I love quilts.

No really, I do.

I also love Sunday afternoon guitar sessions.
And this moogerfooger.

seeing sound

Guy draws wave forms on film's sound track for percussive sounds.
I feel lazy.

Analog Slob

Some new studio additions and swap outs over here in slobland.
Most noteworthy:
Moog (pronounced like "rogue", not like, um, "boob") Little Phatty Analog Synthesizer.

It's a monophonic synth (only outputs one note at a time), but that's okay because it is awesome.
Not awesome like that bird pooped on the car next to you and missed your recently washed car...
We're talking awesome like the cool side of the pillow in summer, glowing red tide sand, lover giving you a hug when you had a bad day, Los Altos Taqueria burrito (!) kind of awesome.
What's not awesome is that I'm not really a keyboard player...so, there's that.
But I pretend, kind of.



All parts (yes, even the drums) were made with the little phatty synth.
For percussion, I spent some time programming some white noise and filter envelopes (harhar|snort|har) for the high hat and snare sounds and some deep sine tones for the bass kick.
Then I assigned each of these samples to specific keys and BOOSH, I can tap out a drum beat.

The bass and high lead sounds were presets on the synth, I only changed the modulation slightly.
So again, I've posted some unfinished, unmixed, unmastered tracks.
But I learned some things. Progress is fun.



Netflix stream picks:
"Moog" - Awesome documentary on Robert Moog (founder of the synthesizer).
"Arrested Development" - So. Good.
"Example Short" - Just search for "example" and stream one of them. That's where I work, in Los Gatos. That guy moonwalking? Oh, yeah, he was a hired professional.

Sometimes I do what I wanna

What could be a better follow up to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (courtesy of the princess) than a glass of Bushmills and some guitar?

Warning: Volume increases near the end of Jam 2 as I switch from the BOSS DS-1 to the EH Big Muff Pi.


Boring videos, I know, but placement decisions had more to do with audio than video action.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the mic on the iPod touch.

Vocoder Win

You've Seen the Butcher is probably my favorite track from Diamond Eyes.
Sol Invicto (members of Cypress Hill and Deftones) remix it below.
Purchasing the remix benefits Deftones bassist Chi Cheng who is in recovery from a car crash in 2008.


Not sure about the 80's drum down, but I love the vocoder on the chorus.

Bad Rabbits on Deftones

Bad Rabbits performing a cover of Deftones' track Sextape off their latest record, Diamond Eyes.



No, that's not Pau Gasol on guitar.

Yeah, here comes the rooster...

This is awesome.

For you, Mom

Mom is a big fan of Carrie Underwood.
Me? Not so much. I can get on board with this though:


The passion!
The defecation in the pants!

What I did during mu (sic) weekend.

I got a new desk.
It's made by Studio RTA, producers of some excellent studio-friendly furniture.
It's very nice to have the computers, speakers, drum machine, mic preamps, synthesizer, etc. out and ready to be used when I'm inclined to make and record some noise.

4four highlights the recording debut of the new Taylor acoustic.

Also brought some technology to BF, find that below.
Thanks for the tips, SOSwitcher.

So now I have 2 (that you know of) songs that are half-assedly written and arranged.
A bunch of stupid people are always saying I never finish anythi

4four


3three


As an added bonus, I'll offer the American tradition of false democracy and you can tell me what to do for the next recording session (provided I'm not inclined to move on to 5five):

Which crappy song should Slobscot finish?

Oh hell yes.

Get excited.



Also, this is pretty awesome:


Thanks Case.

Reality > Analog > Samples

Last week I went to see Massive Attack live at The Warfield in San Francisco. I bought the pi soundtrack in high school and would listen to Angel by Massive Attack over and over until I picked up Mezzanine and became a huge fan.

This was the last of my short list of bands that I really wanted to see live and hadn't.

They delivered the music. It was an amazing show.

Shortly before the concert, my Heligoland record (Massive Attack's latest album) arrived from Amazon.

I had purchased their EP a while back in mp3 format, but there are certain bands and albums that I get excited about and prefer to own on vinyl.

I read an interesting article about vinyl sales being the final killing blow to CD purchases (old and not exactly prophetic, but still interesting).

In short, it points out that CD's are no longer the more portable medium. Those of us that still do purchase music, would prefer to download it to our mp3 players, or buy the album on vinyl (which always comes with a download code for the digital format these days) and enjoy the artwork and physical ownership.

Brother-in-law helping me move my vinyl collection last month: "You know they have these things called mp3's now. They are weightless."

Me: "..."

There are also those that argue vinyl sounds better than other audio formats, CD and mp3 included. I generally consider these people elitist middle-aged audiophiles that spend more time looking at audio on an oscilloscope than they do listening to it with their Blondie-concert-damaged ears. Some 47-year-old dudes chasing the way their records sounded way back when they had a full range of hearing? Not very compelling.

However, their argument is sound...HAHA!

Whether it's a track on some wax or the organization of rust on some strips of plastic, vinyl and tape are called analog audio because they are just that, analogous to reality.

So a digital delivery of audio, as a collection of discrete samples, can never attain the same fidelity of vinyl.

As a simplified example, imagine this was the signal of some audio over 4 minutes:

Now let's say you use a sample rate of once per minute (extremely low to illustrate the point, CD quality audio has a sample rate of 44,100 times per second), the delivery now looks something like this:

At this sampling rate, it becomes a square (instead of sine-ish) wave, and you lose quality.

Increasing the sampling rate will smooth out the square wave and more closely approximate the actual sounds, but we cannot have an infinite sample rate, so the analog audio will always be a more accurate representation of the sound.

Don't buy it?

Alright, try this...

I like the tactile and active process of listening to vinyl.

Sitting down with a glass of bourbon, getting up to flip the record over every 4 or so songs, without a fancy digital player visualizer bouncing around, is active listening and I enjoy it.

Opening iTunes on shuffle and leaving the room, forgetting you have it on is passive.

I do both, but when I have the time, I drop the needle of the Audio Technica PL-120 (thanks Dad!).

Check out Massive Attack's performance of Angel

(apologies for the clipped digital audio - they don't make a Flip camera that prints to vinyl yet):

Plus the video

Saw these guys in SF last night. Good show.



Wondergirl points out that they use Piet Mondrian's art style.

Today I:

My friend Casey works remotely but comes up once a month ish.
We have to pack up our office and move to the other building next month.
Yeah, he has juggling equipment.

I found the sheet music for Entry of the Gladiators by Julius Fučík (bet you didn't know the composer or title of "that circus song" before reading this), but I transposed it down a bit so I could play it on the glockenspiel a little easier. The pretty señorita got that for me last year.

The other sounds are from the awesome microKORG.

This started out as something funny to do for an hour on the weekend. Something to distract, play with half-step silliness on guitar...

Did I take it too far?
Yes. Yes, I did.

Stay awhile

I like this band. And this player.

Also, Canadians are so desperate creepy.
Alex...weren't you in the Canadian army?
Didn't you date a teenager and ride a motorcycle?
Serial.