The RPM Challenge is just a couple of weeks away. I plan on setting up the stay at home pedal board and recording all of the guitars through it. I still need to get a wah wah pedal to complete the board. I will probably just get another standard cry baby. Nothing fancy like the Fulltone Clyde Deluxe on the band board.

That was the plan at least. Then the god damned Electro Harmonix folks had to announce they were reissuing an Op Amp version of the Big Muff Pi pedal. I had no interest in getting one before. I was all about the Triangle muffs and the Russian muffs. I didn’t have a desire to go for a V4, IC, or Op Amp muff (three names for the same circuit… in case you were wondering).

Then I saw the Billy Corgan video. I still didn’t want one, but I kinda wanted one. I mean, the Op Amp muff is the key to the gigantic mega massively huge amazing guitar sounds on the Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream album. One of my favorite albums ever, and one of the best guitar tones ever.

I would never use an Op Amp muff with the band. I’m pretty sure I am Russian muffs or bust on the band pedal board. But throwing some Op Amp muff on an RPM song or two? Maybe quadruple tracking guitar parts and going for a nice monstrous Pumpkinsy sound?

Musiciansfirend is out of them. Guitarcenter.com is out of them. Sweetwater is out of them.

It is literally gear acquisition syndrome torture. Literally!

Yes winter can be pretty, but it’s still a swift kick in the nards.

We had 3/4 or a band practice today. No singer, he is getting over the flu and his voice wasn’t available. The rest of us were there. It was more of a set stuff up and see if our fingers still worked kind of practice. We did, they do… almost.

I took the stay-at-home pedal board. I still don’t know why. I put the new Way Huge Russian Pickle on it and used that all night. I bought the pedal a week ago but I was too sick to actually try it out, so tonight was the first time I heard it at all. I liked it. Better than the Wren and Cuff Tall Font Russian? I don’t know. Maybe? Probably not. We’ll see.

Next week I’ll bring the big board and I’ll have a valid comparison.

Apparently today’s joyous revelation that one of my pictures made it to Flickr’s Explore page was not my first time on Explore.  Really?

Once, back in September, I got an invitation to add a photo to a Flickr Group called Explore.  I accepted the invite and ran over to Explore but I didn’t see my pic.  I went to the Scout script (Google it) and it said I had zero entries.  Huh.  Maybe the group admins got it wrong?  Oh well.  Nothing to get excited about after all.

Today I was messing with the Scout script (Google it) and it has a category called Dropped.  Huh.  I didn’t see that before.  I clicked it and lo and behold, that picture that got the group invite was there!

So apparently this photo was briefly on Flickr’s Explore before getting dropped.  It’s kind of disappointing because this picture is an utter piece of throw away crap.  It was actually meant as a text message to my step son to let him know where in the grounds of King Richard’s Faire I was sitting and waiting for him.  Oh well.

I feel like I won the lottery! I feel like the king of the world, Rose! (How ’bout you scoot over and share that door, Rosie?)

One of the pics I took while we were in town on Friday made Flickr’s Explore page. I’ve been posting junk on Flickr since 2009 and this is the first time.

Here’s a screen shot of my pic in Explore on the iOS app!

Here is a screen shot of the Explore Scout script result (Google it, it’s not a Flickr function)!

I feel like I just got promoted to the big leagues! I feel like I graduated!

I think it is time. Maybe.

The kids’ High School music department gave a performance at Boston Symphony Hall last night.  It was magic.  Talk about a once in a lifetime opportunity.  My step daughter is a soprano in the school chorus, and my step son is a percussionist in the concert band.

The concert opened with the chorus.  Their first piece was mostly just intertwined counter melodies.  Not a lot of harmony.  Not a lot of individual voices blending together.  In other words, it didn’t really take advantage of the space.  The second piece was big blocks of harmony.  Perfect.  All of those voices working together to project across the huge hall.  No mics, no amps, no sound reinforcement at all.  Just the perfect concert hall.  Everyone could hear every nuance as the voices filled the space.  I said to my wife, after the chorus finished, that is what music should sound like.  It was awesome.

It was awesome, but it didn’t quite reach the full potential.  You need a the band for that.  You need a big brass section to blow the doors off the place.  The room was so alive, it just sounded amazing.  Every note from every instrument filled the entire space.  It is the sound that everyone dreams of.

I had a moment during the concert band performance where I reverted back to my audio engineering days.  I thought of all of the racks of gear we had at Northeast Broadcast School, and all of the pieces of gear I bought to help me mix off of my old 8-track, and all of the plug ins in GarageBand.  You are always looking for the perfect reverb sound.  Springs and plates and rooms and halls and in some cases airplane hangers.  Digital representations of the natural echoes in all sorts of environments.  They can sound good, but they never ever sound good enough and even when you spend thousands of dollars, it never really sounds real.  The concert band was playing a piece that had a lot of loud stops and starts.  Every time they stopped with a bang, there was a second or two when the sound reverberated throughout the room.  After one stop I actually laughed out loud.  Jen thought there was something wrong.  There wasn’t.  It was just the perfect sound.  It wasn’t A sound, it was THE sound.  It was the sound everyone is trying to reproduce though no one ever gets it right.  The kids both got it last night.  Acoustic perfection.

After the concert was over we were out in the lobby.  I said to my step son, do you get it?  He said, Yes.  I didn’t have to explain what I was talking about, he just new.  He now gets what it’s like to perform in a real concert hall as opposed to an auditorium.  I am so happy the two of them had this opportunity.  I’m even more happy that they enjoyed it as much as they did.  They both clearly had a blast and they both did a fantastic job.  I hope this is something that sticks with them forever.

Bed head + Cat = Cat Head