The Solution

So after many unsuccessful recordings with only meager improvment, I have tested and determined that I need to buy a better preamplifier. In this case, I think a MOTU 8Pre will do the job. This little wonder combines the beauty of 8 integrated XLR connections with a firewire interface. I can use this and my exsiting MOTU 828 and do 16 channel recording.

  

Also on the radar is the ART TubeFire8

Either of these babies would do the job and would eliminate the need for a space sucking board on my desktop.  Any body have any real world experience with these?

"The" Kick Drum Sound

So I have been trying to get a good kick drum sound and as it turns out, it is much harder than you might think. There are just a few mics that are considered to be "THE" mics for recording the kick and I have one...the AKG D112! This is a mighty microphone and the day it arrived I thought all of my troubles were solved.
No.
You see, I have a freind "in the business" and when I asked him the seemingly simple question "how do I get a good kick drum sound" he used terms like "black art" and "tomes written on the subject" which I kind of already knew because I had spend days reading them and learning about compression and gate and attack and realease and threshold and shell micing and head micing and duel mic micing and on and on and on! Keep in mind this is just one drum. I have not even addressed the other 4 drums involved not to mention the cymbals. My friend said that engineers spend "5 to 7 years developing their drum sound" and now I can see why it takes so long. I love doing this but I wish I had started 20 years ago. I would be so much further than I am right now. A google search yeilds close to 2 million hits on the subject. I guess I better get started.

Apparent

So as is apparent, I hate to update my blog. I often get mad at others for not updating theirs but cannont hold myself to the same standard. So, as I have said in the past, feel free to stop by and look but I offer no guarantees that I will ever update this.
That said I just made a really cool thirft store purchase. I will post pictures later.

Blast off

Someone has been reading The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh. Space Services Inc. is actually a customer of mine and their offices are, well, disappointing considering what they do. But hey, eveyone has to die sooner or later and the list of possible clients is endless. The real question is, how do you advertise...AARP newsletters? Perhaps the Star Trek crowd? Actor James Doohan is abord the next flight, or should I say, the next 2 flights.

My backyard is a wildlife refuge

So I woke this morning to the sound of a little bird chirping outside my door. It was not until I stepped outside that I realized that it was baby bird that had fallen from it's nest and was just a short few feet from becoming a large orange cat's breakfast. Not really knowing what to do, I swooped it up, put it in a box and took it to the Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Coalition who gladly took it in and identified it. It was a mocking bird. They will raise it and release it into the wild through their program and so that it can be lunch for some larger prey down the line. Ah the cycle of life!

The Stimulus Progression

Fascinated by the way in which music informs and controls your life? I am! Upon doing some research on muzak, I came across this article. Check out these quotes from the linked (click the title) paper on how musak and architecture inform your world in ways you may not have appreciated (read as "ignored") in the past.


"Whatever the workplace environment, Muzak set out to maintain a median level of arousal. Muzak observed that natural levels of arousal are never static or consistently varied, but rise and fall throughout the day as well as over fifteen minute cyclical periods. In response, Muzak arranged programs according to a “Stimulus Progression,” varying musical energy levels over fifteen-minute segments that would be followed by either a thirty-second or fifteen-minute long period of silence, depending on the subscriber's desire. The Stimulus Progression was based on Muzak’s analysis of its songs for their emotional content and energy levels. Factoring in tempo, type of music, instruments employed, and the size of orchestra, Muzak determined a stimulus value for each song. By the 1950s, Muzak could carefully vary its level of stimulus during the day to offset decreases in worker efficiency during mid-morning and mid-afternoon slumps. The fifteen-minute length of the Stimulus Progression also served to enhance productivity by creating more distinctly delimited breaks between spurts of work activity. The order of the Stimulus Progression was crucial: studies showed that if played backwards, it would put listeners to sleep."

"After a tremendous period of economic and technological growth from the first two world wars, a surplus of income allowed teenagers unprecedented freedom from familial restraints and societal mores. As the first purely consumer market, youth culture relied heavily on the purchasing and playback of music to express itself and create identity."

This is facinating stuff! Think about that next time you are subjected to Sunny 99.1 and consider that it is #1 in the workplace for more reasons than just their great "mix". They know something you may not...and it is about you!

I've lost my wife to the internet

We were once happy, together, in the back bedroom...stealing internet from some unsecure network (thanks NETGEAR). But then they came and fixed our internet and now she is gone...forever. She hardly talks to me now. Only the occasional "come here and look at these cute flats" or "what's that guys last na...nevermind I found it" My dear wife, I miss those salad days.