Gideon's Disease

'Twould appear that straining my left wrist around some atypical chords over the weekend (whilst unnecessarily employing a wide-necked classical guitar) has aggravated a previously minor ganglion cyst, which has since swollen considerably. Admittedly, it's still a decidedly weak specimen when placed in direct comparison with those found on various websites about the place.

Pictured below however, it's the weird 'bump' on my wrist (thumb side). Photographing it properly was inexplicably troublesome too, though perhaps this was simply a case of me wanting the photos to lie in their exaggeration of what wasn't actually there ...

Not quite sure of how best to approach its remedy (or, in lieu of this, minimalisation) but I suspect paying greater attention to my arm/wrist position whilst playing and making alterations as necessary will help considerably.

Incidentally, a new demo, aptly named id=10T (though not purposely so) was evacuated into being during the conjuring of this current ganglion's rage.

Milking a dead horse ...

Video footage, from an entirely different angle and courtesy of an entirely different video camera, has come to light and has thusly now been shared via Youtube. This new footage contains the opening acoustic set of the Wundy gig (23 April, 2010) and can be found here.

And now that the well has run dry with regards this particular gig, next stop: recruiting a new bass player.

Electrical genitals

An issue that was recently brought to light whilst unloading some recent recordings from our multi-track recorder was that the vocals, although occasional buried beneath the sonic surrounds, were actually (and obviously) still there - merely decidedly low in the overall mix. This was easily remedied by simply lifting the affected track within our editing software, making it more prominent when necessary (normally only the first half of each verse) before leaving the remainder relatively untouched.

Of course, when playing live, this luxury quickly vanishes beneath the general fuzz of on-stage noise, and so mooted for trial at our last practice was the idea of attaching a foot pedal to the microphone, effectively returning to us some basic level control. Conveniently, we happened to have a disused Boss DS-1 laying around.

This pedal will intercept a newly purchased Cannon to Cannon lead, which was cut in half to give us the two desired end connections (one for the back of the mic and one going into the PA) plus two newly severed ends that'll have the necessary jacks attached (one for the DS-1 input signal and one for its output).

There's a level setting on the DS-1, which controls the output volume, and (with the applied distortion amounts set to effective zero) we'll hopefully get a simple boosting/de-boosting of the vocals when the pedal is kicked on and off.

Of additional benefit, we'll hopefully also gain the oft-mentioned ability to apply effects to Tim's vocals (most especially within 'Movement Eight' ) ...

A quick Google search for 'replacing XLR with jack' led me to here; a simple diagram showing the standard method of wiring an XLR to a 1/4" TRS (stereo jack plug). I managed to harvest a spare one of these from the workshop, although another one will be needed to finish the job, of course.

To confirm which connections needed to be made and to where, I stuck the multimeter on 'diode test' and followed the wires from the Cannon sockets (numbered 1, 2, 3) to their appropriate ends, listening for a 'beep' whenever a connection was present (as shown above). Once I knew that the shield (the weaved mass of wires surrounding the four actual wires inside the cable) was 1, blue(s) was 2, white(s) was three, it was simply a matter of connecting them all appropriately.

Note: Before soldering the wires into place, ensure that the eventual sleeve is positioned back down the cable (as above), as once you're done, this pulls down to cover the connections and provides a nice finish.

The final two photographs show the end result (albiet of only one cable!)

Whether or not there'll be any complications with this idea when it crosses that all-important line from concept into practice remains to be seen ...

Edit: Turns out that using a stereo jack was actually overkill, because the DS-1 sockets only have two connections and thus support mono only. The basic idea did worked in practice however, though some unwanted 'noise' started to creep in when lifted to the volumes we wanted to achieve. A fix for this new annoyance shall now be worked on ...

The Mixer; facefixer

After recording the drums for our debut album with five microphones syphoned straight into our PA system (the sounds then merely flung at the computer in whatever mixed state we could achieved 'on-the-fly'), it was decided that this time around we'd employ a proper multi-track recorder to do the job, whereby we could then tamper with the results to our heart's content; deepening the kick, lifting the hi-hat, dampening the snare, without each manipulation automatically being applied to every other component of the kit as well.

And so, with this specific task in mind, the purchase of a Korg D888 was commissioned.

The sheerest modicum of knowledge is possessed by the sum of us three with regards recording in this manner however, so there'll be the inevitable difficulties, although my delight of moulding mistakes into justifiable musical expressions is wallowing in frolic at the prospect!

Prior to the departure of our bassist, who possessed a wealth of recording knowledge encompassing the better part of two decades, we (in the collective sense, that is) did actually manage to capture several live recordings of various songs, and I've since managed to extract these from the D888. This was easily achieved and no more drastic than transferring data from one external device to another.

Below is a screenshot of the result (it essentially dumps eight streams of equal length into sequential tracks):

'Twas a positive beginning.

From memory, five tracks were derived from precariously-placed drum mics (kick, hi-hat, snare and rotos, toms, and cymbals), one was the vocal mic going directly in, one caught the bass amp, and the last microphone performed duty in front of the guitar amp. Bleed was present, although it was relatively minor (or at least workably so), and makeshift baffles - actually old office dividers - were used in front of both amplifiers to aid in this prevention.

Also, as a delightful surprise, also found on the mixer were some older, full-band practice runs of two (at the time) brand new songs, 'Under The Table' which has since been smoothed out and played live, and an energetic version of 'Face Down'. This last song, although slated for inclusion on the new album, is not currently being performed due to its ungainly bass-driven structure being irrepressibly hollow at present, so we're certainly glad to have this early rendition for future reference; both from a technical point of view, and one merely divined by interest.