Chip McDonald

I'm grateful I can sort of get by working at home. We need to think about what COVID would have been like 15, 20 years ago. Pre-internet, pre-free long distance phones, pre-24 hour news. It would have been very different in the 70s. As a story it wouldn't have developed until the surge started in April. It would have taken over a week before everyone had any idea something different was going on. Weeks more for action to be decided, it would have been like Italy by May. On the other hand, I think the government back then would have decided to immediately lock down - *until it was figured out, and safe*. Masks would have been mandated. I believe it would have been taken much more seriously. A lot more people would have been dead by July 2020, but then it may have been over by the end of last year, ala New Zealand. But the toll on the economy would have been devastating. No phone calls to relatives in another state. Food distribution? Who would have been working? How long would utilities hold out? The power was a sketchy thing here in S.C. at one point last year; more primitive, analog systems requiring more human attention, how long would things have lasted? I couldn't have worked as a guitar teacher. My wife's scientist position at a DOE nuclear site could not be done off-site, but HAD to be done; COVID took it's toll on people where she worked, but in this scenario - I'm not sure how any would have survived. Worst of all - NO VACCINES. People have already forgotten how grim things were for awhile last year. That's an interesting phenomenon that I suppose has always been around, during times of war, but I've not experienced: people forget.

I've had so many I think I'm literally going to write a book. Gunfire, nudity, clowns, O.J. Simpson, psychotic audience members, Wiccan strangeness, Klingon bikers, angry rugby teams, MMA contestants breaking my wah, statistically impossible Matrix-defying events, confusion about stolen guitars, called to sub for a guitar player and arriving to find the entire band passed out on stage in front of 200 people, subbing for a guitar player and the guy quitting the band after I play 1 song, singing "I turned to look but it was gone" from Comfortably Numb only to find the girl in front of me in the front row buttoning up her shirt, having just tried to flash me and then having to sing "I cannot put my finger on it now" and the band having to stop playing from laughing, that time doing the acoustic-new-age-ambient loop gig at the bookstore, and the guy telling me "I've been watching your fingers and I know you're not really playing"... and apparently he told *every single person in the building* the same thing.... having a gig where one by one almost every piece of gear stopped working one at a time until we didn't have enough gear to keep going, the guy selling guns out of the trunk of his car in the back of the club, and watching his customers come in, go out back, come back in and leave, the time the jukebox at random picked the last song we finished our set with to play, when it was plugged back in, and everyone in the bar stopping to look at each other like "WTF????", the time when the place was so packed there were people crowd surfing behind me on stage and out the front door, the time the guest singer tried to smoke the fog machine, the time the label lawyer came to the show to see the band but the bass player decided it was time to quit because he was above it all, the time the Really Big Historic Band lawyer pulled me aside and asked for a CD from me and I didn't have one, the drunk golfer during Masters Week tipping $50 to hear "Brown Eyed Girl" but we played "Ice Nine" by Joe Satriani instead, but the guy danced to it anyway and was scream-singing 'BROWWWWN EYED GURRRRRRRL" as if he was hearing a completely different song at 102 db, the time the ... the time Local Rock Keyboard Singer Guy had a non-stop hallucinogenic conversation with a wall during the whole show, and people were waiting between songs to hear what he was "discussing" with the wall the .... well... anyhow.. ..I could elaborate and it would be funny, and there's a whole lot more, but... yeah.

(Yeah, this is another long one. It's something that preoccupies my thinking a good amount every single day.....) I've been paying for a lease on an office I've not used for over a year now. My guitar lessons room is a 10' square space. Early January 2020 I had put up a clear shower curtain across half of it; it WAS COMPLETELY OBVIOUS what was happening in China in December 2019 *was AIRBORN*. I got a lot of flack for doing that, including from 2 doctors and a nurse I was giving lessons to at the time. I remember the week it suddenly wasn't a Funny Chip Thing, and then the next week I vacated my office - and then the following week the lockdown. Right, so don't listen to me, I'm not a doctor, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night either, but... I've been telling people I'm not giving face to face guitar lessons at my office/studio until the daily infection rate is below 10,000, and stays there or downward for 2 weeks. My reasoning is that thereabouts is where it was prior to the first surge. I think it's reasonable to presume that reflects a saturation point where the *actual* R0 goes well over 1, to the point you're rolling the dice with encountering it. I've read a LOT of studies on the mechanics of covid spread, I've watched 2 courses on aerodynamic air flow in buildings from MIT, and the epidemiological studies on the statistics of transmission. I've discussed it with 2 friends who are epidemiologists, doctor friends, and my nuclear science wife that does statistics on things much scarier than SARS-COV2. Without a doubt, if I sat in my room 30 minutes at a time with students 5 days a week, I would be breathing COVID virion at some point every week. There is no way around it. And no, the weather in Augusta Georgia goes over 100 routinely, circulating air from outside is not an option unfortunately. The question is viral load. I'm vaccinated via the Dreaded Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vax; but the problem is VARIANTS. There is actually two curves right now: SARS-COV2 Mk. 1, and now SARS-COV2 alpha, beta, etc.. The variants, from what I can glean, are now dominant. The variants are not covered well by the vaccines, if at all. But that's beside the point: *I don't want to be infected, period*. People are talking about vaccine side effects, when we ALREADY KNOW SARS 1 caused lifelong lung damage, and we also know COV2 can damage effectively all of your organs, including the brain. People talking about having it, being sick for 2 weeks and "now I'm 100%!" is misleading. You don't know that, and probably won't know that for more than a decade. So no, I'm not going back to my office. I don't want even a "mild" case. And the reality is, what is going around now are VARIANTS. Effectively we're at the same point we were at back in March 2020. The *variant curve* is buried in the data, but it's going UP, not down. And there is an illusion the vaccines have created, and the start of what might be considered "proto-herd immunity": everyone is safe, and if you get it, it will be "mild". I know people that's died. But I also know people of all ages that have been debilitated by it. I also had a woman in her 60s that had to quit lessons because she literally told me "I just can't focus on anything now after having this covid thing, I can't think straight". I've got another student back from covid, in his 20s, who was one of my better students - who can't seem to keep major and minor bar chord forms straight anymore. Another guy that had it a few months ago - he comes back, we have to go over some old stuff. He can't remember interval shapes anymore. It's been months, any each lesson is basically me showing him a chord, asking him to tell me the intervals I'm showing him - and 10 seconds later he's forgotten what he said. This wasn't an issue before. He's 30 years old. And it's not just those 2, I've seen this with others. I claim *I'm seeing the effects of "mild covid"*. These effects are not obvious. The 2 guys above kind of know they've forgotten things, but they don't seem to realize they're not remembering what they were just doing. They sound "fine". But without a before and after example of examining how they thought about things, their memory capacity and cognition, it's not something that's going to stand out in day to day activities. Most all of my students are asking when I'm "reopening". All of my leads all end with "you're giving face to face lessons now, right? I'm vaccinated". I think we're in the closest thing to a lull we may have for a long while, but a lull never the less. Partially illusory; with the vaccines, 50% vaccinated in the States (not in the South, though...) there is no doubt many infections going unreported. Who is getting tested anymore? I have had students out sick with "just a cold", "allergies I think" - but do they really know? A 20 year old nephew in law is sick, coughing, "it's just a cold" - well, is it? The moving average today is at ~12,500 infections a day. That alone is enough for me to keep doing lessons online at home, but I'm going to play viral epidemiologist again and suggest it could very well be double that. But if the rate goes below 10,000 and stays there past 2 weeks, without a new variant exponential, I hope to partially reopen by August? Maybe. Not fully, I expect 3 of 5 days will still be online. If people don't want to show me their vaccination card, no lesson. I'll have my shower curtain up. And masks. No, I don't care what the CDC says, I'll debate anyone there (and I know people that are scientists there.....). What I've learned, though, is that I've lost about half of my students before this because of people having to move away (a good portion of my clientele is local military related). I should have been doing online lessons lonnnng ago. And maybe a third of my clients now are out of state, so there's that. And until a few years ago, I needed my office location simply because I needed a place to hang a sign out that could be seen on the street in a relatively high traffic area, but most of my business now is either word of mouth or by Google. So I don't really need my present office location. At least not paying for one located off of a main/secondary street. PUNCHLINE: I had just reupped my office lease in 2020 in early February, before it was obvious what was going to happen (even though I had speculated "this" was going to happen to friends!!!!! Ahrghhh). Not only that, but I reupped for 2 years in order to save $20 a month on my rent, and to keep it from going up even more for 2021. So my lease will run out in April 2022 - hopefully I'll be back in it before then, but regardless I'll have to decide "do I really need to be leasing this place?".

Seriously - if it's a vocal where you can maybe have it at no more than ... 72-74 db-ish at the singer's head, maybe they sing over the top of the level on loud parts - it's amazing. There may be an additional factor; IIRC I put it close to the null/center of the room, my thought being the room bleed opposite the singer might null. I may have gotten lucky, but I remember playing it back and cranking the track and both the singer and I looking at each other like "What? Is it really that low?" As in, headphone-bleed level low, seemingly much more than the ~25 db one might expect. Hmmm... well, another thing: I think I rolled off the high end 1k up, and ran the bass guitar a little louder in the monitor, so she could get her pitch off of that - since the sub-250hz wouldn't be accentuated on the vocal track, and the transients above 1k where her voice mainly was would be an extra few db down. So IIRC she was singing to a slightly dull mix with a bit more bass guitar? A primadonna may not like that, I suppose. So maybe it's figure 8 null plus a 3db advantage from that. It won't work for a metal/loud rock singer, but for everything else, if the singer doesn't require trans-82db levels to project, etc...

People say all sorts of hyperbolic, complimentary things it's hard to tell if they're being serious or not. Coming off stage I've gotten "you made me cry" a few times, but I don't know if that's good or not? The things people say off stage is sometimes difficult to respond to, onstage it's the Wild Drunk Hyperbolic Compliment that gets lost in the churn of sound so I can just smile and not have to figure out the Proper Response. But if you want to talk about *weird* or *funny* things heard on stage, that's a different thread.....

They're working on a way of figuring out how to automatically have 2 quantum entangled drummers on the other side of the planet screw in a lightbulb, by explaining it to 2 drummers in a room in Maryland? Quantum research is going so fast and heavy I doubt anybody is on top of all of it right now.

They're working on a way of figuring out how to automatically have 2 quantum entangled drummers on the other side of the planet screw in a lightbulb, by explaining it to 2 drummers in a room in Maryland? Quantum research is going so fast and heavy I doubt anybody is on top of all of it right now.

The important thing about the Pentagon "UAP" thing is that it puts *everything* back on the table. *We now know UFOs are real*, and one can no longer dismiss accounts simply on the basis of it being improbable. The South Africa school account, Bob Lazar, et al - one has to consider these as not being apocryphal out of turn. / what can you do if you can manipulate valence levels/fermion states with modulated attosecond laser in your immediate vicinity? // crazy

I haven't recorded vocals in ... years now, but the last time I did I tried setting up a figure-8 LD mic with a polarity flipped monitor in the null a few feet away, and.... ...it blew my mind. No headphones, basically no bleed. I thought there would be a little bit but it was shocking. The monitor wasn't very loud, probably around 78-82db, but still it was amazed at how low level the bleed was. For non-metal/loud music vocals, the benefit of the singer not having to do headphone mix, get the "right" level, blah blah... It makes it so much more casual, much better takes. I'd never paid attention to just drastic the null was on a figure-8 before, it seems like magic. The way it makes the process easier supercedes the mic IMO; I can't imagine now telling a singer to go through the headphones/levels battle just to use a particular mic, no headphones > anything else I think. I also tried the Tony Visconti "loud/distant" mic trick, but only about a meter away, that works great as well. For any vocal with a drastic swing in volume presentation that almost seems like a must now as well. ...but I think within a few years a.i. enhancement will make all of that moot. As well as EmVoice like plugins taking over, leaving the similarly unique voices to rise to the top. Hopefully.

I don't know how long you've been in Nashville Craig, but you've probably heard dog day cicadas already? They're generally "always there" in the south east; sometimes I notice them if they're feeling particularly randy, volume wise, but growing up here it's just "background nature ambience" with the birds, crickets, frogs, foxes, etc...

That might be a stance presented by a Pentagon official to the POTUS, or some such dynamic. In this case they know info is going to be released and they're taking a position of "we don't know what it is" when if they took *no position at all* the Big Question could then be turned to a strategic advantage. "They're not saying anything because it's ours". Because I'm certain they would have thought of that angle, and they're choosing not to take it (or rather, perhaps that's the angle they *had* been taking all this time), their position seems in line with that of showing their cards. They don't want to show their cards for some reason. They don't know if it's aliens, Chinese or Russians, UNLESS it's a scenario that has forced their hand the whole time (which has scary implications). Either they've concealed their hand out of fear of revealing a tactical disadvantage relative to Russia/China, or there is a functional/dangerous reason. Do they think Russia/China knows more? I don't buy the "they fear Russia/China has this technology" aspect, because if so neither would be behaving like they're still in competition with the U.S.. They're both still pursuing weapons advancement that wouldn't be needed. Contrarily, the U.S. has been stumbling forward with weapons technology, including not caring about spending trillions on systems that don't work; so maybe there's that to consider. Why has DOD been so incompetent in the past 20 years with research and development, while DARPA seems to be trundling along just fine with more "human centric" projects (crowd control systems, robotic crowd control systems, UAV crowd observation/control/weapon systems, ...). China is about to bust out with a massive multi-carrier per-year program, Russia is fielding their hypersonic systems - they're not banking on Tic Tac technology they don't have. But maybe we do? One thing that is curious that the "emotional" aspect of the reveal appears to be one of "resignation", All second-person confirmations have the same kind of verbiage, "UAP", "we don't know what it is", "we have tons of footage/evidence", "a long time". It's verbiage that seems to fall in line with the Bob Lazar narrative, which has to be taken more seriously now. If this is to bury a black project program of this magnitude - this technology is bigger than the Manhattan Project in implications - maybe this is the angle. Regardless the implications are profound, knowing the existence of the technology. But strange that people are ignoring it....

Auger decay controlled via modulated attosecond lasers, setting the frequency of leptons/fermions/hadrons could be the key to every thing. / comedian

There are tangential aspects to this that are interesting. 1) it *appears* that this was compartmentalized in such a way that congress was not aware of it. At what level in government were people made aware of it? But more importantly... 2) it shows that that the U.S. government is *horizontal*, not pyramidal. The black projects are compartmentalized away from government *completely*. Not only that, but there are at least 2 layers of "government" that are invisible; a functional bureaucratic layer and one that apparently has super-jurisdiction over the U.S. military. They're not CIA, they're not NSA, they're not any listed intel agency; they're a black project that apparently has some mandate that allows them to move freely above all in the U.S.. 3) the fact that they've chosen to release things slowly kind of warns me that this may actually be Something Paradigm Shifting. If it was to distract they could do it in a more salacious fashion. The Fravour incident has gone completely under the radar for the past year. This has the feel of easing us into something. 4) If any world government had breakthrough technology to do what is demonstrated in the videos, we'd already know about it and be vassals of their state. 5) The universe is not only stranger than we think, it's stranger than we *can* think. With completely legit people in different branches of the government saying this is the tip of a massive iceberg, and that it was obviously only Need To Know, is quite scary. There seems to be cognitive dissonance going on; tv announcers talking about the story that they now know is verified as if it's not real, government officials feigning indifference, Scientific Authorities such as a Neil Tyson acting coy that it's nothing, is kind of worrisome as well. But the most peculiar thing I've seen about it so far I saw a few days ago. There was an interview with the director of SETI where he was uncategorical about stating "it's not aliens, because it can't be" while at the same time saying "I believe there is extraterrestrial life". Which is a seemingly discongruent position to have, BUT in the context that this is the person that is supposedly in charge of *finding evidence of ET life*, it means something else. Without a doubt to me, it means *this person is charged with disarming this subject*. It means SETI was a distraction. Because nobody that legitimately would be in charge of searching for an ET signal would simultaneously have the closed mindset of "despite this evidence it can't be real". It's a dichotomy. If this is the case, then there are two main scenarios I can imagine, enhanced by my hordes of sci-fi book filled mind: a) it's not "aliens". It's extra-dimensional things. b) it's time travelers. "Hahahah, Chip is talking about time travel!!" Cognitive dissonance: *you know we now have verifiable proof of technology way beyond human knowledge*. Everything is on the table now, and people should be thinking this way. Of those scenarios I can think of many scary things I don't want to really consider too closely. Quantum research is yielding so many new revelations that I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person that is on top of all of it right now; the Standard Model is out, not to mention any "public school basis conventional view of the universe". Whether that means actual, literal/tangible "alternate universes" or that the Nick Bostrom view is true (which is scarily halfway proven scientifically now... uhg), this could be phenomenon related to that. In which case, I can imagine many reasons why aspects of the government would have to keep such things silent. Time travel? 10 different ways of theoretically doing it. Feynman diagrams take into account particles going in temporally backwards directions; quantum paradoxes are seemingly showing the necessity to accept the reality. Just as quantum teleportation is being shown to be scalable not just in informative translation but in particle arrangement, there are hints of the same in time travel. There are mind blowing things being done in quantum research right now. But, if this is the case, what then? Are the grey our DNA mutated selves from the future, back at this particular time for a reason? Are the grey actually trans-a.i. civilization? Just fun, right? But it's interesting that the "government" is taking this "we're not saying it's UFOs, but it's UFOs" angle. Because obviously the evidence says otherwise, and while psychologically there are reasons for them to not admit it, if there is no *directive* to play it down, then they wouldn't be commenting/trying hard to change the wording. Which indicates to me that there is a directive involved beyond the old "we can't let the world know!" angle. Which is worrisome. It's not a psyop, because nobody is benefitting from it - and if it was, and you had so many people at different branches of the government involved, that too would be worrisome. I think there will be at least 2 more leaks before the "information release". If these leaks are more and more dramatic (as certain people have alluded to; "we have video of a craft less than 50 feet away from a plane"), I'm going to be scared: because it won't be the Chinese or Russians, and *they really seem to not know*. I personally hate that it seems to be yet another upheaval of "normal reality" that is occupying my thinking. The strangest of which *people seem to know but don't care*. Which maybe indicates the real psy-op is modern events that are so "loud" they blot out news of literal aliens.... It *feels* like they're trying to dilute it.

Yes, of course. But the consumer isn't aware of that. "A lot of people" believe what they hear on a record is a representation of what the band/artist would sound like if they were *literally* standing in front of them. "Capture the sound" is not meant literally. Nobody is sticking a pair of un-eqed DPAs XY in front of a metal band with no p.a.. It would be amusing to hear a metal recording done old-school Nashville/Sun style, but nobody makes documentary style recordings of pop/rock bands - sans p.a. - with zero eq or compression. The "capture the live sound" thing is hyperbole. What's a famous pop-rock recording that is a literal documentary "live sound" captured, that doesn't involve at least a p.a. with close mics? It's never unaltered reality. Yeah, a Trevor Horn production doesn't exist outside the boxe(s). But what I'm referring to is the reality that recordings are eqed and compressed presentations of multi-close miced instruments; it's a collage.

There's that, but what I'm referencing is the disconnect between what a rock band sounds like in a room, versus on a recording. The end consumer doesn't realize how drastic the recording process alters the initial conditions. They wish to clinically reproduce something that was an intuitive process; I'm suggesting the same intuitive, creative process is also surreptitiously happening with the end consumer in an additive fashion.

Yeah: Honey mustard is the harmonic distortion of food. Probably an unintentional invention. Nobody makes a meal out of it. But it hides a lot of things, can make things better and can make something edible that's otherwise very droll and unpalatable. But most people abuse it and don't care about being picky in the possible varieties and makeup of it; they don't give much thought to it at all but expect it to be there.

Many people think that "recording a band" is a more scientific process than it is. They expect instruments to have been recorded in a rigorously accurate fashion, akin to an orchestral approach maybe. They look at records as somehow being more "accurate" because it's analog, instead of what I'm suggesting, that they're effectively adding spice to a prepared dish. I'm not saying some wouldn't but.... what is the percentage of listeners in the 70s and 80s that were listening to music in any kind of manner that approached "fairly accurate"? Misaligned cassette decks, cheesy record players through sketchy playback devices, *always* re-eqed, crummy speakers placed against a wall - some *might* prefer a clinical reproduction, but I think what people miss is the chaos at the end of the recording chain at home, or in their car. What the artist "intended" (which I'd say is a very diffuse opinion for most when it comes down to the recording process itself) is subjective to the listener, they don't really know. The majority hasn't heard anything in a clinical environment before. I'm suggesting the consumer is doing to audio what the diner does at a restaurant when adding salt and pepper to their meal. It's not exactly what the chef presented, but for most people it's part of the process of "eating", to modify the end result to their taste (even though it maybe wildly askance from the original intent). Some people put ketchup on their steak. Some people make soy sauce soup out of their sushi. Some are less wacked out with their modifications, but garnishment is part of the expected end result. Turntables, eq overshoot, speaker resonance might be the salt and pepper shaker, the bottles of ketchup and mustard on the recording table. The only time I've had wine I actually liked was when the boss insisted I try a particular one at a restaurant in Nashville (Mere Bulles? Is it still there). Otherwise I don't want it, I see no point. But I also know the reality is people apparently like... dreck, and are not really sure - probably haven't even thought in detail about what they really like. It's an effect. For someone that likes wine, maybe they slum with stuff from Walmart. My wife actually prefers milk chocolate. I've been caught eating Peasant Sushi from a grocery store to get a mid day Sunday umami fix. I knew a guy in hs that had a Trans-Am with a Kraco head unit and maybe 500 watts of amps, and he liked 6-8k so much that you could feel the moisture of your eyeballs evaporating being within 10 feet of that car. He wanted his Metallica SIZZLING bright. He's now a day trader on Wall St. and probably has a gazillion dollar stereo - and probably has eq'ed it into a "human microwave waveguide" state of reproduction. Other people think it sounds wrong if the trunk on their car doesn't rattle. People expect different experiences as the end result; the process may not be "complete" if they were presented with a perfect rendition. Some people need ketchup, and can get cork-sniffery about it, even if the chef didn't have it down as an ingredient. People have always been adding faux record noise to recordings. It's like a restaurant that decides you want raspberry vinaigrette on your salad without asking. Some may eat salads without dressing (my wife), but most presume they're going to add it, and I'd think it's akin to what a chef has to come to grips with: the consumer is most likely going to douse a dressing on this artisanal organic kale, capers and broccoli but he'd prefer a more specific an controlled end result. The consumer wants honey mustard on everything.

I was trying to stick to Craig's "without bringing up people" admonishment at the top of this thread, but I also lost my mother to "covid-like massive coagulation" last year. The worst thing in itself, coupled to having had to stay away from her in order to try to KEEP her and m father from getting covid. It was not how I had thought or wanted things to be like for her at that time. Now I've got to fight my father to keep him safe thanks to "the president said it's over!", "the CDC says we don't have to wear masks!!!" rubbish.

I do! Like in the "Hi-Res Audio...So What?" seminar. Which, for some reason, generated far less controversy than I expected. It's hard to disagree with. BUT - I'm going to posit this: again, the irregularities of the playback system functions, in reality, as part of the "process". It's a two way street: from a pro audio standpoint we might think some oddball "hi fi" setup is goofy because it's adding a bunch of non-linearities, resonance, that wasn't originally there. At the same time, the consumer is presuming (another thing I've not seen anyone point out) *the "recording process" is some sort of empirical, rigorous *documentation* process that involves accurate capture, attention to linearity. And that's a white lie: people using ancient ribbon mics into mic pres with great specs - but are being pushed, into compressors that add harmonics, squash dynamics... but, all of that chaos *sounds good* when done right. The end consumer is adding another layer of chaotic complexity. They're smearing transients, burying detail, adding ringy eq - it's audio gumbo. While it's easy to deride their innocent naivete of starting out of the gate with a flawed reproduction system, by the same token there are plenty of people making records that are completely oblivious to what outboard gear is doing, or a plugin. In fact, I've come to realize (somewhat mirroring the experience of seeing voting insanity last year) *I don't think many pro/Big Name engineers or producers really understand what they're doing*. They have a process built on top of a process they learned worked for someone else. They know a 57 works on a snare and a Neve makes it snappier, and they saw CLA crank the eq and do that, and hear all of the old school stories of tape being buried so they hit a Cranesong Flamenco plugin or Decapitator, and literally clip transients into the bit bucket... without being aware of 2nd order harmonics, IMD vs. clipping a diode, magnetic remanence... It's just distortion, non-linearity to *taste*. Some people's tastes require a bit more at the play back end. Cork sniffers of chaos.

I'd suggest a lot of what happened around Mr. Brown musically or sonically, was partially the result of the chaos or fear that always accompanied him.

The funny thing about distortion is that nobody apparently realizes *the consumer is the last part of the recording chain*. It never seems to occur to "hi fi" enthusiasts to buy the same kind of gear found in a studio; they're in a state of cognitive dissonance over liking the melange of non-linearity and distortion record cartridges>amplifier stage>RIAA equalization (nobody ever talks about that...?)>input stage>eq stage (*Baxandall extremes, or corner frequency ringing)>big old school transistor push pull output stage (*slew rate, variable *damping factor)>variable impedance curve speakers>non-linear crossover points, filter muxing, ringing, unintentional low/high passing>3 different drivers with non-linear impedance curves, response curves, overlapping comb filtering, group weirdness> box design concessions, resonance, port non-linearity, non-linear dipole effects>room coupling non-linearity.... People like witnessing chaos. Record players add non-linearity and distortion *to taste*, just as driving a Neve or an 1176 does. The consumer is unwittingly completing the recording chain, whether it's with a vinyl record playback system, poorly designed car subwoofers, or by setting speakers in the corners of the room.

I had been writing - for many years - a bunch of short stories based around living in apocalyptic scenarios. Then, hahaha, irony of ironies... we're living in an apocalyptic scenario. Reality becomes more surreal than fiction. If only I'd seen this coming (I did...) maybe I would have hurried up before now. If I were to have a tombstone, it would say "too early with ideas". It would figure my town would get it's first real skatepark since I was 12 at the age of 50. Little did I know you *can* forget skateboarding. Got too excited second time there, fell to the flat bottom of a 12' deep bowl from about 7' feet up. Thought I'd broken my hip, arm, ribs. Even after the shock wore off, thought I wouldn't be able to get out of the bowl with my right arm not really working, not being able to walk too well. Get to my car, and I almost couldn't move my arm forward enough to shift gears; hurt to press the gas pedal. Took half a year really to be able to raise my arm beyond shoulder level, and even years later the closer I get to my 10,000 daily steps the more my acetibular/hip joint hurts. I was lucky. Learning to skateboard with in 100% of my present ability is psychologically beyond me at the moment. Tony Hawk is my age, and he's doing 540s and still slamming hard over and over, gets back up - I don't have that kind of constitution or pain threshold. There is a way to have fun within limits, but it's *hard* to stay below that limit. I've given up real mountain biking for the same reason, it's too easy to get out in the woods and feel exhilarated - and end up pushing the limit. The maturity, and discipline of the psychology of being *safe* with an extreme sport is something I need to conquer. Like the guitar students I'm continually having to cojole "go SLOWER!!!". I'm a hypocrite, but with more dangerous hobbies. I got into bowling heavily for about a year, and then tennis. And on bikes, both shoulders have managed to not make it past trees at 20 mph+ through the years. At one point in the late 2000's I couldn't lift my arms without my shoulders hurting; again, deliberately laying off aggravating them was super challenging, but now they're pretty much normal (save the year I had my "Sudden Gravity Refresher Course" at the skatepark. ////////////// One thing that was "best" in my life right before the pandemic was making myself simply walk everyday down at the Savannah river. Very nice public works project had made a walkway along the river for a few miles - and despite being very scenic, I'd only see 1 or 2 people everyday walking there. Sometimes nobody. Then COVID happened. ....and everybody decided to start walking/running there. I haven't been there since 2019 because it's effectively impossible not to be drafting somebody's breath, or having multiple joggers run by huffing and puffing. Outdoors, but many chances to inhale infection. Always a crowd of people there now. It's like all it took was for a few people to see some guy walking along there and it occurring to them "hey.... that looks .... very pleasant!". For that matter at the football field adjacent to my house, they're always having volleyball tournaments, and the 10 soccer fields down the road are always active, where as 2 years ago it was just weekend football games at the stadium and the occasional soccer league match. I see many, many more people out walking in my neighborhood now, and down at the river - an order of magnitude. I would guess it's the same everywhere, people stuck at home, bored, ending up going for a walk outside. A positive of this situation may be that more people end up getting a passable amount of physical exercise due to this effect. I'm very sure COVID has made a large portion of the U.S. population more conscious of exercise outside.

Well, I'm just thinking right now must be "peak pedal" time, I can't imagine people being more hyped about buying pedals this much again! I'm everywhere. At the gas station "insert chip here", "chip machine down", "only accept chip", "use chip".... then Bill Gates is trying to put me in vaccines, and "Chips in demand as factory burns down", and of course now the big tech news is "Apple changes chip" (... as I'm changing to Apple...? Wha?) But seriously, "Ander-tone 10-in-1 Guitar Pedal Experiment Kit", you make the rounds on all of the YouTube guitar influencer channels, and yeah - it becomes the new "Electronic Projects for Musicians"....

1) Radio Shack is gone. 2) A lot of people learned a lot from Radio Shack "1,001 Experiment" spring-loaded P2P kits. 3) A lot of people build pedals. A lot of people fiddle with rewiring guitars. You should make a proposal to Chuck: Craig Anderton "Ander-tone Experiment Kits": 1) Op Amp kit: 4555, LM745, OPA, 075, etc., + some different resistor values, trim pot substitute 2) Fuzz kit: 3 different types of transistors, trim pots 3) Eq/Drive kit: emphasis on filter types? 4) BBD/pitch: "?" Same cheap-cardboard+spring terminal construction board as Radio Shack kits, printed with color-coded blocks, that would fit into an equally cheap *box that it comes in* with a toggle switch+ 1/4" in/out. The thing here is that you, Craig, are probably best suited to design the layout of something like this that would allow a few different permutations with the same components/spring terminal board. Your experience in writing books, manuals, makes you uniquely qualified to make a clever design out of a minimalist form factor. "Build 10 different pedals". I think you could get such things mass produced, parts and packaged in China for less than $10, and Sweetwater could sell them for something like $30. You and Chuck Surack could create a legacy of continuing the Electronic Circuit Experiment Kit being the impetus for people learning about electronics, filling a void left by Radio Shack. I could easily see such a thing becoming an underground following, a cool factor of making accessible to more people something most people could try to make and tweak to their unique combination to put on their pedal board. And if they really want to, they could stuff it into a larger, optional metal pedal box. This really seems like something your name and expertise, combined with Sweetwater and Chuck Surack could make happen.

THE BEST: Finding out I can almost get by doing lessons online. I'm not in my car for an hour every day in bumper to bumper traffic, I don't have to encounter the Routine Office Strip Environment (although I'm losing money on an empty office I'm in a lease with for another year). When a student doesn't show up I can walk outside with the dog, go make green tea - or post here. And I'm having to get a forced crash course lesson in setting up a little Black Magic ATEM Mini switcher with a couple of GoPros, trying to integrate it's macro system with MIDI (maybe, since I can't afford the Elgato StreamDeck that would be the sensible way to go). Used it as an excuse to throw stimulus check money at an M1 Mac Mini, forced to interface with the Apple ecosystem for real for the first time. Which is good - because Microsoft is actively, rapidly making using Windows 10 like a horror show rendition of the Apple ethos, and at least Apple did it right. If Windows is going to do things like hide the control panel, without warning routinely shut my computer down to do updates, force more and more Corporate Products into my life - they're pushing off to the Other Corporation that *does that a lot better*. So the stimulus check helped out, and timed with the M1 Mac Mini release worked out well: I'm glad I'm not facing what now appears to be an endless morass of Windows 10 "improvements", and I'm learning new tv production skills, so to speak. The worst: Having to do lessons online. In constant fear of attrition ruining me. But also I could have done without the hassle of negotiating the ins and outs of video production in a hurry (Black Magic has a "chroma key" button on their controller; but in the software it's labeled "ON AIR" - ok... that wasn't.... vexing... at all..... grrr...). I have a 3 monitor setup for my PC that works well, I've had Reaper configured forever to make use of the screens. But now I've got the HDMI input on my main screen in front of me hooked up to the Mac Mini, so in order to use it I have to reach over my keyboard controller and wind my wrist underneath to manually switch it from DVI>HDMI. Then switched the USB splitter so I can use my precious and expensive Kensington track ball over... and keyboard. THE WORST: do I commit to using the Mac Mini on my main screen in front of me, relegating my PC to the adjacent screens? A demotion for my (sort of) trusty PC....? spent the past year maneuvering an ancient 2009 MacBook onto my desk amid the various cables and detritus, and now I've substituted that with having to jump up and physically switch the monitor settings. In other words - am I switching to ... switching to Apple as my main machine....? Oh, the hidden horrors of the pandemic..... / I know multiple monitor setups are passe now in the age of Cheap Giant 4K tvs. I just can't bring myself to spend $250 on a big tv right after the Heeyooge Computer Purchase. // The best: I'll start trying to see if I can get by with Reaper on Mac, but also it will be good to have a clean slate in which to try to work out what my *needed* plugins are, trying to keep it streamlined, without wrecking my PC setup /// The Worst: I know some plugins won't be M1 silcon ready? Waves Scheps OmniChannel, Valhalla Reverb, ...but I suppose there won't be a Steven Slate Drums 4 for Apple silicon? Addictive Drums? EZDrummer? //// The best: because of the aforementioned, I have a good reason to just accept the Generically Perfect kits in Logic Pro X....?