DRL Echobox

whether or not the explosives in iraq dissappeared before or after US troops set eyes on them doesn't change the fact that invading that country has unleashed a storm of terrorist-encouraging weapons and idealogy. but in case you think the Bush's honor hangs in the balance on the issue of when the explosives were raided, here's an article with photo's of the bad stuff, taken in the presence of US troops.

in other news, this has been a weekend of shows for me. strength last night, as amy recounted, was strong. also at dusk tonight in eugene - i'm thinking there might be some new material to hear.

oh yeah, it was awesome, i saw the pet shop dude put a scorpion in his mouth, but not eat it. i don't even like the idea of touching such a thing.

it seems like i only talk to my family members when thier computers are broken. so, in august, before coming back to portland, i helped my grandma buy a new iBook. with wireless, so she wouldn't have to worry about network cables. i got it all set up and took her through the steps of checking and sending email a few times, before i left for portland.

i hoped my mom would be able to drop by once a week or so and click 'Mail' in the dock, or just make sure grandma had it under control. but she's a busy lady, so no luck. i just found out this weekend that my uncle in LA now has grandma's computer and is trying to sell it for her. when she decides she not interested in something, there's no talking her back into it.

so now i have to decided if i want to buy the computer from her, it might do me some good but it's not the computer i would pick for myself. decisions, decisions.

saturday was our big live day with matilda catches fire, where we had the whole band in the studio for the length of the day. for two songs, we got it.

last night i brought home a copy of 'space' and 'the house that god built'. it was extra mindblowing to listen to something at 48kHz (sounds real sweet) but on top of that it was really the first time i got to hear the band play in the comfort of my own home. it's funny how the things you think are sloppy in the studio turn out so much tighter when you're listening at home. its also nice to listen to something with no compression.

i'm starting to think that while Gabi's room is a headache to work with sometimes, it is worth it because in the end you've fought hard for the sound you got, and you can hear the attention to detail. i'm also getting excited to do vocals on these songs. some combo of amp fuzz and delay, phaser, etc.

I've been thinking some about the crisis of faith in America. Too many people, too much faith.

It's a knee-jerk reaction to something that's been happening a lot lately - the legislation of belief. I see people voting 'yes' on 36 all over America, and the only reason to do that is fear.

well, anyway, I've been thinking of building a meme-bomb to eradicate religion. but how to do such a thing? I'm no anthropologist, but an ethnography of the born-again would be a noble project, for someone qualified. Amy thinks ethnography is by its nature, derogatory, colonial, of judgment. yet I'm curious of how the other half lives: a statistic in the new york times says 42% of Americans are born-again or evangelical.

a meme-bomb: a book, an idea, a popular song. this is like propaganda, but I think I'd be imposing no ideology, except that of doubt. this, of course, is an outpouring of my ideology of doubt, instilled by a hunderd-thousand dollar and up education. So am I converting the born-agains to my ideology (perhaps some sort of rationalism, secular humanism, or otherwise), or am I merely instilling doubt in them?

As a practical matter, instilling doubt might be easier. Would it be yet easier to take them to a 'Live and let live' outlook, or is that too complex. Fear is a powerful motivator, but doubt has a tenuous relationship with fear, let alone to faith.

So it comes down to doubt. How to instill a doubt-bomb in American thought? Once again, I think Jon Stewart did a good job on 'Crossfire'.

John Stewart is my new hero. Find the torrent of his appearence on Crossfire on boingboing.net.

Se Kerry's Knows

tonight i'm listening through old at dusk tracks and taking notes - working on a masterpiece DAA6.

sessions today went well, in that they happened. we cut basics for "House That God Built" in 3 hours or less. that was our greatest work/time ratio yet. keep it up, boys!

i'm always pushing, pushing, to do it live, with bands. the more players in the room - if the band can manage that kind of thing, and i mean even schedules, - the tighter, closer, easier tracks we can record - a live day, no bassist.+++

luckily we have next saturday as well.

I told Ed in the Car. (jesus i'm not very good at this capitalization.) that i'd thought for a minute that we'd lost grasp of the sessions there. like a near fumble, in football, but we pulled it off, and in return for the risk we've got a chance at a touchdown.




Amy's been very good to me lately, I feel lucky.

Real Genius T-shirts

allright

each time i work with a band, pieces of the puzzle come together. on Heights it was that the sound of a band playing together is the only thing that sounds like a band playing together. that, and that the energy you put into a record is what you get out of it. on the current project, with Matilda Catches Fire, the pieces are a little bit smaller. guitar tone is one big success. it comes down to listening, recording, adjusting, and listening again. a guitar can sound dead when it is recorded by itself, but get another one going at the same time and it comes to life.

another piece of the puzzle i was confronted with tonight is vocals - Ed threw down scratches on two songs tonight, and while the energy was there in the room, it did not come back out on playback. i think with vocals, you kind of have to throw the rule book out. at least they were scratch vocals, i hope they don't sour Ed to the notion of recording vocals, but rather make him determined to tackle the real thing when they come.

http://sltl.blogspot.com/

my dad has a blog!

i have a couple days off from the sessions so i made dinner tonight for the people i live with, and we watched TV.

i also ran some spectrum analyzer tests on the ramsa, which didn't really tell me anything i didn't already know, but it was fun to hear the eq's applied to white noise. also, did some a/b ing of the mixer vs direct signal. amy likes the sound better through the ramsa, i think it is missing some low end - the sort of thing that makes a difference on missy elliot but not elliot smith.

i'm gonna go listen to some more music before i call it a night.

loogy, ruggy, dbam, thrz.

last night i went to shuanas party and katie and sarah and katie and emily and a keg and amy played a show with a real PA.

"the real PA" it's like tripple hotter than the OC/

i've been in the studio with Matilda Catches Fire, Ed's rock band. we're working in a garage studio, with a decent sounding room, a modest mic collection and a behringer 32 track board going to ProTools.

On the first day, I walked in the room and turned getting drum sounds from a frustating hit-or-miss, knob twisting experience, into a productive, exciting sounding endeavor. The secret is not something I came up with, or anything really that secret. it's just a bottom-line rule of recording everyone learns soon enough: start at the source.

when the kick drum sounds too 'bouncy', like a basketball - not a sound i mind, but not what the drummer was looking for, start at the souce. tune the drum - dropping the front head a half turn made a huge difference. putting a little bit of blanket against the beater head (which i've never done before) also didn't hurt for what we were going for. when you hear what you want in the room, and only then, is it time to put the mic up.

why professional? because i have to go to work tomorrow! 10am, to listen to cds, schedule tracking, and i'm getting paid. woo hoo!

i'm just typing this so it'll be there.

fine. ok. i fixed phantom power on the ramsa. the 1/4 jacks are a no go. kinda the opposite of what i expected. (1/4 -easy, phantom -nearly impossible.)

it's 8:15 in the morning, and Jem and I just started the install process which should, hopefully, if all goes well, take us back to someplace slightly less advanced than where we were after 6 hours of work. ah, linux.

so with this clean install, we're gonna have to reconfigure everything, from apache to mysql, and recreate all the users. but it is a chance to do it right the first time. the m4dz server was a little janky, with multiple installs of things all over the place.

i'm thinking about taco bell, but am hesitant to say anything.

went to lunch with luke and meghan today, at Genie's. then to Luke's house (ie. he's a homeowner), which had the biggest front yard i've seen in PDX. it was fun to see luke, as its been more than a year now, i think. and meghan i haven't seen since last thanksgiving. they seem to lead a pretty balanced existence - video games, school / work, and not doing the yardwork. a little like things around here.

our house right now is in a deep state of disarray. there is much that needs doing. yesterday we embarked on a grand project to rearrange the upstairs and filter the knick-knacks down to essentials. my my. all i want to do is hook up the mixer and get cracking on something or other - i don't care what. but first, to clean the living room, upstairs, the kitchen.