Nowarezman

I still miss our old frenemy, Angelo Clematide. In case anyone remembers the old poster nat whilk, why, that's actually me under the psuedo-psuedo-nom de plume Nowarezman these daze. nat

Just practice a dozen or so times before working on anything mission-critical. I loves the smell of that smokin' flux! nat

The problem is that out of the zillions of people who play music, only a tiny fraction of them listen. Headphones, speakers, buds, phones, it doesn't matter. I do all I do for the ones who listen. nat

If AI at some point is perceived as having a serious impact on unemployment, it's going to hit the fan in a big way. But in uncountable ways, AI will inevitably creep into businesses and schools and the professions and the arts and government, the military, the flow of goods and services, manufacturing, service provisions of all stripes, education, on and on and on. We will be arguing about whether to do something about it long after nothing can be done about it short of unthinkably brutal tactics. I'm already in a funk thinking about AI, and it hasn't gotten serious yet in a big way. I am by nature a positive, yes/yes sort of person. But this topic I find depressing. Second only to climate change. It seems the most complex challenge to society is coming at a time that society is at a remarkable standstill with regard to dealing with large, encompassing problems. Feels like hairline cracks in the structure of society are slowly but massively proliferating and widening, and ominous rumbles emanate from the ground everywhere. On the other hand, there are lots of bluebonnets in the Texas Hill Country this year! nat

Yeah, I've played around with ChatGPT and I feel like I'm trying unsuccessfully to engage on a deep level with a corporate spokesperson. nat

Any band with a big bad B-3 in '65 - '75 got my attention. I like the intro to Chest Fever by TDN more than the original Garth Hudson version on Music from Big Pink. The late 60s vibe included a massive amount of back-and-forth between soul and rock. Soul being, to some degree, a hybrid of rock and R&B to begin with. I think of Booker T and the MGs as the source that turned into a river after countless bands joined the flow. Also Etta James. Then blue-eyed soul/rock groups like The Young Rascals started popping up everywhere. I got to see TDN when they toured as warmup for the Animals - had to have been '68 or '69. Then again a couple of years later when someone I've forgotten warmed up for them. Great energy and that B-3! Wore my bellbottoms and a hippy shirt. Mom dropped me off and picked me up The very concept of blue-eyed soul is cringey to lots of the younger crowd of the progressive persuasion. I get it, but I'll be glad when everyone gets over it. Although that probably won't happen until all musicians are equally destitute without regard to race, creed, culture, or sexual identity. nat

Love all these stories - I've been mainly a singer-songwriter type, so it's coffeehouses and similar lo-key venues that I like. I discovered that I had the ability to chat up the crowd a bit between songs and make them laugh - does wonders to offset stage nerves. I was in a couple of bands in the 70s, did some bar gigs, wedding gigs. Just found those kinds of gigs depressing. And I've got no patience for drunk idiots creating havoc in the crowd. After I wrote enough decent songs to do the singer-songwriter thing, I never went back to the bar circuit. But I have to admit - if I could have played B-3 in a really good funk/blues/jazz band, I think I would have played in any nuthouse, regardless. But I could never afford the B-3 in the days before kids and a settled life with a different career. Now I'm hoping for some type of second career in music now that I've retired from the day job. Not looking for glory, just some fun and the chance to get creative with a few other folks in the quieter sorts of venues. nat

The Roland website is really terrible. I have no idea what they think they are doing with a website so wretchedly designed. They violate Retail Rule Number One, i.e., "make it easy for people to buy what they really want and give you money!" On the other hand, if you watch for deals where you can buy lifetime licenses of their better VSTs on sale (Jup 6/8, the Junos, the 101, some others) then those are bargains and the synths are extremely good. I have the Juno 106 VST on a lifetime license and it truly sounds fabulous. I know digital from analog, inside and out, upside and down, and I'm tellin' ya - it sounds just great. I'm on the fence whether to buy a System-8 or not. I would totally love the hardware interface for the wonderful virtual analogs, no question. But I can get the software for so much less money and I'm quite used to programming MIDI controllers to twiddle soft synth parameters. However, one thing with System-8 is that the effects are not just tacked on at the end of the signal path, but can be programmed and modded as an integral part of a patch. Nick Batt did an entire YT on this via Sonic State. nat

Paper books for depth, digital media for quick dips. There are exceptions, and habit is a big factor, regardless of "best" format. Videos can be fantastic for short lessons on this and that. I have a big list of YouTube subscriptions - mostly music, science, and how to fix it videos. I read my Kindle quite a bit - it's a constant companion. Interestingly, my adult children prefer printed material almost exclusively, except for the quick stuff they look up on their phones. Both of them were English majors - I was a History major. But this is a bookish family at heart. Nothing beats a good book on good paper with good lighting and a rainy evening to just sit and read. I've got a lot of hardbound books - some collector items, 'tho I'm a reader, not really a collector. I particularly love coffee table books for artwork and photo essays and big, indulgent books on science or history or music or whatever. At least half of my reading is re-reading. Some books I've read too many times to keep track. This is golden age for used book buyers. People are slowly abandoning the format, and the used book stores are crammed with (mostly junk, but occasional) treasures. nat

I'm basically a Reaper user, 'tho I'll probably be giving Studio One a few kicks in the tires soon. I use some of the Reaper VST freebies for quick sketches, but always end up swapping out for my tried and trues. Komplete, u-he stuff, Waves this and that, Pigments, East-West, AAS, etc. I know a lot of the stock plugins that come with Ableton are great - my son uses them all the time. But plugins are like stocking stuffers - endless fun checking them, watching videos on them, browsing say, Plug-In Boutique and finding gems here and here. Rather similar to buying pedals. The shopping and trying them on is a favorite activity in and of itself. nat

Ackerman's cousin, Alex de Grassi was also on Windham Hill back in the day - ah, spending a rainy Sunday morning with some coffee and Ackerman, de Grassi, and Michael Hedges albums vinyl spinning was heaven circa 1982. nat

Janacek wrote a cycle of piano works called "On an Overgrown Path" that I'm pretty crazy about. I also really love classical YouTube videos that show you the score as the music plays.....the visual helps me hear better nat

This surprised me the first time I heard it, not knowing that the theme was borrowed by "those other guys" nat

I have a set of guidelines that I've evolved over a long time doing home studio stuff: 1. when it comes to actual tracking, stay well within your limits in terms of instrumental or vocal performance. The other side of this coin is "hide your weaknesses." All us self-taught, home-brew types doing multi-instrumental productions have lots of gaps in our skillsets and training. It's ok! Just do what you really can do and stop there. 2. I don't have a drummer. Good drummers listen to your tune and start throwing out ideas - some work, some don't. If all goes well, everyone gets hyped and the drummer's part gets everyone's juices going. Same for any band where the members contribute ideas and grooves and such. If some piece of software - such as EZ Drummer - can do the same thing more or less - that seems totally valid to me. It's a collaboration of sorts. 3. Showcase your best playing on your best instrument. Like Sinead O'Conner on No One Compares 2 U. Who cares about the backing track? It's a hit just because of that voice and those eyes. Dumb down the stuff you are not so good at, whether produced virtually or by actual playing. But put that well-done bit of real human expression in there front and center. Let everything else get a bit lost in the background. nat

No comments on the first tune - ok, try this one. If no likes this one, well, for the record I find it a terrific song with a great message: nat, crosby fanboy -

Crosby was a mix, a muddle, as Dylan called him friend, and a "obstreperous companion". My first two 60s music obsession were the Beatles and the Byrds. Crosby has given us all some wonderful gifts, and a lot of them are still sitting on porches unclaimed and unwrapped and even the pirates pass them by. Here's one with CPR - his late-age band with his son, the song about "Morrison", yeah that guy, whom Crosby knew from the LA at the very beginning of it all: nat

Warning - long post. FWIW, this is my wisdom such as it is on the stock market, wealth, and taxes. This is not political...it's just straight figuring using tax law on the books. The stock market is not a very good place to get rich. But it's a great place to stay rich. In my long career, I've seen hundreds and hundreds of people get into the stock market. A tiny few made big bucks through sheer luck - like Austinites who bought Dell before it was anything but just another couple of guys in a garage building computers and Michael Dell was peddling chunks of stocks to friends and family for startup cash. The next group who made big money almost always lost it eventually - the day traders for the most part. Quite a few of these before the dot.com bubble popped and their fast money disappeared. These folks never have enough - they just keep playing until they are out of chips. The bulk of everyday investors I've seen who went to a retail brokerage to plunk down $50K to $250K - going to any of the big brokerage names that advertise and are well-known - they would generally make a little, lose a little, make a little, lose a little. Impatient investors would get tired of this seesaw and quite often jump into day trading or some hot stock tip off the grapevine. Others who just stuck it out for decades, letting their money manager make the investment decisions, for the most part came out pretty well but not spectacularly. All of the above - except for the tiny few lucky ones who had windfall and didn't blow it by wanting too much more - never got rich from the stock market. But the final group - the folks who are already rich to begin with, i.e. trust babies and successful business owners and owners of big acreage taken over by growing cities, some of these folks are able to stay very, very rich and make tons of money each year and not have to work a lick if they don't want to. What they do is generally find a conservative broker, an old-school type, who spreads their wealth into a portfolio of mainly blue-chip, dividend-paying stocks, and maybe some bonds (when interest rates are not flat on the ground.) These folks just leave the stocks there for decades, even across multiple generations, and their portfolios generate 2% - 4% in cash dividends annually, while their underlying investments just slowly rise over time. The short-term ups and downs mean nothing to them. Who cares if you lost 30% of your original stock value the day after you bought it if it cost $10 per share at original purchase, and now is worth $150 per share, 30 years later? Just think - if you have a portfolio of, say, 8 million, and it pays 2.5% in qualified dividends on average, you'll make $200K a year in cash dividends you can live off of. And in 2021, for a couple filing jointly with no income but that $200K in qualified dividends, how much tax do you think they had to pay? $13,710. And zero medicare or social security withheld or paid in. That's a tax rate of 6.86%. (13,710 / 200,000) And this is a couple who does not claim any mortgage interest or charitable or any of the itemized deductions. If the same couple made $200K in the form of W2 wages, their tax in 2021 would have been $29,381. Plus they would have had another $8,854 withheld by their employer for social security and $2,900 withheld for medicare. For a total of $41,135 in total tax. That's a tax rate of 20.57%. (41,135 / 200,000) Because, well, you earned the money instead of just getting it off passive investing. Lastly, if the same couple made $200K from their own self-employed small business, then here's the hickie: Income tax $19,774 + self-employment tax $23,063 for total tax of $42,837. That's a tax rate of 21.42%. (42,837 / 200,000). Don't take my word for it - if you've got TurboTax, just plug these numbers in and see the results for yourself. My takeaway is that, well, 21.42% I could live with and pay as a loyal citizen and just get on with life. But that 6.86% for a non-working passive investor seems....[fill in your own adjective stream here.] nat

Got it. Some of these sophisticated DAW features these days take some explaining! A quick peruse of product release blurbs or quickie reviews in the media just don't get a clear message across. Thanks for the info - I can see the appeal now. nat

Thx, Craig, for the info. The harmonic editing is something that some of the Izotope products can do. And can't Melodyne also do that now? The Chord Track does sound interesting. I just now read through an SOS article on it. I generally shy away pretty strongly against any sort of AI assist to composition, but I'm not adverse to some convenience features. I'm actually trying to build a Reaktor instrument that lets me build chord progressions quickly to audition a variety of chord sequences to help speed up my composition process. I haven't found a VST yet that is close enough to what I'm aiming for - 'tho there are certainly a ton of VST midi idea generators and such, like Scalar and so on. I think I'll get the Artist first as part of the Faderport package and demo the Professional so I can dive deeper into Chord Track, the Lyrics feature, and the Scratch Pad. Thx again for the guidance - nat

Oh, I won't mind being dead at all. Just not quite ready for the part where you have to walk from here to there. This being a case where the trip is not all about the journey, but the destination. And I don't subscribe to the point of view that after death there is nothing. There is never nothing. I won't be surprised if there are still tax returns in the hereafter. nat

So I'm thinking hard about buying a PreSonus FaderPort 16. Comes with a copy of Studio One Artist. I've looked at the version comparisons between Studio One Artist and Professional on the PreSonus website. I don't do videos, so those features don't matter to me. But the lyrics features on the Professional look very interesting. I'd love to be able to look at my laptop screen while tracking vocals and have the lyrics scrolling by (bouncing ball not necessary ). And also, just be able to type up lyrics into the DAW and edit them, see where they come in with relation to bars and so on.... Any advice on the Artist version vs. the Professional from you Studio One pros? Craig being AFAIK Pro #1 at Studio One. I can get by without the Pro-level lyrics thing if the price point for upgrading hits my sticker shock trigger..... nat

I'm always up for drummer jokes, better yet, drummer anecdotes. Or is this simply advice on how to fire your drummer? nat

Well dang. All this time I've been trying to be a troll, indulging in tangents constantly. Failure at trollism! I need to find something new to fail at. nat

Ha! The tangents make SSS feel more like sitting around with folks and having a real conversation, rather than a strictly on-topic moderated discussion. Have to have chemistry and decency, or the loose format can lead to chaos and attract trolls and other low forms of life. SSS has a pretty good vibe these days. nat

I wondered about the exact same thing, but I'm not inclined to doubt Gary Burton. How did George Shearing manage, blind from birth? There's a good number of excellent blind jazzers on various instruments. These guys are all light years beyond me....and you know the really good musicians find a way somehow. Only two fretting fingers on the left hand? Django says, "no problem!". nat