One of my oldest friends, Brian Malouf, emailed me at about 2 this AM to remark on the Giant City music files archived on the Compositions page. Blasts from the past and all that. It occurred to me that there were actually a number of other tracks I hadn’t uploaded and linked to. Fixed that. Brian also offered some thoughts on digital recording that triggered my finally locating the answer to earlier confusion about mixing multiple audio tracks to a single stereo track using SONAR. The answer came as a function of looking for the information I needed to accurately pose the question. Duh: File / Export… It was almost embarrassing. Obviously, I’ve used these tools too long with just MIDI (and simplistically at that), and still haven’t completely shaken the “analog studio” thinking from the old days – where a mixed performance in its entirety would be recorded onto two-track. Computers… 30+ years and some aspects of them still escape me. Thanks, Brian.

And by the way, I was sorely remiss in not mentioning on that page that the guy who was actually responsible for collecting all the Giant City stuff in one place (i.e., two Audio CDs) some years ago was another old friend, Bob Bruning (faculty member at Hamilton Academy of Music). Thanks, Bob.

While up in MA training for my new job, I got together with another old friend, Brian (not Malouf , from my Army days in Berlin back in the ’70s. We spent some time reminiscing about our off-base apartment on Paulinenstrasse (near Andrews Barracks), the enormous amounts we used to drink, the wacky schedule we used to work (and the wacky place in which we worked). Brian and his wife Barb also introduced me to one of the best margaritas I’ve had in a long time (several, actually). Thanks, Brian. I’m working on reverse-engineering the recipe… though it may take considerable experimentation!

Another old friend finally came back into the picture on Friday: on my way home from MA I stopped to pick up my Lyle 12-string (acoustic) guitar. The Lyle was a birthday present to myself when I first got to DLIWC (Monterey, CA) back in 1973, and I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere here that it’s one of the oldest things I personally own. Over the years it had gotten pretty literally beat to sh!t though, thanks to being lugged halfway around the world without a decent case, being stuck 8” into the sand one day when I took a soft spill on my motorcycle (it was bungie-corded to the sissy bar), being left in extremely dry air year after year here in CT, etc. Eventually the top warped, the neck bowed, it became virtually unplayable, and sat in an old cardboard guitar case (heh… one I got from Brian Malouf back in ’78, IIRC) for about 10 years.

With the resurgent interest in music last year, I recalled the number of times the sound of that guitar – just an inexpensive Japanese instrument of no real note (NPI) – had been complimented by musicians, studio engineers and the like. It had a beefy low end that’s not characteristic of most 12-strings, which are typically pretty reedy-sounding. Anyway, after looking around for quite a while, our friend Deja referred me to Jane Hamel up at the Fretted Instrument Workshop in Amherst (MA) who agreed to restore it.

“Restore” is actually not the word for what Jane did to this instrument however. She essentially reinvented it, and it now plays and sounds better than any Martin or Taylor 12-string I’ve ever heard, including the T5 another old friend – Bryan … yes, I have a number of friends named Bri/yan – brought over some months ago (Bryan’s T5 still gets the award for most beautiful 12 I’ve ever seen, though – sorry Jane . A new grade-A sitka spruce top was the main ingredient, but everything else was fixed (again, an understatement) and it’s now more of a joy to play than ever. In fact I’m giving my sore fingertips a rest today after having played it most of Friday night and yesterday. Thanks, Jane – you did more than a beautiful job on this old friend of mine!

Ok – finally got something recorded that I can stand to listen to. This was the best single take of Those Who Wait I could throw down this morning. Not as dynamic as usual, but then I’m playing “sound engineer” while performing, so it may take some time to minimize that distraction. One step at a time…

Those Who Wait (Tommy Emmanuel) – MP3 – 256kBps -10.2MB

Those Who Wait (Tommy Emmanuel) – MP3 – 128kBPs – 5.4MB

Setup:
Larrivée OM-09E -> Rode NT-1 Condenser Mic -> M-Audio AudioBuddy Preamp -> Tascam 1804 -> SONAR 6

Mix:
96kHz x 24bit Stereo Track -> Compressor* -> Reverb* -> Eq* -> Export to 44.1kHz x 16bit WAV -> MP3**
* All Cakewalk effects
** Used AudioGrabber for conversion from WAV to MP3.

Feedback appreciated.

OK… so this is the first time in recent memory – or hell, extended memory for that matter – that I’ve actually had a better computer system at work than the one I personally own and use at home. I can’t decide whether or not it’s a good thing I recently updated/upgraded my home system. If I hadn’t, I’d definitely be spoiling for a new one right now.

On balance, the new job has definitely been a positive change. I suppose fifteen years of contracting/consulting and/or working for (both real and imagined) startup companies can have a tendency to make one jaded, but the past four days have been quite a pleasant surprise. Facilities are nice and the people are genuine and very friendly, which I wasn’t expecting from a large, “impersonal” corporation. Benefits: excellent, plus. Also, I’ll be getting formal product training right off, which I think is extremely cool (it’s the way I’d do things, anyway, if I ruled the planet).

I’ve already had several deep technical discussions with the team, and it’s apparent the last five years’ experience will definitely be valuable (and valued – what a concept!). The project is pretty much at the start, so I’ll get a good chance to pitch ideas, which is always fun whether or not they’re ultimately used. And the folks there seem more than open and interested in actually listening and considering, which will be a welcome change.

Plus, I ran into Mark – a drummer with whom I played briefly about 10-11 years ago in a galaxy far, far away! That was pretty cool. He’s still going strong (check out here and here), which is great to see. Didn’t know he was working there. Wonder who else I’ll run into.

I’ve finally done some more audio experimenting and learned a few new things.

Thing One: the Larrivée OM-09E’s L.R. Baggs iMix Notch system turns out to have a very distinctly ‘digital’ sound when direct-connected to the Tascam AI (with or without an in-line preamp). I can’t decide if it’s square-wavey or sawtoothy, but it’s definitely not anything approaching the nice, round sine-wavey sound I hear coming out of the thing acoustically. This is kind of a bummer, actually, and what’s worse – I didn’t notice it before – but now I can ‘hear’ this not only in recorded tracks but coming out of the amp when I plug it in, as well. Big, big difference from the (much nicer) recorded sound I get from acoustically mic’ing with the Rode condenser. One might say that’s to be expected, but I would have thought the electronics in the guitar would produce something that’s a little more faithful to the actual acoustic sound, given that it’s far from a low-end instrument (and system). Almost kind of glad I didn’t have one put in the Lyle, now – which, by the way, will positively, absolutely, definitely, no-way-it-won’t be home on the 27th (yes, smartass… of this month!).

Thing Two: having done mostly one-the-fly mixes of multitimbral MIDI synth stuff up to now, it has occurred to me that I’ll be needing to do some creative patching to mix multiple audio tracks down to stereo. I may be missing something obvious, but it’s certainly looking like I need some way (like an SPDIF cable, etc.) to feed the mixed output back into the Tascam in order to capture and record it in SONAR on a stereo track (or pair of mono tracks). More reading needed…

In other news – I’ve been watching the John Adams miniseries on DVD. Very fascinating stuff. Quite different how the violence of the time period has been consciously played down – happening ‘off camera’, as it were – in favor of showing its actual effect(s) on the individuals. This puts a lot more demands on the dialog and the actors, IMHO. Oddly, the music strikes me as a combination of Greg Edmondson’s work on Firefly and some of the passages from Last of the Mohicans (either Edelman or Jones – not sure which). It fits, though some of the scenes depicting The People singing seem a bit strained. Might be intentional, as the times were most definitely strained, to say the least.