My buddy and I spent all last night debugging form submissions for a client using php just to find out they never installed php on the server. I know that sounds like gibberish but just know I facepalmed so fucking hard. At least I got paid.

My breakthrough was largely a result of reading up more on gain staging in the mixing and mastering process and then sitting down with a bunch of decent-to-good source material and seeing what I couldn't get it to do with various EQ and compression over a couple of hours. I feel like I just sort of really gained an ear for getting what I want out of things via EQ.

Not surprising. Gain staging is fucking critical come mix time. And the more tracks you have, the more of a bastard it becomes. It's a hard breakthrough to make because it's so tweaky and unsexy and kinda not gear-related, but I don't doubt for a second it improved the hell out of your work, because that's what it does.

Also, too, yeah- sitting down with the tools and seeing what you can maek eech of 'em do. Load up half a dozen EQs or compressors on a track and set 'em more-or-less the same. See what happens. See how you can push stuff. And this again is somewhere gain staging plays a significant role. All hardware and the better class of plugin (save for the ones that strive to be cleaner than a really clean thing) will react differently when pushed. Sometimes it's cool, sometimes it sounds like dick, sometimes it works in context even though it seems questionable for whatever reason when soloed- it could be weak when soloed or overly aggressive, but in the track, it fits.

I'm reminded as well of a great Slipperman quote: "everything is EQ." And it's valid- almost anything you can do introduces frequency-related changes into the source material. And then there's the sorta sneaky compression we get out of gain staging hardware or hardware-emulating software (NLS, Decapitator, Satin, among others).

Shit never ends. Everything affects everything else. It will break your brain if you let it. But it's worth knowing, and key to doing some useful shit.



On an unrelated note, I'm off to teach remedial English to 9th graders this afternoon. It's as fun as it smells. I jest; they're mostly good kids and mostly shower as far as I can tell. Perhaps surprisingly, the ones in that class because they have actual learning disabilities are generally the better-performing students and not obnoxious. Most of 'em are their 'cause they can't be arsed to do the work. I have pointed out the fact the time they spend complaining they have work in class (the horror- work, in class!) could have been spent doing said work and they wouldn't have to complain about it anymore. I am ethically obligated for a number of reasons not to mention they're being outperformed by the special needs kids, much as I'd like to mention it to a couple of 'em. C'est la vie; in my position I don't get to choose what I'm doing on any given day, I just have an assurance while it's not always history, it's not going to be math. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've found I can handle Earth science from memory as if it was my thing- at least on that level- when that's come up.

Where's the Way Huge Fat Sandwich fall on the rocks/sucks axis? I ask only 'cause MF has them for seventy bucks today.

I have generally liked the Way Huge stuff but have not played the fat sammich


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I wound up not snagging the Way Huge, though it was a deal. I'm more looking for a chorus pedal at the moment, so if anyone has recommendations, I am all ears. I'm thinking BBE Mind Bender, but I'm willing to be pointed in other directions. One of my friends suggested Red Witch Empress, but that's perhaps a little rich for my blood, what with being a superficially Normal Adult these days and having to pay for household shit.

It also came to my attention that if I'mma record some metal when I have the time, I will use my Tele and semihollow, just to be a dick about things.

I have two choruses that switch in and out of boards. And old mij boss ce3 and and eh small clone which was surprisingly good. I have not tried the mind bender. I did get a Wilson effect haze which I love. Does great chorus and awesome vibe. Also, it's purple.

Wins just for being purple.


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Look'd it up after you mentioned it. That has potential. Also, it is purple.

The Mind Bender is a piece I've wanted for a while. It made a brief appearance on my never-finished rekkid (Australopithicine, clean guitars) and I have to say it's tempting. Totally unoriginal- chorus side is a clone of a Way Huge Blue Hippo, vibrato side is a Boss VB-2 clone. So analog, if that matters. True bypass if one cares about such things, sturdy EHX-style enclosure, and they're fiddy bucks on the 'bay/Reverb.com despite the $150 new asking price. Now, I get why BBE isn't a prestigious name among guitarists, but their pedals are well-made, if not exactly new designs.

I do believe I've put off the Les Paul thing 'til February. Happy birthday to me/Cash On Hand and all that. That being said, the best of our local stores has some quality Gibson deals. '50s and '60s Tributes for not a whole lot out the door, among others. Also, Mr. Chris from Garda and I have been seriously discussing, of all things, the PRS SE 7-strings. Because we need 7-strings, right? 'Cause we're so metal. We realize the idea is slightly insane and entirely genre-inappropriate, but it could work...

I picked up the haze for the bridge of sighs feel which it does in spades. Then I got turned onto the chorus on it. The new ones are not purple. why would one go and ruin a perfectly fine purple pedal and make it silver and black


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Sometimes I think that I would like to own a 7-string guitar of some sort, but I don't think I will ever get around to committing to do so. I like standard a lot, and if I wanna get low I just do the AADGBE thing. It lends itself to a weird songwriting dynamic, I find myself playing like that 75% of the time I'm not practicing someone else's song, which is a whole lot these days. Would recommend playing around with it!

http://instagram.com/p/vcSNren7LT/

Teenage girls love my band.

Not to stereotype Buffalo or anything, but there's over two feet of snow in my yard that wasn't there last night.

Cold as fuck here. Staring to hate this time of year. I know chris will be buried in snow before you know it, hermitting

What am I supposed to do with a goat when it gets cold? I told my son the goat would get his upper bunk on his bunk bed. He was fine with it


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4/5s of our house is playing a two song Thin Lizzy cover set Friday. We're playing Jailbreak and Suicide. Should be gnar. I'll be doing solely vocals for the first time on stage ever, should be interesting.

Very true. Even more true than you might think, as i do not even know if i can shovel my way out, with the way i fucked up my arm a few months back. I should probably be stockpiling food and beer by now, to be honest.




Firstly, this is one of those ways that you know that you are raising them right. Secondly, it is a good thing that he doesn't mind, because well, we all know the goat would be up there either way, the way goats do.


The time for snowgoats is afoot.

Yeah, fuck winter. I am especially disliking this year's conversion to shit-weather.

November is the worst.

Seattle had approximately two weeks of fall before plunging into freezing temperatures.

Winter is awful in all ways to all men.

Sorry, snaxo.

Sardo, Alex and I live on Beacon Hill now. When are you gonna come hang?

Yeah, Buffalo is earning its reputation at the moment.

It's kinda fucked up- the area of the city in which I used to live got a few inches of snow, no big deal. Here, I have about four feet of accumulation, with drifts even higher. I was digging out the ventilation pipes for my furnace last night because dying of carbon monoxide poisoning is not on my list of things to do. There's so much snow it was actually posing a hazard to being indoors. For what it's worth, after clearing out the area, the chest-high trenches with parapets reeked of gas. Gas-filled trenches. That's some World War I shit right there.