Category: iphoneography

18 Volts

I did some playing tonight, which seems to be the routine during my little quarantine adventure. Strangely, with 45 songs in progress I currently don’t have any songs waiting on guitar parts. All 45 songs have rhythm guitars complete, and the songs that don’t have leads yet also don’t have vocals yet, and I don’t like recording leads before vocals so… I currently am not waiting on any guitars.

That is so weird.

On a gear front, Prior to our little quarantine adventure I had not been using the pedal board I use with the band, so I have not been able to try the Wampler Plexi Drive Mini at 18 volts. I like to use the Plexi Mini for noisy, distorted, rawk sounds, and I like to use some form of a Klon style pedal for boosting cleanish sounds. I also like to run the Klonish (in the bedroom recording board it’s a Ryra The Klone pedal, and on the band board it’s a Klon KTR) first so that it pushes the holy hell out of the noisier pedal that follows it. Unfortunately, when I put the Plexi Mini after the Klon or the Klon Klone and then into a low (15 watt) wattage amp I end up with a sloppy, awful, over compressed, squashed mess. In the bedroom setup I am only able to run pedals at 9 volts. On the band board I have a couple of 18 volt options and I thought that running the Plexi Mini at 18 volts* would give me enough headroom to clean things up. It worked. Mostly. The Plexi Drive at 18 volts after the signal output avalanche that is the Klon sounded a million times better than at 9 volts, but it was still a little squishy. Hmmmm… will running into a higher wattage amp fix what’s left of the problem? I bet it might. Where is my Fender Deluxe Reverb when I need it?**

*There are not many pedals that will work at 18 volts. Most are designed to run on nine volts (as in a nine volt battery) and if you give them 18 volts the circuitry will fry. The Plexi Mini works at 18. My Malaise Forever Black Lives Matter can run at 18 volts. The two overdrive pedals I own by the racist frat boy prick in California that the Black Lives Matter is based on can run at 18 volts. That’s it. Any of the rest of the crap load of pedals I own or have owned would melt down (figuratively… and literally?) if I plugged it into an 18 volt power source.

**My Fender Deluxe Reverb has been at Mike the Bass Player’s house since February of 2020. It’s still there. Waiting for me.

A Bit of Gitter

I took two of my groupings of random riff ideas and worked them both into song forms, and then added rhythm guitars. Then I added leads to the only song I had that was ready for leads.

Now I am going to exercise for 11 minutes and then I am going to go into a coma due to exhaustion.

Winter

It’s the day after Labor Day so today is the official first day of winter in New England. Damn it.

I wanted to cook dinner on the grill tonight even though it’s winter and I’m quarantined and pretty much everything sucks. I suggested the usual, burgers and fries. Jen suggested an alternative turkey burgers with the hamburger buns toasted on the grill.

That wife of mine. Can she pick ’em, or can she pick ’em. That was so good. Grilled turkey burgers on toasted buns. Just… epic.

The universe has screwed us out of summer two years in a row. I think it’s time to move somewhere that has summer year round. What do you think?

At least we can still grill turkey burgers.

Two Therapy Sessions

I was able to sneak into the cellar and play the guitar twice today.

I got a lot done for 50/90, which was nice, but I reached the point on the second go-round where my hands just wouldn’t do it anymore. That’s actually not a bad thing. I really need to build up more stamina, but I’ll get there.

On a gear note, I have my little recording nook in the master bedroom that has my current recording pedal board and my little 15 watt Fender amp. My big use-with-the-band pedal board and my Vox 15 watt amp (and my 30 watt Fender amp) are all in the cellar because Covid was slowing down and I thought they would be traveling to Mike the Bass Player’s house soon… and of course that hasn’t happened because the universe has intervened. The upside is I could set all of that stuff up in the cellar to keep working on 50/90 while I’m locked out of my bedroom. I bring my new Les Paul and my MacBook Pro up and down with me, as there is no way in hell those puppies are staying down there in the humidity. I set everything up far away from the flood zone, but you may note from the previous pictures that none of the electrical stuff is actually on the floor. The pedal board is, but the pedals themselves are not. That’s for flood damage prevention reasons.

So that is what I am doing to keep 50/90 going this week.

I also wanted to start with the exercising again. I started a couple of weeks ago and then fell off the wagon. I wanted to start up again today, what with it being a Monday and the iPhone Activity app starting its week on Monday. Jen wanted to do the same thing and she totally kicked ass all day today. Me? I was at two minutes of exercise as of 7:00pm tonight. Looked like I was going to fail for the day. Well, screw that folks. I’m up to 17 minutes now with 3.5 hours left in the day. I’ll get to 30 minutes, you betcha.

Okay. I need to go get a bottle of water and do another few minutes of exercise.

Looking for the bright side of self isolation. It’s tough to find, but it might be out there. Probably not, but maybe I might be able to pretend.

Clueless

I don’t know what to write about today. It’s Labor day, so have a good one.

Clean up in the cellar has been taken care of for now. All of Harry’s left over laundry is done, though I still need to put his sheets back onto his bed. There is a mountain of laundry in Bellana’s room that I’ll probably start today. I set up a new music nook for quarantine in the cellar last night and am hoping I’ll get a chance to use it today. Maybe.

No cookouts for me today. Just isolation and stress and work and guilt and the usual. It’s hard to explain what is going through my head at this point. I am sad about how my mother is handling the change (did I ever post what the change was? I’ll get to it), I am guilty because I am not there to help, I am pissed off because I have to isolate for Covid (even though I’m positive this whole thing is an overreaction, even if the overreaction is still the smart move) and I don’t get to hug my wife, and I am filled with relief that my parents are finally in a place where they can get the help and care that they need rather than have my idiot ass pretending like I know what I am doing.

I don’t know.

Here’s the Covid music nook:

Hopefully I won’t have to use it long and can go back to the bedroom. I haven’t received a call from the urgent care place telling me I have a positive result so that’s good. I have an appointment for another test on Wednesday. If that comes back negative then it’s back to reality for me. I know it will because I was barely exposed and people who had much closer exposure are all testing negative. Whatever, isolating is the right thing to do, I just want it to be over.

I want isolation to be over, I want Covid to be over. I want my parents’ difficulties to be over. I want being guilty to be over. I want to be able to get a good night’s sleep again. I want to be able to work without having to think about all of this other stuff. I want my wife to not have to worry about me. I want my kids to not have to worry about anything except their educations. I want my band to get back together.

Call me selfish, but I just want normal back.

Shit. I had nothing to write about when I started and then I turned it into another downer. Sorry about that. Next time I post I’ll try to include some jokes or something.

I don’t like Being Quarantined

I sat at the desk in my step son’s room all night tonight. My wife was down the hall. A few times we masked up and had distanced visits in our own home. Yeah, this sucks.

Once I am at work on Tuesday you can expect lots of shit like this:

I am going to be working this weekend too, on top of all of the other stuff, so maybe you’ll get something before Tuesday. I don’t know.

I wrote a song for 50/90 tonight too, so that’s positive, right? Right? I strongly believe that if you sit alone in your car in some random parking lot and don’t interact with other living creatures then you are still within your quarantine. So maybe car music tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or maybe the day after that. I don’t know.

I miss Jen. She’s right down the friggin’ hall, yet I miss her. Boo.