Or maybe the world is getting too young. As I approach middle-age, I see the dream of finally having a million dollar idea or even a couple thousand dollar idea fading. I read about company acquisitions and people making billions off ideas I think are terrible but the rest of the populace is on board for. I try to establish some kind of artistic relevancy, but I never had any and it seems unlikely I’ll get any now. This very blog now feels like a fucking anchor… tying me up, in the depths, rusting, and completely unnoticed by human kind.
Dave Brockie (1963-2014) Oderus Urungus (1984-2014)
Words fail. Tears don’t.
Continue reading “Dave Brockie (1963-2014) Oderus Urungus (1984-2014)”
Screening for Vengeance: Ghoul Tour Poster
I think Digestor from the band Ghoul is a fabulous artist. That’s why I decided to print, outside of my time working for Monolith Press, their upcoming tour poster. In no way did Digestor and the crew from Ghoul hold an axe to my throat and threaten to eat my family if I didn’t agree to do it. Nope, it was all because I believe in Digestor’s art. And that’s how they got this:
Digestor supplied me with the drawing and I was violently forced to happily did all the coloring and separations. Now, just because this was a poster for a maniacal lunatic guy whose art I really like didn’t mean I couldn’t make things a little easier on myself for the actual printing. Being a printer by day meant I had a few tricks up my sleeve to ease this poster along with minimal headache.
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Mondo Morley Medicale: RWV Rotating Wah
So you think you’re analog, eh? You always use physical faders for your volume swells, you only record to tape, and you have that nifty vibrato guitar pedal with a BBD IC chip. I call bullshit. That’s not analog enough! An IC chip? Well, domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, but no arigato. If you want that pedal to be even more analog, you need to send your guitar signal through an aluminum disc covered in oil to rubber pickups. WTF? Here’s one of the biggest stomp boxes you’re likely to ever see, the Tel-Ray Morley RWV Rotating Wah.
Raymond Lubow invented the oil can echo in the 1960s for his company, Tel-Ray Electronics, to be a more reliable device than the tape-based echoes of the time. Smaller than a tape echo, it was also able to be added by amplifier manufacturers to their products. It uses an aluminum disc rotating in an electrostatic oil which brushes against conductive rubber pickups to carry the sound. Raymond used the same technology to create the Morley rotating speaker simulator and shove it into a pedal. The name was a pun on the Leslie (less-lee) rotating cabinet speaker. Thus a company was born and we all got ever-so confused. Now imagine you have a broken one. Fuck.
Mic Hunt: Shure SM7B
I have an Amazon Wish List a mile long. They’re dreamy items because I dream of having disposable income to spend on them. Maybe some dreamy billionaire who reads my blog will think I deserve a present. On Christmas Day, my brother surprised me with what he dubbed a “baller gift” from said list. He’s had a good financial year, so he gifted accordingly with a Shure SM7B. Fuck to the yeah.
I don’t own much in the way of equipment that’s not been used. Like, almost nothing. It’s a big deal for me to get something like this without a hunt on craigslist. I’ve wanted a really good vocal mic for some time and the Shure SM7B fit the bill. If it’s good enough for Michael Jackson, then it’s good enough for me. That same logic is how I also got addicted to prescription drugs and why I’m always trying to hang out with Macaulay Culkin.
Operating Theater: Gallien-Krueger 400RG
Mauz from Kicker had this interesting paperweight laying around the shop for awhile over at Monolith Press, where I work my day job. Turns out, it used to make noise. This was a remnant of the eighties, a Gallien-Krueger GK 400RG in all its solid-state and rack-mountable glory. It had its own crusty history as the amp for Geoff Evans from Skaven followed by Mauz when he recorded guitar for Dystopia’s “The Aftermath.” It also had a history of blowing up and some questionable, tweaky repairs with non-spec parts.
Mauz asked if I would take a looksy, so it went from a paperweight at the shop to a paperweight in my room. I wasn’t jumping at the chance to work on it. Fixing solid-state amps is a bitch. There’s so many little things that could be wrong or blown and you can’t always see it. You actually have to be smart… or you can blindly test everything a gazillion times until you get it right. So, yeah, testing everything it is.
Logarithmic Fades, Linearly Speaking
I had a very frustrating conversation the other day about a fade out on a song. I thought it sounded too fast. To me, it sounded very linear. I was trying to explain it should be a logarithmic fade out. Sarcastically, I was told I should teach a class on the subject if I flippin’ knew so much. So fuck it, class is in session. When speaking about audio, what does one mean when using the terms “linear” and “logarithmic?”
For a linear fade out, a linear equation of the dB decrease could be shown simply as y=e*x+dB, where e is a negative number. That’s a straight line heading downward. When speaking about “logarithms” in audio applications, though, it’s actually describing several things: exponential and logarithmic curves, and their reverse functions. For a “logarithmic” fade out, the function would be y=ex*dB, where e is a number between 0 and 1; that is an exponential function showing decay. For fade ups, the function can be reversed to y=ex/dB to show an exponential increase in volume. Fucking confused, yet? YES!*
More Maniacal Layouts
While I’m sure some of it had to do with the fervent fan base and maybe even partially the music, it’s nice a record I did the design and layout for was voted Pirate’s Press “Record of the Year” by Facebook voters. Ghoul’s Maniaxe LP won the prize, but let’s be honest…. it was mostly ’cause of the layout, right?
Doing the layouts on a 10 year old record is no joke. A lot of people were waiting for Ghoul’s second full-length to be on vinyl for a long time and expectations were high. I didn’t want the packaging to disappoint. It wasn’t easy because 10 years ago no one bothered to make sure everything was prepped for this big-assed release.