Freakwitch community forum
There is a new
community forum on the Freakwitch.net site. There are forums there for both album production as well as Quitchcraft Productions, which is our studio. I think that much of my audiogeek babblage will be located there for a while.
So, if you are interested in Freakwitch, go check out the forum. Register, and speak freely. We're trying to get all this infrastructure-type stuff in place before the album is done sometime this summer.
Also, Freakwitch.com and Freakwitch.org both now redirect to Freakwitch.net. This means that all 3 domains are now under our control.
last audiogeek explosion?
I ordered the tubes today. Now, I'm done. For a while.
I know many of my readers are bored. I'm thinking about setting up a separate blog just for my audio engineering stuff, as we move through the Freakwitch album production. Or, I could continue to leave it here.
So what do you think? Should I set up a separate blog for this? Or not? Leave a comment.
Anyone?
::crickets chirping::
Bueller? Bueller?
for those keeping score....
...I've been
more or less updating my Everyday Systems log. I'm reasserting exercise -- especially walking -- now that the weather is warmer. It was a bit chilly tonight, but a good walk....
So because everyone is so enthralled
...I thought I'd explain why I ordered the Shinybox 23 as opposed to the other models.
First of all, there are 2 basic ribbon mic types in this range, the big one (Shinybox 23 et al) and the small one (Shinybox 46, et al). The small one is generally cheaper, and they share the same capsule. However, in the smaller body, the capsule is not symmetrically mounted which means one side of it sounds brighter than the other side. Not good when using the M-S technique.
So the larger chassis it is. The question is then, why the Shinybox, and not the Nady or the Apex or the .... myriad of other rebrandings this mic exists under. Answer: first of all, I like the little guy. Secondly, the Shinybox comes with a groovy case, and is still cheaper than the Nady. Thirdly the guy who runs Shinybox seems to genuinely give a rat's ass about sound quality.
I placed the order yesterday but I haven't heard anything yet. Hopefully soon. The site says I should hear within 48 hours.
audio geekery part 912
So I decided to order the
Shinybox 23. Waiting for the guy to call me back to answer one last question about it.
In addition, I'm thinking about upgrading the tubes in my ART TubePAC preamps. This is a lower-gain tube than what comes stock, which should clean up the sound a bit. This mod will be cheaper though, I'd need 4 tubes so it should be less than $50.
EDIT: there are two cheaper tubes available, that will probably work just as well.
more ribbon
I found another ribbon mic that is
even cheaper than the Shinybox. Marking this for posterity.
EDIT: And another, even cheaper.... These mics are all basically the same mic, rebranded, but there is an interesting article on how to modify the ribbon mic which provides better sound, but makes the mic more fragile.
mmmm, shinybox
I'm starting to shift my thinking from getting good rhythm tracks (mission accomplished, apart from some light housecleaning type editing ahead of me) toward getting primo acoustic guitar tracks recorded for the Freakwitch album. I have a decent setup now in terms of recording, but one technique that has interested me for a long time is known as
mid-side miking. It involves using 2 microphones, one of which has a cardioid (or omni) pickup pattern, the other of which must be a figure-8 pickup pattern. Sadly, none of my mics has a figure-8 pattern so this has remained elusive for me.
In addition, I've been intrigued by ribbon microphones, which have by all accounts a very natural sound, though they come with problems most notably that they are extremely fragile. Ribbon mics have been around for nearly 70 years and are definitely in the "vintage" (read: way too expensive) category. But recently, some manufacturers have begun to sell new units, though they are still probably out of my league cost wise. However, the import market has started to pick them up, and you can now get ribbon mics at reasonable prices.
Most interestingly, ribbon mics inherently have a figure-8 recording pattern, which means I could begin to experiment with Mid-Side miking as well. So I'm thinking about adding a ribbon mic to my mic collection. The one I'm interested in is made by a small company called ShinyBox, which has the added benefit of being slightly cheaper than the Nady, and probably of slightly better quality though they are essentially the same mic. Plus they have a cool name which helps.
So yeah, I have to decide if this is worth doing for the acoustic guitar tracks I'll be recording soon. Hmmm.....
US Detains Al-Gebra Operative
Yes,
this is a joke:
Math teacher arrested
Associated Press
At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a morning press conference, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math's instruction.
"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Gonzales said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'there are 3 sides to every triangle'."
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math's instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."
recording marathon
Well, the great Freakwitch recording marathon went well. There are now LOTS of tracks on the hard drive that I have to listen to. There are between 1 and 6 takes each saved of 18 different songs.
Coming into the weekend I wasn't really sure how it was going to go. My guess was that it would take us Thursday to warm up, Friday to start getting good takes, and Saturday would be spent making sure we had everything we needed. That pattern was kinda right, except condense Friday and Saturday into the last 2 sets played saturday night. Thursday, Friday, and the first half of Saturday were spent warming up. After all, we haven't played together much over the past month or two.
But, we stepped up when it counted. Time will tell, the recording marathon now morphs into a listening and editing marathon, so I can make sure I have solid, groovy drum and bass tracks for each song. Once that's done, I get to start overdubbing guitars.
And that's when the REAL fun begins....
But for now, I must sleep. It's amazing how draining it is to focus one's attention on the same thing for 3 days straight.
On Pagan Activism
I've revised and added to my notes from the talk the other night. The resulting document is called
On Pagan Activism and is available in my writings section.
From the desktop of...
I'm writing this from the desktop machine. Why? Because my laptop is currently booted into Windows, doing a software flash rom update on my guitar.
Huh? A software update on a guitar? Since when...
This is gonna be fun. Look at the videos on that page...
Last night my fever hit 101.2 and I resorted to Ibuprofen. It broke within the hour, and hasn't come back yet. I'm feeling gradually better. This seems to have been a reasonably mild one, though I still have a ways to go.
Spritual Warrior?
The panel discussion was today. It seemed to go well. I was pleased that pagans were well represented on the panel, there were 2 of us (my wife and I), along with a christian, a buddhist, and a jew. The talk that I gave is
in my writings section if anyone is interested.
But, I'm not feeling well, I just took my temperature and it is 100.2. So I think I'm going to rest now. Better now than Thursday, when The Mother Of All Freakwitch Recording Sessions begins....
eee-lectric gee-tar
So the trade is complete, my balance is paid off, I have the
Pod XT Live in my possession (along with a case for it, and the special Variax digital guitar cable), and my
Variax 300 (black) guitar is on its way to
my local music shop. It's a done deal, I just have to wait for shipping. The guitar should arrive sometime this week, hopefully in time for our mammoth recording session beginning on Thursday.
This guitar is the budget model, and it is available only in the somewhat plain and spartan black or red finish. Kinda ugly, not really my style. The selling point for the guitar, clearly, is the electronics which are state-of-the-art and allow for a huge variety of sound. I had hoped to get the natural finish model 700, but it's cost-prohibitive for me at this point, especially given that the electronics inside are identical to the cheaper model.
Well, I just found out that Warmoth, a company that makes replacement electric guitar parts, is now making replacement parts for the Variax series. I've played warmoth necks before, and they are fantastic. Plus, I could get an unfinished guitar body and give it a clear finish myself.
Bottom line, if I find the cheaper Variax guitar to be unacceptable, I can upgrade it significantly for much less than the cost of the top of the line Variax model.
in other news....
It was recently pointed out to me that this space has become little more than a log of my acoustics research and experimentation recently. And while the audiogeek in me continues to insist just how endlessly fascinating this topic remains (pffth!), I am aware that it represents a significant departure from the normal content of this channel.
It seems I am boring my readers. Both of them. ;-)
Ah well. I can justify it because this blog is supposed to be a virtual representation of what's on my mind, and it is quite true that acoustics have commanded much of my hyperfocused attention as of late; indeed I have consciously resisted being distracted from this subject in the interest of moving Freakwitch forward as skillfully and rapidly as possible.
But, life goes on. Other things have been happening, I just haven't written much about it. One interesting thing, I was invited to speak in a panel discussion this coming Monday, April 10:
"Spiritual Warriors," featuring speakers from different religious denominations, 4-6 p.m., Woodbury Campus Center Amphitheater, Portland, free and open to the public, 228-8235.
So, come out if you can. I'm not sure what to expect, though it's quite interesting to me that this panel addresses a topic that's been on my mind for several months, namely the intersection of spirituality and politics.
In particular, I plan to talk about what it means, historically and metaphysically, to be a pagan, and why all pagans are activists whether they realize it or not.
Department of Homeland Mathematics
Apparently the Department of Homeland Mathematics held a meeting that I missed recently, where they decided that 11.5+11.5+11.5+10.5=35.6.
This week, my paycheck was significantly less than it normally is. So I came into work on my day off to investigate, and discovered that the program that keeps track of time (our punch in/punch out timecard system) does math differently than the rest of the universe. All the hours I'd worked were there, it's just that they totalled it incorrectly.
Ah well. Everyone at work was baffled. Supposedly on Monday someone in payroll will cut me a check for the remainder. Somehow I couldn't help Tom Ridge grinning his inane grin at me and telling me this is all for my protection...
audiogeek verbal diarrhea
Over the past many moons, I've been frequenting
several audio and
acoustics forums (fora?) to try to learn to educate myself about
good acoustics principles. And, I've learned a tremendous amount from reading these forums.
So I decided to write up my recent experiences, to try to give back in some small way. Maybe someone else is in a similar situation and would be helped by my experience.
There is an overall writeup of what I did, and in a different place I posted detailed instructions on the gobos, including a diagram.
Do they make audiogeek pepto bismol?
cue manic Gene Wilder voice: "my creation ... LIVES!"
Last night I got the studio rewired (mostly -- microphones and speakers work, I still have a bit more to do for everyone's headphones, etc before we record). I'm thrilled that everything is working just as it was; nothing went *poof* and the resolder job I had to do works perfectly. w00t!
So last night, after a couple of minor false starts and everything was rewired (thanks to Matt for climbing behind the desk to plug in the preamps ... several times as it turned out, heh), I arranged the bass traps and the gobos around the desk, and fired up some music.
WOW! What a sound. SO much more focused than it was before. The "sweet spot" -- or, the listener's position at the apex of the equilateral triangle with the speakers -- sounds fantastic. The bass is MUCH tighter, less boomy, I can actually hear what's going on in the low end. The imaging is much more precise, even with my low-end monitors. If it sounds this good with those, then I can't wait to hook up my Dynaudio speakers from home in that room. Regardless, I have plenty of listening to do to familiarize myself with how this room sounds, but as I told Matt last night, we can DEFINITELY mix an album in this space now. Mission accomplished!
After we listened for a while, we moved the gobos out of the way and got out the microphones. We spent some time arranging them into the theoretically correct place as a starting point, put the bass traps and gobos back into place, fired up some headphones, and while Brent was playing I moved mics around one at a time.
I actually recorded a few minutes of drums.... wow! More low end, a tighter sound than ever. Much of this is, of course, due to the new drum heads, but several links in that particular chain have been upgraded lately. I also added another mic to the drums, so now I'm recording 6 channels of drums. So again, Mission Accomplished!
In our recent demos, the only part that sounded "right" in terms of final production was the bass. Now, I'm happy to say, the drums have a similar "finished" sound that should fit nicely into the mix. I can't wait to record my acoustic guitars in this space now, not to mention vocals, not to mention mixing, not to mention mastering, not to mention selling thousands of CDs. :-)
Countdown to our basic tracks recording session: 12 days. Lots to do before then, cleaning, "vibe" detail (making the space comfortable and as aesthetically pleasing as possible, given the proliferation of "construction" scents in there at the moment...bleah), not to mention cleaning up preproduction for all our songs.
Busy, busy, busy.
