" by Thee Iran-Contras for an hour a day). He's a Class A buffoon with a shockmounted "Kiwi," from Baltic Latvin Universal Electronics (or BLUE), on his desk. Not cool, Fox, giving a bad name to a good microphone, but thumbs up, Fox Props Department, for matching an earache with an eyesore!

Open thread: what is your favorite prop mic on TV (past or present)?

I Was a Teenage Ghoulardi Catchphrase

Dispatch from Shamblers HQ:


I've got a fever and a pretty gross cough. From what I've heard, everyone else does, too. Open thread time: are you sick? Do you have those symptoms? Is this the "superbug" I've read about?

Have any of you been to either of these places?

Toe Rag Studios in London:





Carousel Recording in Brooklyn:





If so, what are they like?? They're both still open from what I can tell and look like a ton of fun.

What does your personalized eBay say about you?

I just checked eBay for the first time in, um, days, and lo and behold, there were some "great finds" waiting for me:


Shure SM7s and busts of Alfred E. Newman. Thanks eBay.

What sort of things is the site picking out for you?

Starkey Hearing Science modular

Does anyone know anything about this machine?? Was it a hearing test tone generator? Was it a logic computer of some kind? How hard would it be to build? That sort of thing.

Happy New Year!

We celebrated the New Year in our usual way: starting a new band and recording some new songs just before midnight.

Kate + Jess + Pete = The Trainwrecks



Split 7" with The Speers out in the Spring (or sooner). Stay tuned!

Anyone do anything fun last night? Also, a belated Happy Holidays!

New compressors for the new year

There's a new FMR compressor? Yes. Yes there is:


Completely under the radar, FMR Audio-- whose RNC has been one of the better pro-sumer deals going so far this millennium-- are releasing their "no holds barred" PBC-6A mono compressor "soon." In standard FMR fashion, it's an ugly 1/3 rack-space hunk of plastic selling for much less than it should and sounding far better than it has to (I'm basing that last bit on the samples Mercenary Audio has up). Also in FMR fashion, while we're at it, their website hasn't been updated in years. What's the story?

Equally of note, Chameleon Labs' stereo/dual mono opto compressor, the Model 7802, should be out early next year:


Chameleon's product line is littered with bang-for-the-buck options of Neve and SSL clones, all of which get regular thumbs up marks on the boards. I've wanted a good optical compressor for about as long as I haven't been able to afford one and have been keeping watch for an in-depth 7802 review since the unit was announced last year-- I'll be sure to post the first one I find.

Speaking of compressors that can be set to DESTROY, I've had my eye on Standard Audio's version of the Shure Level Loc, the "Level-Or," for a few months now:


As far as 500-series modules go, it's cheap ($485!) and the no-fuss, no-metering operation screams "abuse me." Just turn everything up until it sounds like the channel is on fire and then add a little reverb. Viola!

And while we're talking about inexpensive tortured drum sounds, it turns out the old Yamaha SPX900--a reverb box you can get on eBay for a couple hundred bucks-- has been in the Flaming Lips arsenal for a while. Who knew! Check this out (thanks Tape Op forum!).

What gear do you all have your eyes on for the coming year? A pair of MX-5050s, perhaps?