Month: April 2006

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.

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.

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….

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.

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.

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…

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?

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.