Notes_Norton

I don't mind an ad or two before a symphony, but do not, I repeat, do not interrupt it with another ad before it is done. That is sacrilege to the highest degree. Fortunately, I have about scores of my favorite symphonies on CD, by my favorite (so far) conductor of each. Insights and incites by Notes ♫

I like that. ^^^ But for me, Wintel is like the comfortable, still attractive wife that I can depend on. She supports me, won't let me down, doesn't force me to change, and is still my best friend. We gig at an outdoor beachside restaurant/bar, and sometimes young babes will come in wearing nothing more than a bikini. Mrs. Notes is so confident with me that she will say, “That girl has nice _____” and call it to my attention. She knows I'm not going to stray, and I have no desire to do so. I'm leading a charmed life, and I know it. Notes ♫

For Mrs. Notes and I, 2023 was the year that our gigging business returned after the COVID crash of 2020. We started working again in 2022, but it wasn't as robust as it was before COVID. In 2023, it still isn't back 100%, there are still a few places that are too shy to gather indoors, especially in the older retirement venues, but we're back at least 90%. As we used to say in the electronics engineering business, 10% is negligible. We also found a few new friends to gig for, thanks to the exposure of our gig at a restaurant on the public beach. We started our duo in 1985, and except for the COVID outage, we've always worked steadily. We sometimes tell the audience, “The only band that has been together longer than us is The Rolling Stones.” If that goes over, and it usually does, as soon as the timing is right, I'll add, “And we still have all the original members.” I guess I'm a dinosaur. I haven't cultivated an on-line performance business, instead, I gig in front of live people. But I like that, life is short, so I may as well do what I enjoy, for as long as I can do it. We did 2 New Year's Eve gigs, one in the morning, and one at night, another on New Year's Day, and today is our only day off this week. Life is good. 2024 seems to be more of the same, and that is just perfect for me and Mrs. Notes. Notes ♫

I have a lot of LPs and CDs. There are some I haven't listened to in years. But knowing I can if I want to is comforting. And there are enough times when I think, “I'd like to hear _____ again” that it makes it all worth it. Notes ♫

I prefer performances. And I prefer the ensemble and vocalist(s) to be recorded all at the same time. There are certain interactions between members of the rhythm section that are made both between themselves and with the soloist that just don't happen when it's one track at a time. It might be the vocalist making an inflection and the guitarist copying or complementing it in the spaces between lines. Or it might be an interaction between the drummer and bassist, and so on. Some of these things can be pure magic. On the other hand, I've heard some assemblies that I dearly love. As always, there is always more than one right way to do it. Notes ♫

OMG, I haven't thought of that rat in decades. And it brings to mind "Fat Freddy's Cat" as well. Notes ♫

There's more than one right way to do almost anything. All we do are two person shows. <road story> About a decade ago, we were the house band at a Yacht Club. The incoming, new commodore wanted a bigger band for his inagural ball and asked us to hire a few more musicians. Since we play with backing tracks, we hired my bro-in-law on trumpet. Besides being an excellent musician, he has absolute pitch so there was no problem with him fitting it. We added a conga drum player and a stand-up bass player who actually faked it all night, but looked great. It was for good money. The ball was a success, and the new commodore thanked us, told us we did a great job, and added we didn't sound very different. Obviously pleased, he renewed our contract for his term in office. </road story> Sometimes, I miss playing with a bass player, drummer, and keyboard player. Since I do the backing tracks myself, there are no surprises in the rhythm section. All the ideas are mine. But I don't miss the personality conflicts, the musician who is late or takes long breaks, the one who is more interest in getting laid than playing with the band, and all the other group problems. Mrs. Notes and I both have good and similar work ethics. Plus, smaller bands generally make more money per musician than bigger groups, and I don't mind that at all. I've developed my right way of doing this, modified it as new options arrive, and since 1985 when we left the troublesome 5-piece band and formed our duo, the only time we weren't gigging was during the COVID emergency. Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Nobody sells Macs in stores around here. I can get a Windows machine in Office Max, O.Depot, Staples, Walmart, and lots of other stores. Notes ♫

Also, I believe there is more compression in a stream than there is on the original DVD or Blu-Ray. At least that's how it looks to me, from the few that I've streamed. Please correct me if that's wrong. Notes ♫

Now that I'm streaming, I miss the extras. Since they are shorts, I called them BVDs. Sometimes a good commentary, or interview with the composer, or film historian take, and others are as interesting as the movie. I even miss some of the liner notes and cover art that came with LPs (but I'd rather listen on CD). Notes ♫

Apple isn't the only dependable computer out there. My 2002 ThinkPad runs as good as the day I bought it. It spent about 20 years doing one-nighters in my duo. And one-nighters is torture for gear. It runs backing tracks and displays music and/or words on a rocking keyboard A-Frame stand. It gets sudden temperature changes, outdoors in heat and cold and going from hot car to cold AC for the gig. Last year, I traded in for new ThinkPads. Why? I wanted a back-lit keyboard as we are playing a lot of darkened stages and my USB gooseneck light is insufficient. Plus, on the gig I bring a spare, and all my data on a thumb drive. In the very unlikely event that both computers fail, I can go to the store and get a Windows machine to finish the gig. Not so with Macs. I have nothing against Macs, but since my other business requires Windows, ThinkPads are my choice. My first Mac was an Apple Mac Classic II, and I've had a few since then. I liked them. Notes ♫

That's a good point. But Microsoft does a lot of R&D without abandoning the old. I also remember a few MS products that had conversion tools to change the old file data format to the new one when they changed a product. Put me in that camp. The then future Mrs. Notes and I left a troubled 5-piece band and started our duo in 1985. Other than the COVID pause, we have never been out of work, and had to block off vacation times or else we wouldn't get one. In the early days, before Standard MIDI Files, we used a hardware sequencer that saved files in its proprietary language. I had two. Then SMF came along. When one of the sequencers failed, I lost 300 songs. There was no conversion from the old format to SMF, and in the pre-Internet days it was impossible to find another. So I limped with the single sequencer, redoing songs and saving them in SMF format. After I had converted about 50, the other sequencer started to give up the ghost. Every bit of my spare time was spent deciding which songs needed to be replaced. The time making a new song was about the same as redoing an old one, so many of the songs didn't make the cut. I was the sequence man for months and months. Since then, I've tried to do as much as I can with cross-platform and back-compatibility. I need dependability and back compatibility more than I need bleeding edge tech. The last Apple products I owned were a big beautiful eMac, and iPod and an iPad. Nice products, but they don't play well with others, and that's what I require most of all. Of course, that's just me. I'm in the “The Show Must Go On” camp. Since I went pro, decades ago, I've never missed a gig or had a failure that stopped the show (I carry a lot of spare gear). Insights and incites by Notes ♫

The upgrade or die policy is the thing I dislike about Apple. I know it means increased revenue for them, but it seems unfair to me. I have software from the 1980s that still works fine on Windows. And unlike Apple, Windows plays well with others. Fortunately, my Band-in-a-Box aftermarket business makes it imperative that I use Windows. And now that the file data for the Windows version of BiaB is compatible with the Mac version, I no longer need to have a Mac. I know some love Apple, they make wonderful hardware, and that's OK for them, but not for me. Notes ♫

Many years ago, I tried to get out of music, and was a Field Engineer for a Cable TV Manufacturing company while playing music on the weekends. Getting out of music failed, as being normal was not for me. Home Box Office was new and you could get all the movies there. Then came Showtime and Cinemax which also showed all the movies. I was getting free Cable TV at the time. Pretty soon some movies were shown exclusively on HBO, others SHO and others Max. So the average person had to subscribe to 3 services just to see all the movies. It eventually got even worse. I eventually quit the Cable TV job and went back to gigging full-time. Checking the price in the 1980s, it was easy to have a $300 per month cable bill. A few years ago, everyone was cutting the cable and going to streaming services to get all the movies and save money. But that was temporary, because pretty soon the same thing started happening on streaming services. Netflix has this movie, Disney has another, and so on. Mrs. Notes and I don't watch TV at all, with one exception, we watch one movie per week. That's the only time the TV gets turned on. The last TV show we watched was Jay Leno's first “Tonight” show. We had the one-disk-a-at-a-time plan from Netflix until they dropped it. Checked the on-line options and saw that streaming was the same trap as the old Cable TV situation was. Too much money for one movie per week. As card-carrying public library members, we have free streaming movies via Kanopy and Hoopla. We don't get the latest, we'll have to wait, but there are thousands we haven't seen yet, and we want to see a few hundred of those. I guess if we want a stale blockbuster, we could go to the Redbox kiosk. We've purchased a couple of used DVD/Blu-Ray discs on-line for about the price of a rental, and donated them to our library when done. We've also checked out movies there, they have a big selection of discs. As for music, I have a collection of CDs, LPs, and purchased downloads burned to disc. I can listen to what I want, when I want, and they can't take it away from me. Movies? I don't know of any that I'd like to watch again and again and again, so I only own a few music performance videos. I suppose others are completely happy with subscriptions, but I avoid them when they are not necessary. There is more than one right way to do almost anything. Insights and incites by Notes ♫

While being on the musician side of the glass, I remember engineers who kept their finger on the faders and had lightning reflexes. When doing the sound check, I would get close to the mic, and play my sax as loud as I could to give the engineer a reference point. Then I would step back a few inches, and play as dynamically as seemed appropriate. I don't know what the engineers did with that reference point, but I know that I never had a ruined take due to distortion. Before he had a stroke, the guy in our local studio called me a “One Take Jake”. I got a lot of work because of that. I came prepared, and fortunately, what he put in front of me was never demanding beyond my capabilities. Mostly pop or country tunes. When recording my backing tracks, I use the same model mixer and speaker as I use on stage in my studio. I'll mix the 6 or 8 sound modules with my ears, then record them all at once in mono leaving a bit of headroom. Then I normalize and make a few versions, normalized, -1db and -3db. Usually the -3db mixes best on stage with the rest, so I test that one first. The one that seems 'mastered' best is the survivor. In very rare instances, I may have to do a -2 or -4. I mix in mono because in a live setting, the majority of people are not sitting in the sweet spot for stereo mix. I learned that sitting in a pizza parlor. There were speakers in the ceiling, and we were under either the left or right channel, and the popular songs they were playing sounded weird because we could hardly hear the other channel. I don't know if what I'm doing is the right way or not, as I am totally self-taught. But it seems to work for me. Notes ♫

That explains it. Many of our single and duo competitors use karaoke tracks. By making my own, I can increase the dynamic range, and exaggerate the groove, plus bass and snare volumes to sound more 'live'. I believe the audience knows the difference, even if they don't know "why". Notes ♫

My recording needs are different due to the fact that I make backing tracks for my duo to play over. I never use a compressor on the tracks. Why? Dynamic response is one of the major ways music is expressed. Reduce the dynamics, and you reduce the expressiveness. For that reason, I would never use compression unless I had to, and so far with well over 600 songs in our playlist, I've never needed to use one. Insights and incites by Notes ♫

I'm not fond of Taylor Swift's music. If the music doesn't get to me, I never get to the lyrics. On the other hand, I don't dislike her music either, it just isn't one of the types of music I'm currently into. However, I do respect her talent. She does what she does quite well and is very professional about it. I appreciate the craftsmanship (craftwomanship?) and production. Make that “man” in craftsmanship part of human. Plus, she has some very good marketing people. Question? Is the cover of time even better than being on the cover of the Rolling Stone? Notes ♫

That certainly is a creative solution to the problem of market saturation. Apple gets an A+ for that.

This is very true, but there is a difference. This is what I learned in university… An unincorporated business needs to make enough profits to pay the employees and owners. It should make enough additional profit to keep up with inflation, and anything after that is extra. A corporation, on the other hand, typically has 49% of the people expecting a profit not working for the company. And they want their investment to grow much more than the inflation rate. So the corporation needs to do all of #1 (above), plus more profits this quarter than the last quarter — and even more profits for the next quarter than this one — ad infinitum. While status quo is OK for the small business, the corporation needs to make more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more profits each quarter than the previous one, or the stockholders will sell their stock. Corporations need perpetual growth, but perpetual growth is not attainable in this world. Once the market is saturated, how does the corporation keep escalating profits to keep the stockholders happy? A few things come to mind, cheapen the product, planned obsolescence in a world where the population increases, use the corporate media to make sure the population increases. I'm old enough to remember the zero population growth movement of the late 1960s/early 1970s. This horrified corporate world, so every day, in every sitcom, interview, drama, news story, and at least a dozen times a day, an actress was saying, “My biological clock is ticking” to her actor mate, which meant, I'd better get pregnant again before I hit menopause. There were 3 billion on the planet then, subscriptions for a product that is mature, that will increase more than the inflation rate as soon as the subscription market is saturated, tacit bribes in the form of campaign funds to legally evade corporate taxes, mechanize to reduce employee paychecks, buy out competition until there is only a cooperative cartel left (usually 3) and raise profits together and so on There are a lot of great things about corporate economy, but this is the downside. Insights and incites by Notes ♫

IMO The copyright law needs to be changed. Copyrights should last either 50 years or the creator's death, whichever comes last. Copyrights should not be able to be sold, but belong to the creator. If the copyright holder does before the 50 years limit is up, the rest of the royalties should go to the people in his/her will or his/her surviving family if there is no will. Of course, there is no chance of this common sense approach to ever be adopted. Insights, incites and opinions by Notes ♫

Indeed. The only reason for a corporation to exist is to make perpetually increasing profits. If the stock doesn't go up, the number of stockholders go down. It's definitely Taylor's year for a lot of people, making some nice profit. Notes ♫

True. Ms. Smith will go the way of Jolson, Sinatra, Elvis, Aretha, and other pop stars, slowly fade away. Altman may make the history books like Marconi, Edison, and Tesla. Or how about Chat GBT as the “person” of the year? There have been some outstanding medical advances made by others this year too. But then, nobody has been more 'visible' than Taylor Smith. Do a top 10, or number one of anything, anywhere, and it's simply a matter of opinion. I recently read an article that put Haitian Divorce as Steely Dan's worst song ever, and I actually love that one. It's one of my favorites. So Time has their opinion and that's all it is. Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Most reliable: ThinkPad computers. I still have a 2002 that is working. These synth modules, Yamaha VL70m, Yamaha TX81z, Roland MT32, Roland SC55. The TX and MT are pre-General MIDI. Buchla Thunder tactile MIDI controller AMC Jeep CJ5. Mrs. Notes bought it new in 1978, has over 300k miles on it, and still runs like a top. She's had the transmission rebuilt and replaced the carburetor. 1925 King Alto sax. I bought it used for $50 back in the 1960s, still works fine. Like all saxes, needs re-padding from time to time, but that's it. Least reliable is hard to say. I've dumped most unreliable things long ago. But here goes: Ever since COVID I find myself gigging 3-4 days a week outdoors. The US Weather service, The Weather Channel, and AccuWeather. If I played as many wrong notes as they make wrong predictions, I'd be laughed off the stage. OK that's half in jest because the nature of weather, but we've cancelled on rain-out days and set up only to be flooded out on sunny days. Once we had a 4% probability of rain, and it was torrential.

It's a balance between how long it will take to digitize an old LP and how often I think I will want to play it. It's a matter of what I want to do with my available time. Several have made the cut, most haven't. Insights and incites by Notes ♫