Tag: Music

Air Pods Max Weirdness

I worked on some lyrics for three of the November songs tonight. I won’t do car music tomorrow, but whenever I do it I’ll have November stuff to work on.

I had my step son’s Air Pods Max that he loaned to me on when I started and there was weirdness. I had two guitar tracks. One was panned hard left so it only plays out of the left speaker. The other is panned hard right so it only comes out of the right speaker. When I had the Air Pods Max on I was getting stereo output, meaning I had music in both ears, but the right guitar wasn’t there. I switched to wired headphones without changing any of the tracks and the right guitar was there.

Most peculiar.

Two Days in a Row

The guitar was played today. That’s two days in a row. Glorious.

Yesterday I worked on four songs for the November Music thing. Today I worked on two songs for the re-recording thing. I wasn’t very good, but I didn’t suck too much. That was nice.

Okay, time to go cook dinner for the love of my life and then maybe do something else. She’s working today and I did a little cleaning to go along with the guitar playing and there is some stuff in the works for the cellar and shhhh I can’t tell anyone yet but shhhhh stop talking about it you moron.

Walking Dead spin offs tonight. Hate watch Fear then actually watch World Beyond? Yeah, I might do that. Or I might not. I don’t know. I’m sure when the hate watch starts I’ll post a bitch-fest post or two. Ya’ll have that to look forward too.

Rock and roll, zombified boys and girls.

Rats

As mentioned yesterday, I put the Rat clone back on the board… because I am ridiculously easy to influence via YouTube videos… ummmm… Let’s just hope I don’t start watching flat Earth or anti-vax videos or anything.*

Note the drive is set pretty low! Inspiration!

Sorry, Aaron Rogers types. I’m dumb, but I ain’t that dumb.

Pedal Board Change is Coming

This week’s episode of That Pedal Show is once again forcing* me to change things in the bedroom recording nook. They keep doing this to me!

The topic is using overdrive pedals in a band setting and it didn’t really teach me anything I didn’t already know. The what not to do examples were things that I used to do all the time, and the what you should do examples were things that I have decided were good ideas over the last 6-7 years or so. I guess I’m like Fredo Corleone. I’m smart.

Nope, what got into my head was just one of the pedals they used for the demonstration. They were using a Rat. Last year I bought a decent Rat clone. It’s on the table next to my desk but tomorrow it’s totally going on the board and getting used on some November Music stuff.

Inspiration, babie!

*Ain’t nobody forcing me to do jack. It’s just inspiration. Oodles of inspiration.

The Simpsons Explain Every Pink Floyd Album

This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to YouTube, The Simpsons, or (The) Pink Floyd.

One Simpsons clip to describe every single Pink Floyd record. Some are a touch too obvious (Animals) but some (looking at you, Atom Heart Mother and A Saucerful of Secrets) are so spot on it’s literally terrifying. Also, you will all finally understand what the hell was going on in The Final Cut.

WTF Reading List

Marc Maron’s WTF podcast had Bob Spitz on today. Maybe it was yesterday, but I listened today.

Spitz is best known for writing a gigantic biography of The Beatles. I bought it and devoured it the instant I leaned of its existence. I’m pretty sure someone got it for me for Christmas or something. It was a great read and I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in The Beatles.

He was on the podcast promoting a new music biography that comes out next week. It’s on Led Zeppelin. That brought me back. The first rock band biography I ever read was Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis . I bought it on my high school band trip to Connecticut in 1986. It was an industry eye opener for this particular high school freshman, let me tell you.

Pretty sure I’ll be reading this one, for old times sake, and I don’t think I’ll be waiting for Christmas.

Attenuating

I think it was yesterday that I posted something about messing with the attenuator settings on my Vox MV50 Clean, the amp I’m using for this month’s demos.

It has three settings; 50 watts, 5 watts, and 0.5 watts. I usually use 0.5 but today I turned the volume knob way down and tried five watts.

I want to say it sounded better, but I only played for a short time and I kept things mostly clean and quiet.

I’ll try it again with some dirt and some serious signal boost into the front of the amp and see how the little Nutube (which totally is not a gimmick) responds.

I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Attenuation

Usually when we go up to Vermont we leave as early as humanly possible so that we can spend as much time there as we can and still get home at a non-ridiculous hour. Today is a little different. I have to time my arrival to match up with his class schedule. That means I have another hour or so before I have to leave.

I was thinking about playing some guitar before I go, but Jen is working and a few minutes from now she’ll be in a meeting. Better for me to keep quiet. It got me thinking about gear though. The amplifier I am going to use for November is a Vox MV50 Clean. There are a ton of MV50 models, but the Clean is the only one that comes with an attenuator. The others have a master volume. Blah.

It’s supposed to be a 50 watt amp and the attenuator has three settings; Off, 1/10th power, and 1/100th power. So it can be 50 watts, five watts, or 0.5 watts. At 50 watts it is loud. Great googlymoogly it is loud. At 0.5 watts it’s not. It’s a nice, useable at home volume. Well… still maybe a smidge loud, but not bad. I keep it at 0.5 all the time.

But should I? I was complaining the other day about it caving in when I bomb it with signal out of one of my overdrive pedals. Maybe I should set it to 1/10th power and just keep the volume control really low. Hell, maybe I should turn the attenuator off and see if I can use the volume control to keep things manageable. It’s doubtful, but maybe worth a try?

Huh… we’ll see.

Change of subject: Last night I don’t know what I was thinking. Two nights ago I had a memory lapse and got into bed without putting my CPAP mask on. Dumb ass. I realized the mistake before my head was on the pillow and all was right with the world again. Last night I missed two things. I forgot to top off the CPAP machine’s humidifier tank. Oops. It didn’t run out, but it’s close to empty.

I also forgot to charge my friggin’ watch. I finished my 30 minutes of exercise and just forgot to put it on the charger. Next thing I know I’m dozing off and my battery is at 30 something percent. Crap. Well, if it dies it dies. What’s a red head to do? I went to sleep. When I woke up today it was at 12%. It’s good to know that I can go 24 hours without a charge. The downside of course is that it’s been on the charger for about 90 minutes and it’s only back up to 52%. It’s probably not going to be fully charged by the time I have to leave. That’s okay. It’ll be charged enough.

I still need to top off the gas tank (it’s about 190 miles each way. In my hybrid Kia, if I start with a full tank I can get there and back and still have about a quarter of a tank left. I friggin’ love science) and pick up some caffeinated beverages for the ride. After that the only question is music or podcasts? If it’s music I might go with the new live record from The Pineapple Thief. I first stumbled across them a couple of years ago and it’s all good stuff, just nothing that sets the world on fire for me. Their new live record (they couldn’t tour last year so they did one show in an empty room and webcast it everywhere. The new record is that show) does it. It sets the red head’s head right on fire. Great album. I was seeing all this potential and waiting for a record that lived up to it. The last one was close. This new one nails it. Having said that though… I’ll still probably go with podcasts. That’s just kinda where I’m at this morning.

Happy travels, folks!