J. Dan

This is maybe OT from the OT, but I was behind on tax returns but filed before losing my job. To my surprise I had quite a bit of money coming back. State sent me checks. Federal sent me a notice that my 2011 had been sent to collections. I'm not sure if that means they won't pay me the $7000 they owe me until that is paid but I don't know which collection agency that was sent to or how much it was since it was 9 years ago. I think that was the year that I filed an extension and never followed through when I left That 80s Band because I never got the 1099's.

I have a friend who owns a local music store - not a chain, just a store that's been in St. Louis for many decades. He told me that with all the catalog houses they can't make a dime on keyboards, guitar, amps, etc. because margins are razor thin... The ONLY way he stays in business is having rooms where independent folks give lessons, and when the students come in, they buy strings, reeds, cables, etc. as well as do repairs. They pay their mortgage on that.

i'm not sure how to say this. I made good money before which makes things more difficult. I have variable income an made WAY too much in 2018 to get stimulus this year, even though before I lost me job, I was already making very little. I'll spill the beans, I made $135k in 2018. Last year probably more like $90k, still not bad. Before being unemployed if you extrapolated my pay, would have been more like $70k. Now it's $0. One thing I've found in all this is nobody cares about your expenses. If you made a certain amount a couple years ago - F-U. In reality it's a bigger burden to handle because of mortgage, utilities, kids education, etc.

There have been multiple threads floating around between several of us who have lost our jobs, not to mention of course all the lost gigs. I was hoping maybe moving forward to have a single positive thread geared towards getting back on our feet - tips, advice, etc. Got some good advice on my original post about losing my job and some good advice on subsequent threads by others whom I will not call out unless the wish to identify themselves. We all lost gigs, so this isn't a "lost gigs" thread, though if your SOLE income is music, then it would apply. By that, I guess this is for anybody who lost their primary income source and want's to update, offer support, etc. I'll follow up with some updates but thought I would at least get it started. Hope everybody is hanging in there!

Let's start a movement leaving random stacks of vinyl records and see if we can change the world.

Lesson to the rest of you guys how to be friends AND give each other shit....you CAN do both! Moving on.....regardless of everything else said, I still struggle regardless of the bad habits of the singer why they can't just put his volume down. Most radio performances I hear you hear NO instruments...like they MAY be in the room, but you wouldn't know. Vocals are up front and dry like somebody who would be talking. No instruments, and even the best vocals sound bad.

I appreciate sarcasm in all its forms!!!! I have a thick skin, trust me my brother! Just watch yourself, because I have a pretty brilliant sarcastic streak myself! I keep it in my back pocket until strategically valuable, LOL!

This is RIGHT IN LINE with the conversations we've been having about how to run gain levels into a DAW regarding headroom and analog vs digital recording best practices. Beyond the issues regarding having sufficient bit depth while avoiding hard clipping, it seems it also has a direct impact on the response of dynamics processing in the digital domain. This is a very interesting topic to me. Furthermore, linearity is of interest. There is discussion of what happens around the inflection point, but it seems to me that it would depend on if your setting is "Hard Knee" vs "Soft Knee". Hard Knee should be just that, right? But maybe digitally it is actually what is defined as Hard Knee, while in the analog domain, maybe truly hard knee is technically impossible. Soft Knee offers a whole lot of variation into what that inflection point looks like and over what range. Even in the gain reduction range, is it truly linear or more like the response of an optical compressor? In fact Craig I don't recall if it was your book or somebody else, but there were schematics on a CLM6000 based compressor that was very non-linear.

I have to admit I had no idea about this until I started seeing all of my FB friends change their profile pictures to black squares. I didn't know what was going on and eventually had to do some searching. Will it bring awareness? Maybe. Awareness is funny to me (not funny "ha-ha"). Is anybody at this point unaware? Everybody is really eager to get on board and make sure everybody knows it publicly. What can we REALLY do? Nobody is promoting REAL solutions. I doubt that making my profile picture black is going to end police brutality.

I want to publicly say that I had no problems with anything KuruPrionz said. I think everything was on point and valuable information. I don't know what happened - if somebody else had trouble - I didn't.

I've come to like Music Go Round. Don't know if they are nationwide, but usually good selection and decent prices. Haven't bought any keyboards there yet, but I got an Apex stand, an acoustic guitar, a strat, a Line 6 Spider guitar amp, guitar stands, and a pair of JBL Studio Monitors. They've had some decent keyboards, just not anything I was in the market for. Some cool rack mount modules too. Came close to getting an Alesis DMPro drum module.

I still struggle with digital compression....it never turns out they way it would using its hardware counterpart, it would seem. It seems like a mS is a mS, an compression ratio is a compression ratio, a threshold in dB is a threshold in dB....but the same settings on a hardware compressor vs the DAW channel strip compressor don't have the same result, and I have a harder time getting things to sound right "by ear" in the DAW than I do turning knobs on hardware. Maybe it's because I'm using the dynamics processing that came with the DAW rather than buying a higher quality plug-in.

Hold my beer....

There's your problem. Maybe you missed the part where the MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS (not news reporters) have said that it doesn't transmit as easily outdoors, especially in warm climates and when exposed to UV light from the sun. If your news source is saying otherwise then you may want to consider seeking news elsewhere.

Not pitch bend, but I've used modulation to make a very sick piano sound....kind of like the piano at the end of Closer by NIN.

IMHO your best option is to use an inexpensive or free home video editor. Pick some image to use for the video portion. Drop it in for the video track, and drop your audio in for the audio track, and save it as an .mp4.

I have NEVER heard a band performing live in a live studio performance on the radio sound good. Bands that I KNOW are phenomenal will perform on the air and it ALWAYS sounds HORRIBLE. I've always just chalked it up to the radio station engineers not knowing how to mix a band since they usually just have a few talk mics and some bumper music to contend with. But some of it just seems so bad that a total novice could do better, so maybe I give them too much trouble and there are additional challenges I'm not considering. Most of the time you can't hear any instruments and it's all lead vocal. Below are a couple videos of me playing in an old band I'm not in anymore. I'm playing bass in this video. This one is actually relatively good compared to most of the times I've heard my friends on the radio. But even still, there is a ton of vocal distortion , feedback, etc. I think probably during sound check they don't realize when you're saying "Check" it's going to be MUCH hotter when you actually sing and don't address gain on the fly. They are used to mixing talk, not singing. I should note that other than our guitars, everything else was studio gear - drums, mics, amps, monitors, etc. and they do this with others. Seems like they should be familiar with their own gear. Let me know what you think. First part: [video:youtube] Second Part: [video:youtube] Note: this was 5 years ago and I haven't been in the band for probably 3-4 other than filling in once when the new bass player couldn't make it. But main thing again - are there unique problems for broadcast or is it just that the engineers are used to speech?

What I really need to know is whether I should be drinking Coke or Pepsi. I don't want anybody in public to think I'm racist or uneducated, or irresponsible because I'm drinking the wrong soft drink. I want to make sure I drink the socially acceptable soft drink but I haven't been told which one to drink yet. Can somebody please help me? Maybe there's a Facebook group I could join.

My next gig still isn't until November, but my original metal band doesn't play often anyway, especially in the middle of recording a CD like we are now (2 songs in the can, 2 more in the works, 1 additional started). But my friends have started landing them. Lake of the ozarks seemed to have plenty of gigs last weekend - you probably saw Backwater Jacks in the national news. Point of order on that....it was ONE place at a lake with 1,150 miles of shoreline, most of which is fairly remote. Also they were taking temperatures and handing out single serving sanitizer to each person entering. But that's OT as they didn't even have live music. Things are picking up. The BIGGEST source of live music so far that MANY of my musician friends have played including one I used to be in myself, is the Metro Powerplex....pretty cool concept. They are combining outdoor drive-in theater with outdoor live concerts.....music followed by a movie. CLONK It's been wildly popular and sold out consistently.

what happens when the prostitutes and drug dealers from your neighborhood stick up for you more than your engineering school folks? maybe time to rethink? I think so.

The error window inside the installer window looks like Internet Explorer. What is your default browser? Maybe try changing default browser to Chrome or Edge?

Saw last night a local Karaoke DJ advertising that there were doing Karaoke at a local bar. I'm probably one of the more cavalier on here regarding easing restrictions and performing, but sharing a microphone all night with a bunch of strangers seems like about the worst possible idea.

I'm trying to offer things in good faith. Some people insist on being partisan assholes. I'm resisting. What was the line in Pulp Fiction when Samuel L Jackson was trying to be the shepherd? I'm TRYING to be the MF-ing Shepard here.

I don't want to make sweeping generalizations and the media, as mentioned isn't trustworthy. But it seems to me watching the news compared to what i experience here at home, that there are some disconnects. This whole time people around here have been wearing masks and social distancing and following all the rules to a T. Now they're bitching about wanting stuff to open up while still being safe. The folks on the news and the coasts are demonizing people for wanting to open up while I see all these pictures and videos of people in NY and NJ beaches and CA blatantly disregarding the safety measures. If that is your view as a New Yorker of what Missourians are fighting for, then I can understand why you would think we're being stupid, but from my point of view, we're following the guidelines more than the people in the NE and West Coast I'm seeing on TV and have FAR fewer cases and deaths. Maybe it's a difference in culture. Maybe folks just assume the worst of society is what will happen, but I think things are completely different geographically. The USA is HUGE. Some european countries fit inside US states, and US culture differs as much as European countries. You almost can't look at the USA as one entity. Even state by state isn't always representative. Look at Cook county (chicago) compared to the rest of IL. You almost have to go county by county.

I continue to be blown away by the support not just here but through Facebook, email, text, etc. I have past customers sharing opportunities at their own companies when makes me feel good because obviously they think highly enough to trust me to fill positions at their own companies. If nothing else, I feel grateful for the outpouring of support. Thank you everybody!