Wednesday in Santa Fe

02010-04-22 | Uncategorized

Early Morning view:

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I feel real pity for musicians sometimes | Beyond The Beyond
I feel real pity for musicians sometimes

*I mean, look at this mess. Listen to it. What the heck is left of them and their craft of music? Every aspect of production, distribution, socialization even, has been virtualized and network-distributed. Musicians have really been close to the fire there for a long time. And their troubles aren’t over, either, not by a long chalk.

*When someone chooses to halt this potentially endless digital process, a stream of ones and zeros reverberates out of a speaker somewhere. Although that artifact still strikes the human ear as music, it’s got about as much to do with analog music as an ocelot-patterned synthetic rug does with an ocelot.

I can dig that, but there is a satisfaction and joy musicians derive from playing old-fashioned analog instruments that I can’t imagine a writer to understand. Words are intellectual, they don’t contain the kick to the belly that a turn of melody or a chord change or a rhythm can give the musician. No sir, I’ll take struggling as a musician over hitting a typewriter any day. Your job is solitary, lonely, and you have no idea what it feels like to play in a group.

While it is true that music production and delivery has been digitized, that is only partially true for the actual making of music. Sure, there are plenty of all-digital keyboards and there are samples of french horns, but to actually play a french horn you still need training, experience, and lips that form the tone through the mouth piece. And while in many cases the digital french horn sample will suffice, often it does not and a player has to be called in to give a phrase life and meaning.

He ends with:

*Okay, fine. What’s done is done, right? But now have a listen to this — especially the sequence around and after 2:20. Do you hear how warm and flat and squinchy that music sounds — kind of stretched, somehow, and especially the very disturbing background rhythm under the drums, that is subtly drifting out of phase? That music could not possibly be created with human hands. That is Brian Eno manipulating analog tape loops. Yes, ANALOG tape loops, with STRIPS OF RECORDED PLASTIC. In 1974. You can still pick up an acoustic guitar and learn to play it, but you can no longer get THERE from here. The high-tech studio of 1974 is dead-media. You’re about as likely to find music of this kind now, as you are to find a jaguar stalking around downtown Mexico City.

Yes, true, but not a big deal methinks. Soon one might be able to use an iPad to control phasing-shifting. Originally phase-shifting was done by using two tape-machines playing back the same music. The proper term is actually flanging. If not properly maintained the two machines would drift apart and if this was done with studio tape recorders, the engineer might help the process by laying a hand on one of the reels, thereby slowing it down a tiny amount… I believe flange is an English term for the reel that contains the audio tape.

A great example can be found on the Roxy Music album In Every Dream Home a Heartache – the first side of the LP ended with a long phase-shifted guitar solo by Phil Manzanera. (((I watched this being performed live on German TV, with Eno using two Revox machines connected to foot-controllers that slowed down and sped up the machines. He was balancing on these foot controllers and I was marveling at Manzanera being able to keep playing with all of this happening…)))

Another thing worth pointing out is that flanging was a studio technique, not a musician-expression. It was an idea producers came up with.
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If you have any interest in Apple products or smart phones in general, you might have heard about the 4G iPhone that was stolen and outed by that rag Gizmodo (((now deleted from my RSS feed))). The best summation of the events can be found on Daring Fireball today, though this article is also worth reading and I love this post about the design. Since I am a huge Dieter Rams fan, (((a genius and arguably the most influential designer of the 20th century))) I love the new design and look forward to replacing my “old” 3G with the new phone when my two-year contract is up in September.
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There is more I want to write about, but I am running out of time. I am leaving at noon for a gig with Michael and will be back on Saturday. Won’t take my laptop.

HD FLAC

02010-04-05 | Photos

Thanks for the suggestions regarding the data CDs!

The HD FLAC CD labels will look like this. Actually they will look much better because I only have low-res jpegs at the moment, but I saw the hi-res versions and they really “pop”.


The limited edition HD FLAC package will only be available from our website and on tour.

Friday

02009-07-17 | Uncategorized

Just finished a brief phone interview with a Las Vegas radio station. When I called them at the number I had been given, I reached a non-working NV Energy line. But another number came through and they were kind enough to fit me into the last few minutes of their morning show.

In Phoenix, yesterday, I started my day early. While everyone else was still sleeping on the bus, I was picked up with my guitar at 07:00. I did interviews and played guitar at KEZ and KYOT. You can go to the KEZ web site – here: scroll down and it looks like you can hear the interview and my brief performance. (((hm, wonder whether they are paying streaming royalties or whether they are doing this on the sly…)))

Then came the interview at KYOT who decided to video my little performance (((without advance warning))). The interview was less fun than speaking with KEZ, even though KYOT is the station that plays some of my music (((MC says they have been playing the same three OL songs for years!))).

Drove to the Arabian Library in Scottsdale with MC, who captured this:

Link to slideshow of photos MC took at the Rialto.

In the afternoon I gave the worst interview of my entire career, speaking with a local Phoenix TV crew. How is one supposed to answer a question like this: who has been in your band the longest and who is your least favorite band member? It was painful and I’m afraid I became rather mono-syllabic. Since the interviewer was not on camera, and shouted the questions from a distance, she can now change the questions and really make me look silly. (((OL as Billy Bob Thornton? That could be entertaining!)))

The traditional (((fourth year))) photo of Stephen Duros in front of the Celebtrity Theatre wall was taken:

Here is the annual shot of the misters:

Here is a look at the stage:

After a very good performance (((best of the tour so far))), a birthday was celebrated in the parking lot – with another birthday to be celebrated today and two more on Saturday:

Photo of Stephen in the parking lot at night, holding up his cellphone:

atnmbl – driverless car design… interesting, but here are my two cents on the subject.

– streets have a larger footprint than railroad tracks
– asphalt retains a lot of heat
– does not solve the lack of physical movement most people experience
– a disconnect from the landscape, maybe even more so – because one does not have to look outside at all…

If energy becomes abundant at some point, and I think that’s quite possible, a walking machine would be more interesting than a machine on wheels. The advantage of a walking machine would be that no flat road is necessary. Something between Neal Stephenson’s chevaline, a mechanical horse that can fold up and is light enough to be carried one-handed, and the walkers from Star Wars.

B for Barcelona

02009-01-27 | Design, Funny


Very interesting and funny. My favorite moment: he shows a Bryan Ferry spread he designed using the dingbat font “because the interview was really really boring”