Civilized Riding
Nice audio piece and slideshow in the NYT.
Friday Travel
You CAN travel without moving!
Download the 111MB .aif file Travel Sound Collage here.
In this piece you will hear the following locations: der Kölner Dom/the Cologne cathedral – listen for the large space and a coin dropping in a donation box, the main railway station in Cologne – listen for announcements and the ICE (beautiful German highspeed train) opening its doors, a farm in Austria – listen for the pitch fork delivering hay to the cows, birds in Cologne…. and much more. I mixed the sounds, all recorded with a SoundDevices 722 digital recorder in April of 2007, in form of a collage. Found Sound. For some of the recordings I wore my OKM microphones (((check out their recording samples here))). I mentioned the OKMs in my Diary before. They look like little earphones and are worn like those. Wearing them, my ears shape the incoming sound – a process similar to the Neumann K100 binaural head we used to record Up Close (((that album was recorded at 24/96 and if there is interest I could make one song available in the form of a 24bit AIFF or FLAC file))).
Enjoy!
Found on Matt’s Flickr
Thursday
I listened to a sound collage I made a couple of years ago, from sounds I recorded in April of 2007 in Germany and Austria. It sounds amazing and I thought about making it available in the form of a .aif file (CD quality: 16/44.1). You can travel without moving!
It was only 28ºF this morning and I discussed transportation with myself. Arguments for and against using my bicycle were exchanged, but in the end I bundled up and took off on the Mariachi Bullitt to meet Jon for breakfast. We discussed that there seems to be more interest in audiophile sound these days. Good!
Gizmodo had these two items this week:
Vietnamese Audiophile Turns a Room Into One Giant Speaker
The second one is particularly interesting as it compares SACD to great vinyl. Then I found this piece, which compares SACS and DVD-Audio and prefers DVD-A. I also noticed that Logic 8 allows the burning of DVD-A. DVD-A does sound very promising. When I was still with Epic Records I spoke to an executive there, it must have been around 1999, who had one of only seven DVD-A players in the country, and he raved about the sound quality! I myself have never heard it. (((however I have heard 24/96 in my studio, because One Guitar and Up Close were recorded like that…)))
While we are staying in Manhattan in May (((five nights at the Blue Note))) Jon and I will try to locate an audiophile dealer there. We want to listen to DVD-A players and see what the fuss is about. I don’t think DVD-A will be a commercial option and we’ll have to wait until high quality 24/96 or 24/192 files can be losslessly compressed and downloaded.
I was glad I decided to ride my bike and ended up riding for about an hour today. I enjoy the easy communication with pedestrians. How can a pedestrian communicate with a car or SUV, especially when the windows are tinted and inpenetrable!! Like talking to a tank.
Soundcheck
Stephen filmed my soundcheck in Torrence last month.
Wednesday
Yesterday Jon modified his bassline for Heart Still/Beating and sent the new parts to me via DropBox. For some reason that only DigiDesign understands, the .sd2 files could NOT be read by my ProTools computer. When he sent .aif files instead they were read and located perfectly. Our theory is that since .sd2 is a proprietary file-format DigiDesign can do some black magic when the file travels across a non-ProTools computer. A file typically journeys from his ProTools desktop computer to his non-ProTools laptop and from there to the DropBox on the Information Highway. Then it is downloaded by my non-ProTools laptop and carried on a pocket drive to the ProTools computer in the studio – which has never been connected to the internet. No big deal, just won’t use .sd2 (Sound Designer II) files anymore. I have only used .aif for years, but we still used .sd2 when we recorded The Santa Fe Sessions in 2001-2002
Worked on a third Lava track, this one called Gothic Rock – how DID we come up with those titles??? Nice dynamics. These new Lava mixes sound so much better to me than the old ones.
Received an advance copy of Roy Rogers’ new album Split Decision, which will be released next week, I believe. I played a Flamenco guitar solo on the track Your Sweet Embrace.
Matt Schoening permitted me to make my rough mix of Kites Over the Playa available to you next week. It features the guitar a little more than the album mix does and I quite like the way it sounds.
Tuesday evening I made dinner for Roshi Joan Halifax, who just returned from Dharmsala, India. She told me about new scientific findings regarding meditation. Amazing stuff. And, check out this photo Roshi took of Kazuaki Tanahashi. I love the band of color in an otherwise nearly black & white image.
