Every Second of an 5:57 Minute Song

How can our crowded minds possibly catalog store and recall every second of an ever changing 5:57 min. song? Take Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, for example. It's not a standard blues progression or something, like a hundred other songs. It's a totally unique string of fairly disjointed musical ideas. Yet somehow, an average person of a certain age, say, my age, who heard this song playing through their puberty has got every single moment of it hammered into his or her head.

I'm not talking about a musical professional, someone you expect to memorize the piano concerto they play at Carnegie Hall. I'm talking about how your average Jane and Joe (probably every single kid from my graduating class of J.H.S. 216), flat out KNOWS this song – stone cold by heart. This Muppet parody video really made me think about the magic of recorded music — and video, for that matter — the magic of recordING and how human memory works.

What is it, you hear something, see something a few times and your brain becomes a tape recorder? It sort of seems that way. I mean, that's what makes this video so funny. We remember the original video and seeing the spoof along side the remembered original in our head, is what makes it work. It's what makes it funny.

So for thirty years, I've been thinking my tape recorders (now digital) where helping me mimic and reproduce a live musical experience. They were the magical machines. Maybe what I've actually been doing is using my recorders analogously to how my brain already works. The more magical machine.

And to me, one striving to make good recording, working to produce multimedia experiences that work, that's kind of comforting. It means I know how to make the perfect recording. I just need to tap into what my brain is doing so well already.

Gear Purge

Creative space, with the emphasis on "space."

Gearchild has had just about enough, um, GEAR. It's heresy, I know. After all, I've been into this stuff since I was a kid, poking around my fathers Telefunken reel to reel in 1968. But something has happened. The gear has ceased to be fun, and the music has faded behind the clutter. True, I've been winnowing my possessions down already, and it may be only temporary. But I decided to undergo a major purge.

What it boils down to getting realistic about what I'm able to do in my life. When "stuff" becomes something I'm responsible toward rather than something that's a help to me, it's a problem. And I'm not just talking about music gear either.

PERSONAL STATISTICS I have a more than full-time job, a spouse and three children. By the time I got to my studio after work, I was usually so tired that I resented my equipment.
Like that annoying kid down the block, it kept looking at me with its blinking red, green and amber eyes and repeating "Wanna play? Why don't you play with me? Here I am." "Get out of my face!" I shouted back and proceeded to log onto ebay.

THE DRUMS Read Garbage Drum Set for the history, but when it came down to it I wasn't playing or recording these drums. I used to be a drummer back in the day, but years operating a computer mouse has left my wrists and soft tissue tender. An afternoon pounding the kit felt great, but I paid for it the next few days. And drums are too loud to not bother my housemates and my kids show no interest in playing them or using them to jam with me or their friends.

So I sold the cracked Zildjian New Beat high hats, the Sabian 20" ride cymbal, the Tama Pedal, the 1970s 16" Paiste crash cymbal, the Tama high hat stand, and the two cymbal stands. After alot of packing tape and trips to the post office, what was left was the "garbage" part of the kit, the drums themselves. They are sitting in my garage. One is a Ludwig floor tom, I think (the badge is missing). The rest are no-name junky brands that have pretty much no value on the used market.

Come and get them.

KORG MICROx I wrote about my love for my latest synth recently. It interfaced well with my computer DAWS and had heaps of sounds. But getting at it all was sort of like looking for ants with a magnifying glass from an airplane. If you are over 40, do not even attempt to read the text on the front panel of that thing. Don't get me wrong, it's a great synth. But with the time I have for it, I just was scratching the surface. When it comes down to it I can make just about any sound I want on my Mac virtual synths. So up on ebay went the MicroX.


PHONIC FIREWIRE MIXER/AUDIO INTERFACE A grossly underestimated piece of equipment. A few years ago, for $300, I got this 12 channel firewire audio interface that is also an analog mixer with great effects. But I also have an Mbox for ProTools. I've gotten into Protools because that's what I use at work for editing audio for web multimedia. When it came down to it I figured I could do everything I needed with the Mbox. So some lucky camper picked up the used firewire mixer for about $100. If you want a firewire interface/mixer, I'd check these out. Not quite a Mackie, but it does a lot of the same stuff, and it's much cheaper.


RODE NT1A Microphone
A great condenser mic. Quiet and wonderful for voice or whatever. But when it comes down to it, I can do what I need to, get a basic idea down, with my Shure Sm58. Someone picked it up for $100.


CAMERAS AND BRIEFCASES
I rounded out my purge by looking beyond my music gear to my other valuable stuff. Saddleback Leather makes these amazing bags. Thick leather and cool basic styling. They are designed to last 100 years and cost at least a few hundred bucks each. I got one a few years ago. I loved it, the way it smelled, looked and was built. But it was too heavy to carry. It was breaking my back. Picked up $400 for it on ebay, almost what I paid. Someone got a great bag.


Finally, I got rid of my Olympus E-500 digital slr camera. A great camera, yes. I take lots of pictures, and always have. A camera is almost always with me. But this camera was about 2 or 3 years old and I figured it was going to break sooner rather than later. So I sold it too. A wedding photographer in Ohio picked it up with the lens and a bunch of extras and got a great deal at that. I took the money from all this stuff and got the new SLR I'd been wanting.

My music studio now boils down to this:

• My Mac laptop
• M-Audio Prokeys Sx keyboard.
• Mbox Mini.
  
• A bunch of virtual synths, notably ImpOscar.
• My Garbage Guitar (read about it).
• $200 Fernandez strat.
• Edirol powered speakers.
  

And I'm thinking of making it even simpler. Meanwhile I have room to breath, I can just sit down and play without getting strangled in wires or demanding lcd screens.

And, importantly, I have a little more peace, which is just what I need right now.



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