As most of you know, I run nwcMUSIC, a geekmusic festival held as part of the Norwescon science fiction convention. It’s new, this’ll be our third year.

We have concerts during the evening, but during the daytime, we have participatory programming, including an intentionally silly talent contest (Cascadia’s Got Talent, which is really Cascadia’s Got a Gong Show, and if you want to look up The Gong Show, go ahead, I’ll wait.)

Back? Good. Cascadia’s Got Talent actually gives out prizes! Terrible, terrible prizes. But I have a rule: we give junk as awards, not garbage. Anything given away has to be what it says it is, and has to work, even our terrible, terrible vacation tours to Beautiful Downtown Kent’s Historic Warehouse District.

(For the record: it’s a pair of Metro ride-free tickets. BUT IT WORKS.)

We usually end up giving away a couple of albums, too. The one I’ll never beat was Slim Whitman: Yodelling, but I’m pretty happy with this year’s finds so far:

Nothing says Dream Along like The Stars and Stripes Forever on Steel Drum

I think Musical Treasures of Holland speaks for itself. Still in shrink wrap! But Dream Away with the US Navy Steel Band is something special. Monophonic TRUE HIGH FIDELITY. And you’ll enjoy the monophonic recording even more played back on both speakers of a stereo unit!

On the back of the album, they printed the microphones used, tape deck used, record master etching lathe model, and crossover circuit specs.

It still sounds like it was recorded in a washroom, but that’s not important. I think I kinda love these guys. <3

The album is visually pristine. It’s also been played, a lot – somebody loved this album. Side 1 played fine, but side 2… side 2 wouldn’t track, on my turntable. The tonearm just kind of slid across, hopping from groove to groove.

At first, I was hugely disappointed, but then I started screwing with tracking and skating controls – putting more and different weights and skews on the turntable’s pickup arm, basically – and it would play for a bit, faintly.

And then the needle would clog. Now, if you’ve never used a turntable, they work this way: a tiny artificial diamond is attached, facing down, at the base of a very small rigid metal rod. This diamond rests in the etched grooves in the vinyl (or other material) album service. Changes in the width and height of the groove create vibrations in the small rigid metal rod, which are converted via very small magnets attached to the rod and the tonearm head into very small electrical currents, which form the analogue sound signal.

(So really, records recorded early enough – off live etching techniques – are literally captured soundwaves. Think about that, it’s awesome. But I digress.)

A modern turntable pickup “needle.” Originally? Actually needles.

A needle clogging refers to the gem and metal rod picking up so much cruft from the album being played that it gets lifted out of the sound channel and can’t pick up anything anymore.

I cleaned this album conventionally before putting it on the turntable. The surface looks pristine. The grooves were filled with gunk, somehow. Not in a visible way, but in a way enough to clog the turntable needle.

It may disturb you to know that I fixed it. Quadrupled the tracking weight, skew and antiskating boosted to unhealthy levels; it probably wouldn’t’ve worked as well in a stereo recording, but I managed to use the needle on my turntable to clean out the grooves.

Which, as it turned out, smelt of cigarette smoke. The album itself didn’t. The record sleeve smells fine. But the gunk coming out… kind of like cigarette smoke.

Fossilised.

And only on one side! Side 1 was fine! I don’t get that part. Side 2… well, it took a lot of work. I was cleaning and clearing the needle four to six times every song, the first couple of times through.

Honestly, it felt like archeological excavation. It really did. Every time, I’d get a bit more sound. A faint fuzzy noise would slowly resolve into distinct instruments. New background instruments would appear. One track, I’m pretty sure, was recorded live; you can now just faintly hear what sounds like audience, in the background, a couple of times.

Or something that sounds like that, anyway.

And now? It plays fine. It still sounds like the classic Old Record – lots of crackle, tho’ not nearly so much as it originally had – but entirely listenable. It works now. And so, it’ll be a prize at nwcMUSIC’s Cascadia’s Got Talent.

All of which is a really long excuse to post this awesome graphic:

Have a good weekend, guys. See you Monday!

First: Wednesday’s DIY post is going to be special. We have a guest appearance by Pegasus-award-winner Jeff Bohnhoff, of Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff. Jeff has been performing for 30 years, and has recorded and engineered literally dozens of albums from the studio he built in California.

Jeff brings far more experience and theory to it than I have, but is still delivering an affordable approach to the topic. If you’re into DIY and home recording, you will want to read this column.

As for me; Anna and I are back from VCON! Being all the way out in Surrey, it was Far Far Away times this weekend – I mean, I had to take a bus to the Skytrain – but the hotel was nice, and we brought home the usual collection of books (via a Friday morning run into Vancouver proper), bagels (courtesy Geri, who drive two dozen out to us all the way from Kitsilano, omg thank you!) and cider! Yum.

Lots of kaiju programming this year, which we thoroughly enjoyed, and the El Rons were funny as usual. We had to leave too early to make the Turkey Readings, though! So sad. I love acting those out. Schedule those before Sunday afternoon next year, guys! Some of us have to catch trains. ;_;

There was an extended panel on the pulp aesthetic which talked I quite enjoyed as well; I have a theory now that a lot of what broke the Action Hero Scientist – alive in well in the 1930s, mostly dead by the early 1950s – was the Nazi movement and World War II. Seriously, I mean it; that whole Ubermench/superman thing was entirely the point, and I think they threw it out of fashion for decades.

Before you say Jonny Quest: Jonny Quest tried to square the circle. He had two dads (and no mom: exploitable), effectively; Race was the physical half of the adventurer, Dr. Quest (Sr.) was the scientist half, and Jonny, the child of both, was of an age where he wasn’t either yet, but had the potential to be both. It’s a nice finesse, and I think has a lot to do with why it works. (Despite all its very, very, many problems.)

(And before you say Superman qua Superman: I think Superman survived because he isn’t human. But even with that, he went from “super-evolved/optimised super-man,” the pinnacle of ubermench achievement, to, effectively, “otherworldly demigod.” It’s a different category.)

KNEEL before SUPERGOD, KING of SUPERDICKERY!

Strangely, I saw no music programming on the grid. At opening ceremonies, a couple of different people asked what was up with that, and it turns out that their music lead had had to drop out on short notice before the convention, as had a couple of their music pros, so: no filk! But they also said that spontaneous filk was welcome.

And since, as Anna put it, she “can’t take me anywhere,” I found VCON Programming Head after opening ceremonies. Her first words to me were, “NO MORE CHANGES,” so I said, “Just gimmie a room, whaddya got?” She hesitated until I added, “You don’t have to do anything. Just give me a room.”

So she did and I, um, kinda, fixed the hotel printer (you’re welcome, Sheraton Surrey) and Doctor Who-ed my way through VCON Ops for supplies. And that’s how there were eight hours of filk programming and notices and wayfinding signs, and if I’d had any of my own equipment around (or wanted to fight the hotel’s systems some more) there also would’ve been branding, because that’s the kind of shit I do.

Then I went back to the restaurant, finished dinner, and had dessert. Custard. It was lovely.

Actually, creme brulee. Not so different.

I have to admit, I love Doctor Whoing my way through an organisation. And I love that fannish organisations tend to make it easy. “Hi, I’m the Musician. I desperately need gaffers tape and a marker of substance. What’ve you got?” XD

Friday night was a bit thin and only ran two and a half hours, but Saturday filled the Cypress Room. Hopefully everyone had a good time – we were going until something like 1:30 so that’s certainly a good sign. I certainly did. (Overdid it a bit, to tell the truth – my voice on Sunday was a tad… gritty.)

Sadly, I missed the Battlestar Galactica fan club party! I got there literally 30 seconds before they closed. I wish I’d got up there earlier, guys! I honestly didn’t expect Saturday filk to run so late. Thanks for the cupcake, though; it was yummy. ^_^

Anyway, that’s what I did. I hope you had a good weekend, and tell anyone interested in studio DIY about Jeff Bohnhoff’s guest post on Wednesday; they’ll want to give it a look. See you next time!

I’m in Vancouver, at VCON! Or will be by the time this schedule post goes live. XD Here, have some toys while I’m gone:

ONE: The Mighty If! shot this and was kind enough to let me repost it. If you’ve ever had terrible, terrible, terrible housemates – as so many of you have, and I have too? Well, then, this song is dedicated to you:

TWO: This is a working radio built in the form of a map of the London Underground. There’s a video at the article; play it, it’s worthwhile.

THREE: One million-millionth of a second exposures. That is, yes, 1,000,000,000,000 frames per second. Watch light pulse through a bottle, and observe the shockwaves. It is utterly astounding:

Have a great weekend, everybody!

I forgot all about Talk Like a Pirate Day! What a fool I am.

So for the next 24 hours, Cracksman Betty is a name-your-price download, including zero if that’s how you roll. That’s not 128k mp3 bullshit, that’s whatever format you like. Click here to listen and download!

The album has privateer songs, pirate songs, software pirate songs – we have songs of the run-running pirates of the land, we got pirates on leave rippin’ up shit in port.

24 hours only. Thursday noon it goes back up, so move quick!

So, I’m crazy with paperwork and stuff today, so I don’t have time for the last Newfoundland post. It’ll be up tomorrow morning, promise.

But! I did upload something over the weekend to my non-band YouTube channel. Back in Ye Daye, there was a fan stage musical parody of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan mashed up with West Side Story. Turns out this wasn’t on the internet, so I’ve taken my dying Nth-generation VHS copy, massaged the living hell out of it (and its sadly degraded soundtrack) and thus…

The Improvisational Insanity Theatre Corps, the Fish and Ships Players, and Clam TV, in extra-cooperation with CRIME and the Forces of Evil, proudly? present a battle for galactic turf: Wrath Side Story.

It was a stage musical, done with no budget at all, performed apparently at a few conventions. The video here doesn’t look great, but the sight gags are broad enough to come across anyway, and I think I’ve done some real good on pulling the audio soundtrack back in. Since I’m treating this as a restoration project, I’ve left in every frame I could, which includes some momentary audio drops on the original.

I’ve also managed to hide a lot of decay damage off the tape, partly through extending sections of good footage over bad, and partly through creative use of transitions. (A hint: the more complex the transition, the worse the damage I’m hiding.) There’s still one scene at the beginning where you lose picture, but it’s brief. There were… several. There are also some strange moments of sound sync I couldn’t fix without doing work which went beyond restoration.

If anyone with better equipment and more time wants to give it a go, I will happily lend you my VHS tape. But only if you’re serious about it. If you just want the raw rips, no problem; let me know.

One cultural note: the part of Dr. David Marcus in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was played by an actor who had previously played a character in the sitcom Square Pegs. The troupe decided it would be funny to play David Marcus as that character.

This goes entirely over my head, but it was apparently very funny at the time. So, it’s a little dated here and there – in particular, in that one decision – but I still think it’s pretty hilarious. Enjoy.

Hey, it’s Friday! This weekend is the first Norwescon concom meeting, and there’s lots of nwcMUSIC work to be doing. We’ve actually been going already all summer, but there’s a bunch of crunch work to be gone after now.

Have some interesting links:

World’s first colour film footage viewed for literally the first time. An Edwardian inventor in the UK had a system, and a patent, but didn’t get the projector finished before he died. This is full- and natural-colour motion picture footage from 1902.

How YouTube’s content-management system lets other people claim your work. This happened to NASA, to the Democratic National Convention, and to the Hugo awards just this summer. Personally, I’ve had four claims against my own work for videos I’ve uploaded. It’s bullshit.

TYPEFACE SELECTION MATTERS. Apparently, in ways I didn’t even realise; worth reading.

And I’ll let Grandpa Skrillex play you out. Have a good weekend, everybody!

aaaaaa so many things to talk about

Okay, a rundown of PAX 2012! Which is to say PAX Prime 2012. The Seattle one. I’ll do the last tour post later this week or early next.

I want to say first that I had a lot of fun at this event, particularly Sunday. I ran into a bunch of people again – HI JOSH! HI AHNA! HI PAUL AND JENNY AND ANNA AND JACK AND AUBREY AND ANGELA AND WOW I KNOW A LOT OF PEOPLE WITH NAMES STARTING WITH A AND I’M SORRY IF I FORGOT ANYBODY! – and continued my tradition of almost running into Wil Wheaton every year, by which I mean headlong, by which I mean collision avoidance.

HEY WIL WHAT IS IT WITH YOU AND DOORS ANYWAY? I don’t think he’s ever actually noticed. But I digress.

Panel programming included a surprising number of trans-inclusive queers-in-gaming events – including panels on transgendered people in the games industry and TG characters in games – and I saw a bit of a focus shift towards trying to deal with the harassment problem in online gaming. That’s good, because that’s a huge overdue deal.

PAX hosted a Match Game panel game as well, and while it had nothing on Kevin Standlee’s version at SF conventions – Kevin, your job is secure ^_^ – it still brought laughs. The two chiptunes panels I attended were really focused and informative – a rare positive moment from the DIY standpoint – and the game soundtrack composer’s panel gave me some insights into that process. Nothing I can use directly in the book soundtrack I’m working on, but good things to know nonetheless. So, good fun there. The Doubleclicks had an on-site show Sunday afternoon, courtesy WoTC! Yay! And lots of gaming fun, which I’ll talk about below.

Kirby!

All that said, PAX has changed. It couldn’t not change, of course; everything does, over time. But there are a few key shifts this year that I want to talk about.

First: it’s too large for what it once was. Until a couple of years ago, it was possible for there to be some attendee-driven thing that caught on and everybody knew about. All Hail Ball, the Bad Horse Chorus of 2010 – member-driven events like those.

That kind of can’t happen now. It’s just too big, and in too many places at once. Once a certain size is reached, the ability to have that kind of common spontaneity goes away, and I think it reached that point this year.

Cosplay is still good, tho’; yes, that’s motion blur, the beast walked

Secondly, and I think this is directly related, the attendee-driven nature has given way to an exhibitor-driven nature. While that shift started last year, this year really drove it home, at least for me. It’s trade show more than convention now; a really good one, but a trade show.

Now, a good trade show is a lot of fun. And PAX does crowd control fantastically well. I never felt herded, and convention-run queues were fewer, shorter, and quicker this year – which, ironically, may be part of the problem. Those long queues used to host queue games! People would game with each other in queue, and I didn’t see that so much this year. Maybe I just missed it.

The Horde

And, of course, the old Pictochat scene is gone, as is the Mario Cart scene. All that was interactive, but the new DSes don’t support Pictochat, and, well.

Finally, and relatedly, a lot of the DIYness seemed to be missing. Some of that is reflected in the lack of queuecon, some of that is reflected in the lack of ability to find out about it, and some of it is programming decisions. The Jamspace, of particular relevance to my interests, was gone. The Secret Level for tabletop from last year was dedicated to way-more-organised D&D and Magic, run by WOTC. There was still a good amount of unstructured tabletop space over in the main convention centre, but… yeah.

It’s a shift. Maybe it was inevitable, maybe it’s all a factor of size, I don’t know. But it’s different now. I had fun, but a different kind of fun.

Indeed

TO THE GAMES!

Sadly, no must-have large-event games this year! Not for me, anyway. BUT that doesn’t mean games sucked! The combined indie wing had a lot of interesting things going on, particularly Johann Sebastian Joust, a game which is difficult to describe without making it sound stupid – jostle opponent controllers, don’t let your own move too quickly, music tempo dictates allowable movement – but which is in fact hugely fun. It’s also the first good argument for having the PS3’s little weird lightstick controllers ever, at least as far as I’m concerned. I played that all three days, and if I had a PS3, I’d be on the waitlist.

Also, Bastion – written by an indie studio, now distributed by a larger group – is now on the iPad! I didn’t know! This is awesome. Of course I’m playing it now, what a silly question. 😀

I finally managed to get some tabletop in at one of these things! Yay! HEY, PAX GUYS, WE NEED SOME OTHER #TTLFG SOLUTION! With all the network fail, the twitter-tag system just isn’t viable. But again, I digress: Siberia is kinda-sorta RISK-but-economics, with the according changes in rules. Definitely interesting. Cards Against Humanity is exactly as horrible and exactly as hilarious as you may have heard. I will be buying that.

Mechwarrior isn’t even vaguely new, but the free-to-play Mechwarrior Online is, and while I used to play a lot of mech games, I haven’t lately. At least on their setup at show, the new Online was pretty damn smooth. But I think I liked Hawken‘s control behaviour a little better.

Similar but different: Shootmania: Storm. It’s an FPS that’s played in powered armour with mecha-like controls. And you guys it is SO MUCH STUPID FUN. It’s in Beta now, PC gamers sign the fuck up!

All three default to mouse control for targeting/view alignment, though; a couple of hours of that and my mouse hand was all HEY REMEMBER WHEN WE HAD THAT LONG CONVERSATION ABOUT NEVER FUCKING DO THIS AGAIN? THAT ONE? YEAH, THAT ONE. HAVE SOME REMINDERS.

At least you can remap to keyboard.

Assassin’s Creed 3 looked really good, but all you got to do was look at it. No hands-on. And: no sign of Bioshock: Infinite. Seriously, it was like it didn’t even exist. I know a bunch of people left Irrational in August; that’s an interesting combination of events.

Those were the highlights. SEGA was there still giving it the old college try, but honestly? I didn’t even hit the booth. Atari was playing the nostalgia market with 2600 game “remixes,” which is to say, “same gameplay, new graphics, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Honestly, that was sad.

Intel was giving away some pretty goddamn srs bsns hardware, of which I of course won none. Goddammit! But I did get a cape. It’s tear-away with velcro, so no chance of that whole unfortunate jet-engine messiness. In other words, thanks to velcro:

Capes are cool.

If you were there, what’d you think of the atmosphere shift? I know it wasn’t just me, but I’m curious who picked up on it.

it’s worked so far but we’re not out yet

It’s Friday! And a long weekend! And while I do indeed feel better (thanks for asking), I have a lot of catch-up to play.

BUT! I don’t want to send you into a long weekend without something. Here, have a long but interesting article on the history of progressive rock. Or if that’s not to your tastes, and you just want something to make you giggle uncontrollably? Can do, sport! Enjoy:

You’re welcome. ^_^

Back next week. Have a good weekend, everybody.

Remember this XKCD?

I am staring at Mission. Fucking. Accomplished. in my spam queue right now. In response to my post last week about studio monitors and the importance of flat frequency response curves:

The text:

Why have I included a frequency-response curve here? I mentioned earlier that the frequency-response curves in a sales brochure are typically meaningless in terms of providing information that’s useful to an end user. Actually, though, I’d go further than that, and suggest that in many respects making any judgment about the worth or likely value of a monitor by examining its frequency-response curve is not far short of pointless. I often read opinions on the SOS Forum arguing that to be of any value monitors require a ‘flat frequency response’, but numerous recordings made during what many would consider the golden age for musical sound quality (the ’60s and ’70s) were monitored on speakers that were all over the place in terms of frequency response — and I don’t know why recording engineers seem to believe so strongly that a monitor should be anechoically ‘flat’ when so much end-product evidence suggests that this isn’t particularly important.

Constructive. Relevant. Interesting. Starts an argument. And the blocked-out information reveals it to be a spambot.

I kind of want to approve it! I’m not. I’m going one further: elevation to top of post, and addressing the spambot’s point, since it had one. Congratulations, spambot, well done: you’ve earned it.

My response, I suppose, would be that the nonflat monitor speakers of the time were reasonably accurate representations of average home speakers, which were nowhere near flat either.

And once you got into the era of flat response curves being achieved, followed by an era of goosing-by-design (rather than nonflat-by-technological limitations), it became necessary to move to a neutral reference base for studios. Simply put, you can’t try to guess all the many ways that people intentionally-off-flat-response systems, so don’t try to optimise for any of them; optimise instead for the average of all of those systems.

I’d also argue that the late 60s weren’t my idea of a golden era of recording. There are some fantastic jazz and classical recordings from the era, absolutely, but a lot of rock and pop was still very fuzzy and often kind of muddled. To my ear, recording continued to improve up until the Loudness Wars – with a hiccough as everyone learned to deal with digital equipment – and that’s fashion, not technology.

So that’s why I still argue that in the current era going for flat – or reasonably close to it – is the best idea.

Your move, spambot. I’ll be checking the queue.

it’s not your fault… or is it?

Suddenly there are CHAINSAWS! next door. So, no recording right now! Enjoy some URLs instead:

Badass of the week: Julie D’Aubigny. Go read that, she was awesome.

In May, Pixar story artist Emma Coats tweeted a series of “story basics.” There are no doubt other versions, but this is one.

Blue lobster! Very rare, caused by a super-unusual genetic defect.