Archive for the ‘diy’ Category

well that was unexpectedly easy: bongo drum mic stand mount

I’m working on Fake Drumkit part for Song for a Free Court/Anarchy Now, and it needed more real drums, so I got out…

Oh, right, it’s been a while since I’ve talked about Fake Drumkit. So the musical shtick behind the band – as opposed to the political/theme idea – is, “what if a bunch of elves heard metal and thought WE HAVE TO DO THIS” and used what they had.

Since that includes a drumkit, I make what I call Fake Drumkit. It’s made of real drums like bodhran and djembe and bongo and wood block and metal and glass, and fake drums like big sampled bass taiko or at least things which sound kind of like taiko. Anarchy Now also has three tuned glass cymbals. It’s gonna be awesome. n/

Anyway, I have a few drums recorded (and all those glass cymbals), but it needs more. And the bongos sound right so far. Not as bongos – I don’t play them as bongos, don’t expect that – but as midrange drums.

But I don’t have a stand, which makes them a pain to mic. So I drilled a hole in the little plastic bridge that holds the two bongo drums together, and epoxyed down one of those metal threaded rings that are on every mic stand ever and I don’t know why.


Anybody know what these are supposed to be for? They’re no good at anchoring mic clips, so that can’t be it.

I clamped it down with wax paper and tape, to keep the epoxy from sticking to the wrong things (like the clamp), and let it sit until this evening. Then I tried it tonight.


I’m holding the mic stand up, to be safe, but I didn’t need to.

Hey, it even looks kind of intentional:


Lots of room for underneath microphones

I’m a little worried about leverage on heavier strikes, but so far, so good.

Fake Drumkit is a lot of work, but I like it when it comes together. Wait’ll you hear the track for Something’s Coming. It’s not half as complex as this, but it’s totally bombastic – kind of 80s hair metal, really. BOOM BOOM BOOM awesome XD

eta: This one didn’t last. Here’s the new, still low-cost, and much stronger version I made later.

will you look at this stupid thing

It’s a pedal that’s an effects switch-in box, but it’s also just an A/B switch, so you can just switch between two devices. The two top plugs are from my zouk and mandolin, the output is to the recorder, I can pick which I’m recording. We’re doing this so we can record tomorrow’s show (6pm, The Dreaming, 5226 University Way, Seattle) with separate tracks for all instruments.

Note the extra cable sticking out the right side, which is connected to nothing. It’s there because the box won’t work without something being plugged in there. It doesn’t use anything that’s plugged in there; it just won’t work unless something is.

So I plugged in a signal-reduction cable. If we’re gonna have basically a noise antenna plugged in on stage to make this dumbass pedal work, I’m by gods gonna use a noise reducing noise antenna.

Honestly some days I don’t even know. This isn’t as bad as the USB-cable-to-nowhere I’ve got in the server room to make the KVM switch work, but it’s close. At least that cable plugs into something on both ends.

Which poster would you think was better?

This came up in talking about posters for this Saturday’s joint show with Leannan Sidhe at the Dreaming. (6pm, 5225 Univeristy Way NE, Seattle, hope you’ll be there.) What matters more in a poster graphic: relationship to music or dynamism?

I had came up with this poster design:


YELLING

The background image is from a comic, drawn comic style, which makes sense because hi, comic book and gaming store, and we’re doing some related songs, so it all works. I think it’s quite dynamic and eye-catching, which was my primary consideration.

Shanti, quite correctly really, felt it didn’t relate to her music, and she came up with some other imagery for the background. That’s what made the official poster:


Godking Owl Has No Pity For You

It’s a good image, I like it. It is more evocative of her music. It’s also lower contrast, and less dynamic from a distance. The eyeflow is still good, but… as a designer, I think it’s less attention-grabby.

So, as someone seeing these posters, which matters more to you? A graphic that is more grabbing (but not as evocative of the music style), or one that grabs less attention (and thus makes people less likely to see it) but which is more evocative of the music on some level?

And does it matter if you already know the music or not?

I tried to fit this into a poll, but couldn’t quite get it together in my head. So I’m just asking outright, in text. Do you think relationship of poster graphic to music is more important than eye-catchiness in show posters? Would you even think about the two if you went to a show, or would you forget about it as soon as you walked in?

an inexplicable amalgamation of sounds

No, that’s not the new album title. The people on the other side of the top of the hill have started doing Something which smells occasionally like asphalt, and occasionally like rubber, and sounds like a combination of drills, compressors, and dumpster juggling. We can’t see them from here, but wow, can we hear them. Any ideas what they’re doing? ‘Cause we don’t know.

i have to try this

Okay, so people who have been out of the loop, Livejournal has gone through another purchase/”merger.” I know, I know, “Livejournal? Really? That’s still alive?” And you have a very good point.

But honestly this new ownership is the most responsive I’ve seen since Brad sold the place. They’ve been asking users what they want, they’ve put back in subject lines in comments, they’ve made all sorts of changes that people actually seem to want made.

Including, in response specifically to me, long-overdue resumption of support for Bandcamp embeds. That used to work, and stopped working, about three years ago? Whenever Bandcamp went to iframes for their players. Previous ownership didn’t answer questions about it. Current support just said ‘Okay!’ and “bandcamp embedding should work now!”

O.o

Which is the entire point of this post. Let’s see if this works, shall we?

eta: oh my gods it works. This hasn’t worked in three years. SEE HOW WE STOMP FOR… Livejournal?

Welcome, GAMCON attendees!

If you’re here, you’re probably looking for the Kitting Out Cheap downloadable handout. Well, here you go. Thanks for coming to the panel!

You might also be looking for the Free Music Set, and that’s right here, one song a year from the last five. I’ll probably add a new song later this year, too, so check back.

How was GAMCON for you? I’m queueing this post up in advance, so I can point you to it during the panel. So I have no idea yet. SPEAK TO ME, PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE! Give to me your wisdom! And your death rays. I need them, you see. For reasons. Business reasons.

how not to encourage promotional payments

Facebook is now doing this to me pretty much every time I hit the site:

That’s not the first one, either. Seriously, it’s most of the times. That might be because I do not exactly stay on Facebook all day, but this is very much not encouraging me to change that behaviour.

It’s like they have some sort of bet going. “How unpleasant and annoying can we make this before people give it up?” I already mostly treat it as a bit of a write-only medium – I skim, but that’s it. And that’s with Social Fixer running, and ad block. The bait-and-switch approach to content – it’s all just kind of awful.

I mean, honestly. How many of these do they think I need to see?

I also want to mention their whole horrible human experimentation thing, but it kind of trivialises both to combine the two. (I mean, as someone who has done research, I want to know exactly who the hell was on their Human Studies Board, just for starters.)

It’s crazy to me, yet I’m still kinda-sorta hanging on, because of the near-necessity of maintaining at least a minimal presence there. I don’t want to; I feel like I’m compromising, at this point, in ways I really do not like.

And yet it’s all so many people will use. If you’re a serious Facebook user, I really have to know – why? Everything they do is horrible, yet so many people refuse to use anything else, no matter how terrible they get. Why?

eta: I see XKCD is in on this question today, too.

music in the post-scarcity environment part 9: google makes its move

Marian Call got my attention yesterday with this tweet:

So I went looking around, and yep, it’s absolutely true. The Guardian also has commentary, as does ars technica, but the Bloomberg article is a bit more in depth.

YouTube wants to solve its “being a radio station” problem with a new streaming service, apparently, and if you as an artist don’t like it, they’re going to exile you. One imagines they won’t outright throw non-new-service-licensing videos offline (tho’ that might actually happen), but they can do a whole hell of a lot by whittling them out of search results. (And, apparently, getting all letter-of-the-law on accessibility.) Several smaller/indie labels in Europe are suing for regulatory intervention to prevent this; I’ve no idea how that will go.

It’s a huge loss, if it plays out as reported. Last I checked – a couple of years ago – YouTube amounted for nearly 70% of music plays on the Internet. Google are the new gatekeepers, and wow, does that suck, because “Don’t Be Evil, Inc.” has been busily showing what a lie that was this entire decade.

Now me, I don’t have a big YouTube presence; I’m barely there at all. Really, I’m only there so if someone actively looks for me, they find something. I’m not on even an “indie” label. I haven’t been asked boo about this initiative and I’m sure I won’t be – which means I sure as hell won’t be on their new service. I’ll be locked out.

On the other hand, I’m likewise sure they won’t be throwing off my tiny-viewership live videos. But damn, folks. A lot of people (Hi Molly!) have gained a lot of traction (Hi Doubleclicks!) on YouTube, and … will this hit them? I don’t know yet.

But it does almost certainly say that this particular onramp – a big onramp – is henceforth closed. Sure, you can still upload your videos. Shame if nobody was to find them.

And that’s certainly one problem. With this action, Google/YouTube have taken the gatekeeper position so many people (hi) have been worrying they’d take. Right now, it’s music. What next?

A further specific music problem gets discussed over here at the generically-named Music Industry Blog. Basically, Apple loss-leads content to sell hardware, with their music service, this claims. Amazon does the reverse – loss-leads hardware to sell music/content.

Google/YouTube’s plan is to loss-lead on both, in order to own you. Which is Google’s business model in general, of course. But the downside is that it means they’re placing no value on either music or music technologies – they’re both just lures. Which has the psychological effect of further devaluing the idea of music having value – bringing zero-value thinking to streaming services as well.

That’s possibly already a lost battle – see also how the music industry made “music ownership” have negative value – but if there’s more damage to do, I’m wondering if these clowns won’t find it. I’ve previously discussed how streaming/banking services keep alienating customers with constant appearance and disappearance of shows, due to licensing games. This takes “licensing game” up another whole new level.

In a real way, it’s another prevention-of-plenty action. Like the cable companies and the so-called “internet fast lane,” which means slow lane for you and me, Google is gaming the system to benefit themselves and the other large companies with which they are making these deals, at the expense of everyone else.

Let’s limit supply of music on YouTube to that from other large corporations. Let’s try to implement some artificial scarcity.

Is that the plan? Maybe. Where there’s a way, there’s a will, and this part of the supply-constraint game is the opposite of new.

But will it work? Good question. Looks like we’re about to find out.
 
 

This is Part Nine of Music in the Post-Scarcity Environment, a series of essays about, well, what it says on the tin. In the digital era, duplication is essentially free and there are no natural supply constraints which support scarcity, and therefore, prices. What the hell does a recording musician do then?

why distance recording matters

One of the songs Anna wanted on the soundtrack album is a traditional piece called John Barbour. It’s the slow song on the album, but this post isn’t about that. It’s about distance recording.

I’ve spent lots and lots and lots of time talking about room conditioning in building home/personal studios. But I’ve also talked about the many benefits of gathering as much signal (what you’re trying to record) vs. noise (airplanes, busses, motors in the distance) as possible, which is usually achieved by close-miking. Close-miking still needs room conditioning, but honestly, not as much – you simply hear less room when the instrument is up in your metaphorical face like that.

(Hey, look, see, I can learn – I spelled it “miking” even tho’ there is no K in microphone. It’s MICrophone, not MIKrophone. See also: why “No.” is a stupid abbreviation for “number.” Perhaps I should compromise and use the cyrillic letter к instead. No? No.)

But this song is one of those times when I needed distance mics. Some instruments need space for their sound to develop. That sounds like woo, but it’s not; it’s certainly not subtle in the recordings, particularly with percussion.

I’m playing Quebec-style spoons on this song, along with zouk, and… nothing else, actually. Yeah, it’s that kind of song. Slow, simple.


And full of spoons.

Mic spoons close and to prevent clipping you have to damp the input down so far that all you get is a tic noise, with no secondary tones and no character at all. But mic these from a distance, say a metre or so – with in this case, an Oкtava mк-319, lol cyrillic see what I did there – and you end up with something that sounds like what you hear in real life.

Same goes for violins, and cellos too, to a lesser degree, and others. All of which is why you need the ability to distance mic if you’re recording live instruments.

And I have it! So what in Dick Tracy was a nightmare of equalisation, compensation, suboptimal microphones, weird compromises, and labour, turned into a simple setup, with a single take, and done.

Hannibal from A-Team: I love it when a plan comes together.

So do I, Hannibal. So do I.

in honour of three hours of sanding dubious paint and rust

In honour of sanding and painting the only one that actually needed either – the better two cleaned up just fine, to my surprise – have this homemade storify of tweets from last weekend.


…ist used to own this, anyway? (Twitter cut it off.)
 

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