the stupidest policy in the universe

 

RECOGNISING STUPIDITY WHEN I COME ACROSS IT

like my late father before me, I find that there are certain aspects of life that are just so stupid, that you can’t help but become agitated and very outspoken when one of these “stupidities” comes to light.

I actually have a real knack for recognising stupid issues, and that realisation came home to me in a quite surreal experience I had at a Guitar Craft course held in Ojai, California back in the 1990s. It was a very good course, with mostly good weather, and we got to listen to Robert Fripp rehearse his Soundscapes, not to mention hearing an early DAT of the then non-existent King Crimson album “Vrooom”, which of course preceeded the album “proper” which is the even more awesome “THRAK”.

but i digress, the incident that confirmed to me that I do have a real knack or propensity, if you will, for seeing stupidity for what it is, and usually, confronting it head on….started like this:

A GUITAR CRAFT STORY

The course was in a lovely, big house on a lovely big green hilltop, a grassy hilltop lawn that of couse, being in California, was fully equipped with sprinklers, which went off automatically at pre-set intervals, to keep that hilltop lawn watered and healthy and looking good.  That is absolutely standard practice in southern California, because, if you don’t water…your lawn, and / or your plants, turn brown and then die.  California, after all, is basically, an artificially-irrigated desert, with water piped in from other states! – from many hundreds of miles away.

part way through the course, on a rare rainy day, where it was raining pretty hard, but in that warm kind of unconvincing California way…   I believe it was just before lunch, and the whole group, including Robert were sitting in silence (as you do quite often at Guitar Craft) and of course, if you are not quiet inwardly (as I often wasn’t) your attention may start to wander, and I confess that at this point, where a long, uneasy silence was waiting to hopefully, become a proper silence…I was looking out the window, watching the rain and looking  at the plants and the lawn.

the silence went on and on, and after an uncomfortably long time, suddenly, Robert spoke: “can anyone” (he said, addressing the entire course) “give me an example of real stupidity that is going on here, right now” and he sort of, gazed up and around the room.

confused silence was the first response, while people tried to think if perhaps, THEY had done something stupid earlier on, and now here was Robert Fripp calling them out?  You could sense some rising panic in some of the faces…but no one answered.

then, the answer smacked me right in the brain, that Stafford tradition (my Dad would have been so proud of me!!!!) came back and I blurted out “the sprinklers”.  “The sprinklers are on, watering, while its pouring with rain”. I added.

“Thats right, the sprinklers” Robert agreed.

And of course, thats pretty much the only time that I had the answer when the gathered elders of Guitar Craft did not, so I was pleased that I’d seen it so quickly.  And no one except Robert had a clue, it is just one of those things that people born in California, are used to seeing, all the time, all of your life.

And, it IS a pretty stupid thing, to have your sprinklers busily overwatering your lawn, and indeed, the combination of a substantial rainfall and the powerful large radius-coverage sprinklers running at the same time, could and often did turn your lawn into a green soaking wet sludge –  serious over watering can occur.

I have told this story before, in a more abbreviated form, and I apologise if you have heard it before – but it was necessary for me to restate my “credentials” as a more than “averagely aware of stupidity” kind of person.  I see stupidity in many designs, processes, and even in well establish practices, where people are doing activities in a particularly stupid way, when a much better way is or at least, might be available.

for example – sprinkler systems that can be overridden and can be programmed NOT to turn on, in the case of rain.

clearly, the owner of that nice house on the hill in Ojai, was unaware of this possibility, and because of that, would be always overwatering his lawn and plants when the sprinklers regularly came on while it was raining!

Stupidity at work, in the universe…a perfect example, and both Robert Fripp and I, while looking out the window at the garden in the pouring rain, had realised what was going on just outside the room, while the other fifty five people were only thinking inside the room, or, hadn’t noticed  or, hadn’t realised – that a really stupid thing was going on, right then and there – but outside, not inside!

It’s a day I’ve never forgotten, not only because I knew the answer when RF was the only other person who did, but because it was a great course, and my “Stupidity Detector” was clearly working better than it ever had done before.  A very useful tool, being able to recognise stupidity when you see it – and, if you look around, you will often find that its … EVERYWHERE!!

So what does this long and somewhat tedious Guitar Craft story have to do with today’s blog?  Not a lot, really, except perhaps, to establish that I have this knack, this ability to spot stupid practices, and that, coupled with some forty years in the business world, makes me the Customer From Hell, when companies have to deal with me.

THE ISSUE IN QUESTION

Today’s blog, however, is not about a gentle, somewhat forgivable stupidity such as watering your lawn while its raining…no, today’s blog is about something much, much stupider than that – and therefore, a hundred times more irritating because the stupidity actually has a real, negative effect on you.

I am writing today about a very specific “policy” that a particular music store has, which is, in short:  supplying the wrong type of power supply with almost every guitar effects unit they sell: a European power supply with round pins that cannot be plugged into the wall in the UK! (where we use flat pin power supplies only). To me, this “policy”…is right up there on my “stupidity radar” – supplying a useless power supply that could only work in Europe…in the UK.

a) it is a policy that makes NO logical sense – and the stream of useless Euro power supplies arriving every few months – utterly useless

b) I am sick and tired of ARGUING about it each time I make a purchase – and, an important point here – having to ask in the first place is bang out of order – when it SHOULD HAVE BEEN in the box when it arrived!!

Life is literally too short for me to waste my time railing against such a stupid thing – and they, unwilling to do as I, the customer politely asks again and again – well, the most recent sale they made to me – will be the last bit of business they get from me…I need vendors that will work with me on this.

Not, fight me tooth and nail when I try to get a useable power supply for my effects unit – that I have already paid for (it is part of the effect units’ purchase price)

Meanwhile, I have grown so frustrated with this “policy” over the past six or seven years (!!!!!!!) that I have recently reached the point where I told them that, if they were unwilling to continue to make the situation right, each time I make a purchase of an effects pedal from them (containing a European supply), that they will no longer get my repeat business or any of my business, because I refuse to participate in this specific power supply stupidity any more!

ANALOGY

I’d like now, to ask you a few simple rhetorical questions:

Note: today’s “stupidity” only occurs in the United Kingdom to my knowledge.  It does not occur in Europe or elsewhere that I know of.  This is important to remember.

 

So – UK residents only, then – when you buy a new toaster (or any small appliance) do you expect it to have a UK style plug (flat blades, three pronged) attached, so you can plug it in the moment you get home, and have some nice toast with your cuppa tea?

when you buy a new iron, do you expect it to have a UK style plug attached, the correct flat-bladed UK style plug, so that when you get home, you can plug that iron in right awaty, and get your three week backlog of ironing done in a jiffy?

when you buy a new hair dryer, do you expect to be able to plug it into the wall, and dry your soaking wet hair right away, without waiting?

when you buy a new alarm clock, do you expect a UK style plug attached right to it, so you can plug it in straight away, set the alarm, and then get woken up ever so gently to the quiet strains of Rammstein’s “Zwitters” blasting out at 6:05 a.m., at volume 10…?

when you buy a new Hoover, you expect it to have its UK style flat bladed plug already attached, so when you get home, you can plug it in straight away, and hoover your dirty ole carpets to yer heart’s content?

If you got a new set of hair straighteners, you would definitely want to go hone and plug them straight into your UK 230 volt wall outlet, so you can then wait for them to heat up, and straighten your hair to PERFECTION??

Let’s go large now, you finally bought that brand new washing machine you wanted, and I just know you will expect that it will come with a UK style plug already attached, so you can plug it straight into the wall outlet, hook up the water, and wash all those dirty clothes that have piled up everywhere??

I think you can see the everyday truth in the above statements.  Nothing tricky about them – just ordinary appliance purchases and expectations.

 

You may have gathered that I am making a point, and I am, and yes, OK I have rather belaboured that point (apologies)…but there is a reason for the many, many examples of ordinary electrical appliances both small and large – so that we can establish that for any electrical item that you buy in the United Kingdom, you have developed the perfectly reasonable expectation that the moment you get it home, whatever it is – you can plug it in, and start using it immediately.

however.

What if that were NOT the case? What if, you brought that toaster home, and it didn’t have a UK plug on it, or with it, so you couldn’t plug it into your common, ordinary, garden UK 230v outlet – in fact – you couldn’t plug it in anywhere in the UK.

First of all – that would make you feel very frustrated, because, you couldn’t feed that horde of screaming children waiting for their morning toast.  You would all starve, or at least you’d be eating untoasted bread which is almost as bad – when you want toast. and it goes on for days and days and days – no toast, and a useless, cold toaster.

That scenario is pretty unpleasant, but let me take this story one step further.  Let’s say that on that same day, the day you got home, took that toaster out of the box, and THEN realised that you couldn’t plug it in…that you rang up the store you bought it from, and asked them to please provide a proper UK plug, and they said, yeah, OK we’ll do that, you will get it in a couple of days.

Three days go by, with no toast made, that toaster not lighting up at all.  The toaster is dead.  The promised UK plug does NOT arrive.  You ring the store again, they say they will send the plug…so now three weeks have gone by and you still have no working toaster and no plug from the store…

After many calls, much argument with the store, pleading, cajoling…You reach the three month mark…THREE MONTHS WITHOUT TOAST…and finally, you get a UK style plug for your toaster delivered, finally sent by the store at long, long last.

And if the children haven’t all starved by now, they finally get some toast – but you’ve been through three months of hell trying to get the store to make things right for you, and you really begin to question your sanity.  You have argued calmly that it should have had a UK plug all along, but, the store seem unconcerned, and they also seem bent on supplying the NEXT item you buy from them…with ANOTHER useless Euro style plug.  Repeat of same scenario above.

Now, I could build a similar scenario for each and every item above, but it would take far too long, and I think the toaster example is a good enough example.

Three months without being able to plug in your new toaster?  Can you imagine?

 

Now – with the above everyday analogies, I’ve set up the background here, I’ve created practical examples of how it would feel if you got home to find that you could not plug your new toaster in, and then, the store you got this rather useless appliance from, took over three months to make it possible for you to plug it in and finally have some toast.

How would that make you feel?

 

IT’S BEEN MY EXPERIENCE…THAT WHEN THE ROW GETS SERIOUS…

A CERTAIN SILENCE WILL FALL.

 

How would that make you feel??

 

Now – that is a question.

Unfortunately, I can answer that question. I can provide in fact, a first hand account of exactly this “toaster experience” but with something else in the way of “small electrics” that I regularly purchase: effects pedals for guitar.

For the past several years, I’ve been purchasing the odd guitar pedal or two, and often from one of my favourite stores, DV24/7.  They were, and are, a good store – they delivered quickly, they always had the lowest price, and eventually, they got all of my business.

Until a few days ago, when I reached such a point of impatience and sheer frustration with their attitude regarding the power supplies for said guitar effects – that I’ve told them that I will be taking my business, my REPEAT business, to another guitar store.  ANY OTHER STORE. One that will truly want AND truly appreciate (not just say that they appreciate, but ACTUALLY appreciate) my repeat business. GAK, Dolphin, I really do not care. Just – no more Euro power supplies.  Please.

 

I must have at least six of these useless Lumps Of Plastic with round pins sticking out of them, cluttering up my storage area at home. They are worthless in the UK, sadly, they would be quite handy for any number of young guitarists in Europe.  I have enough for a whole Euro power pedalboard.  In Europe.  Where I don’t live.

They are doing me not one whit of good unless you think it’s perhaps, a good reminder from myself to myself to say NEVER AGAIN to accepting a Euro style power supply for any UK-purchase / UK-use electrical appliance or guitar effect pedal.  Ever.

 

DV24/7 refused to listen to the pure logic I presented to them regarding this very, very stupid “policy” of theirs – which is this:

Each effects unit they sell IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, comes supplied with a power supply (as intended by the manufacturers – who meant for the correct-country power supply to come with each pedal, it is included in the PURCHASE PRICE!) but with a twist; its a EUROPEAN power supply that DV24/7 regularly send to their UK CUSTOMERS.  That cannot be plugged into ANY power outlet IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.  Now – where, exactly, is the logic or sense in THAT?

Answer?  There is no logic present in this odd policy of supplying useless / wrong power supplies with each effects pedal sale.  If I just shelled out £400.00 for a really nifty pedal, it had darn well come with the CORRECT, USEFUL POWER SUPPLY.  That will plug into one of the many UK OUTLETS that I have in my UK HOUSE.

TALK ABOUT SPOILING YOUR ENJOYMENT!

So,  you’ve finally decided to buy your first Eventide H9, a truly powerful and exciting new guitar effects device – you order it from DV24/7; it arrives in a day or two..

but…BUT…it comes supplied with a EUROPEAN power supply.  So all that anticipation, all the excitement – dies, because you cannot PLUG IT IN.  So you then get to LOOK at it, but not use it, or hear it, for several days or even weeks, while you impatiently wait for the store to send you the right, usable power supply. After the fact, after the purchase….”oh please, kind sir, may I have a UK power supply so I csn actually USE my guitar effect??”.

 

Now, the first few times this happened, I would just ring or email them , and say “can you please send me a UK power supply for this REALLY EXPENSIVE pedal i just bought from you?”.  And – generally, they would.  I just had to ask.  (Not my job, really, but, whatever).

And I would then have to wait, a few days, a week, whatever, and the power supply arrives – so I can FINALLY plug in my brand new effects pedal.  Finally use it, finally hear it – at last. But it is just not the same, as being able to plug it in the moment it arrives…nope.  A third-rate experience at best.  Sheer frustration and mounting anger at the worst end of the “DV experience” 🙂

After this had gone on for some five years, let’s say, they started resisting me when I would insist on the proper UK power supply, and then finally, just a couple of weeks ago now,  their salesperson told me, in an email, no less “you will have to accept that some of these effects (read: all of these effects) will come with a Euro adapter, and we may then provide a UK plug adapter with the Euro power supply”.

And, that, dear reader, was the wrong thing to say to me.  my reply was “Salesperson’s Name Here, I must certainly do not “have to ACCEPT” anything – “I am the customer, and, you’ve set a precedent with me, i.e, you have been supplying me with the proper UK adapter, AFTER each effects sale, with NO ARGUMENT, and at no charge for several YEARS NOW – and now, you are reneging on that, and saying that I MUST ACCEPT Euro plugs, and a crappy plastic ‘plug adapter’ to go with it ! – no thank you, and furthermore,  I refuse to trust my really expensive device to a £1.79 plastic UK plug adapter”.

So because they instigated this new “policy”, where they no LONGER supply the proper UK power supply at request or at no charge…which they had done for about five years out of the six OR seven years (or more) I’ve been buying from them, I’ve had enough – more than enough of their attitude – and if it costs them money, to supply what should have been in the box all along – well, that is NOT my problem.

I was a good, repeat business customer, a good one – but over the past two years, I’ve had to argue, argue, argue, and eventually they would reluctantly send me a UK power supply for the device I had just bought.

I got really tired of the whole subject.  I even called the UK store manager in Romford, and had a long talk with him about..about just how incredibly STUPID (THERE IT IS….THE ‘S’ WORD) the policy of sending Euro plugs (aka, something that in the UK, MAY AS WELL BE A LUMP OF USELESS PLASTIC WITH SOME ROUND PINS STICKING OUT OF IT) – and he agreed it wasn’t the most brilliant policy, but I thought we had reached an agreement, that they would continue to supply them to me when I ask for them…but I was wrong.

not so.  In fact, after the last conversation with the boss, it was then that I waited THREE MONTHS for a UK adapter to arrive for my Ground Control Pro. Almost as if he had told them to drag their feet…

 

But not long after that, the real arguments started, and the salesman started telling me what I “MUST ACCEPT”.

That was the signal for me to end my relationship with DV24/7 (except of course, in the event of me needing to use one of my many, many, three year warranties that I have with them for a number of my effects devices).

So the income and the profit from sales to me have how stopped, permanently, they claimed, in an email that they “valued my repeat business” but basically, I would have to accept Euro plugs with UK plug adapters…so from that threat, I could tell that clearly, they do NOT value my repeat business at all.

If they did, the precedent set six or seven years ago, would still be in place, and I would still get a proper UK power supply for each device I purchased.  But – no more

All the other stores, I will be completely honest with them going forward:  I will EXPECT a UK adapter with each pedal I purchase – or, I will give the business to the vendor who will happily say “yes” to that humble, simple request.

 

WHAT THE MANUFACTURERS MEANT TO HAPPEN

(and what they supply to MAKE it happen in the different markets)

 

As if the all of the above wasn’t enough, now, please consider this:

Each manufacturer, for example, Eventide (USA based) or Electro-Harmonix (USA based) has included in the price of their effects pedal, a working power supply for that device, which should be different for each non-USA country it is sold in.

So let’s imagine that you bought a pedal from a well known online store in the USA, and you LIVE in the USA.

Let’s say it’s that Eventide H9 I mentioned earlier.  You would receive that H9 in a box, with a US style two-flat-bladed-plugs-bearing power supply.  You open the box; you plug that two prong flat bladed US style plug directly into the nearest 110v US outlet in your US home – And you are instantly delighting in the beauty of the H9 experience.

So let’s now imagine that you bought a pedal from a well known online store in Germany, and, YOU live in Germany…or anywhere in Europe except the UK.

Let’s say it’s that Eventide H9 I mentioned earlier. You would receive that H9 in a box, with a Euro style two-round-pins-plug bearing power supply. You open the box; you plug that two round pin style plug  directly into the nearest 220v German outlet in your German home – And, you are instantly delighting in the beauty of the H9 experience.

Repeat above  paragraph for Japanese market.

Repeat above paragraph for South American market.

Repeat above paragraph for any non-UK market.

 

Finally – let’s now imagine that you bought a pedal from a well known online store in the UK, and, YOU live in the UK.

Let’s say it’s that Eventide H9 I mentioned earlier. You would receive that H9 in a box, BUT, much to your everlasting astonishment – instead of the 3-flat-bladed UK style power supply you expected (just as with your toaster, your hair dryer, your washing machine, your hoover…) but instead, to your ultimate dismay – you find, inexplicably, that you have instead been sent – a Euro style two-round-pins-plug bearing power supply.

You open the box; you remove the wrongly supplied Euro power supply in disbelief, which you cannot plug in anywhere in the country you live in – And, you now have no idea what the H9 SOUNDS like, because you cannot plug it INTO THE WALL as you can in every OTHER COUNTRY ON THE PLANET.  And – you DO NOT GET TO DELIGHT in the beauty of the H9 experience.  Not for days or weeks or latterly, apparently – ever.

Eventide MEANT for you to get that box, open it, plug the RIGHT power supply into the proper outlet, and play your guitar through their pedal. Immediately.  You PAID for that, you paid for the good experience, the one where you get to actually use the pedal you just bought.

No..not here in the UK.  Instead…you get argument.  You spend literally hours, emailing, calling the DV24/7 boss AGAIN to complain.

THE LAST STRAW

There is one remaining wee story to tell.  And that story is about a device that I bought from DV24/7 … LAST YEAR.

I bought a new Voodoo Labs Ground Control Plus MIDI controller from DV24/7 in late October or early November – the actual date isnt really important.

 

you’ll never guess, to my amazement…it TOO, like the Eventides and the Electro-Harmonix pedals before it, the Ground Control Pro arrived…with a Euro style round pin power supply – with a twist, it was an AC adapter (rather than the much more common DC adapter), with a higher current requirement than most pedals have.   Still useless though…I did say “Euro” and “round pins”.

So standard procedure, I rang up or emailed DV24/7 and said “please send me the correct voltage Voodoo Labs UK power supply for my Ground Control Pro”.  I got argument and stalling.  I rang the boss yet again, applied pressure verbally…he promised they would send the adapter.

still no adapter.  Christmas passed.  I cajoled, I asked nicely, I became irritated…no result.

New Year passed.  I wrote again, this time simply saying “appalling customer service, making a good, repeat customer wait OVER THREE MONTHS for a lousy power supply that costs £2.00 to produce in Asia…you ought to be ashamed”.

Nothing.. No response to my emails anymore.

 

then, tonight, on January 20th, having waited thru November, thru December and thru most of January with no power supply – when I got home, a small box from DV24/7 had been delivered to my neighbour.  I went to retrieve it.  Finally – and, by the way, NOT a Voodoo Labs supply at all, but the cheapest of the cheap generic type adapter, BUT the right voltage 9 volts AC at 500 ma – so theoretically usable with the Ground Control.

The adapter was promised over and over, the salesman promied, then his BOSS promised it, and it didn’t arrive.

I doubt it was my “you ought to be ashamed” message that finally caused it to ship to me – but it should have been.

They still owe me a power supply for an EHX pedal I bought recently. But we shall see what happens with that one.  But, I won’t expend the least bit of effort on DV24/7 any more, no more chasing down a power supply EVERY SINGLE TIME I BOUGHT SOMETHING.  For SEVEN YEARS.

 

A SIMPLE, SIMPLE SOLUTION EXISTS

DV24/7 have some internal “problem” where some their stock that is to be sold in the UK, comes from Europe, and it has Euro plugs in it.  But guess what – the manufacturers make at least four different adapters, that are supposed to be sold in the US, the UK, Europe, and Japan.  So – you, as the distributor of these products, are supposed to be SMART ENOUGH to order the right boxes with the right adapters for each country you are selling them in.

A quick example of a smart policy:

You are a big music store with stores in Europe and in the UK.  Sales are roughly equivalent in both areas, so, instead of buying 1000 boxes of EURO Eventude H9s, you order instead, 500 boxes of Euro H9s (which you sell in EUROPE) and 500 boxes of UK BOXES, (which you sell IN THE UNITED KINGDOM). Simple.

Under my clever scheme (see above) the customers in BOTH Europe AND the UK END UP WITH THE CORRECT POWER SUPPLY when they receive their order. Rejoicing. No more phone calls.  No more emails. No more arguing with customers.  No more customers so traumatised by their never-ending NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE AT DV24/7 that they finally just say NO MORE.

NO MORE.

 

Now – clearly, their purchasing department wasn’t smart, and all their pedals are in EURO boxes.  So this won’t ever end, with DV.

BUT INSTEAD of them making their problem by MY problem, and pawning off their unwanted garbage/Euro Lumps Of Plastic onto UK customers who DO NOT WANT THEM…instead of you making your problem be my problem…why don’t you just SOLVE the problem, and buy the boxes with effects with UK power supplies in them, to SELL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM???

by the way:  I ***HATE*** it, when companies, or people, make THEIR PROBLEM be MY PROBLEM.  I refuse to allow that.  My time is too valuable, too precious to waste on the “Euro round pin power supply game”.  It is a game that sucks, I can tell you that much for free.

THE REAL INTENTIONS OF THE EFFECTS’ MANUFACTURERS

Remember, the manufacturers, WANT YOU not only to get a power supply with your device, but, they WANTED for it to have a power supply with it, that meets the following  criteria (you PAID for all this – it is included in the effect’s price!!!!):

a) fits the outlets in your country

b) supplies the right voltage and has the correct current handling requirements for your device and your country’s power outlets

c) you PAID FOR THAT privilege, to be able to plug right in and enjoy your purchase – whereas, I got to LOOK at how nice my new effects looked, for many days, while I waited for the “afterthought” correct UK adapter to arrive – and, looking is not HEARING or ENJOYING, is it?? and

d) they did NOT intend for you to receive the WRONG PLUG type, that does NOT plug in, in your country, and is, to a UK customer anyway, a useless LUMP OF PLASTIC with two round pins sticking our of it.

 

CONCLUSION (?)

 

i rest my case.  As Bryan Ferry once said “don’t let this happen to you!!”

I told you I could find the STUPID stuff.

 

 

 

peace and love and UK POWER SUPPLIES FOR ALL!!!!

 

Dave 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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From Gong’s Guitarist to Blu-Ray Music Extraction Processes to the NewestOld ios Application for IDevices…

I am becoming acquainted with the first five albums by Steve Hillage, beginning with his band “Uriel” and their album “Arzachel” in 1969 and moving up to 1976’s BBC Radio 1 In Concert – which is playing now in my headphones – the announcer letting us know that only 8 percent of BBC listeners are currently listening in stereo – and they’d like to get that number up as soon as possible!

On almost a whim, I decided that if I was ever going to get caught up on what I had missed in the solo canon of Steve Hillage, outside of his work in Gong, with which I am very familiar, would be to shell out for the remarkable new 22 disc box set, “Searching For The Spark”.  It arrived a few weeks ago, I then spent a few days ripping discs, and I’ve since spent a very, very enjoyable morning indeed, listening to all five of the discs currently on my IPod – and – Hillage is a remarkable person – and, along with his life partner Miquette, he fronts a band with ever-growing confidence – especially when we get to “that” guitar solo.

I was quite amazed at the jump in guitar playing quality between the first two albums that feature Hillage, the above mentioned Arzachel from 1969, and then, 1972 brought us “Khan” with their album “Sea Shanty” – and in the three years that had passed, Hillage’s guitar prowess had increased by a significant amount – but nothing like what was about to come – in the form of his first two solo records, the first that bore the name “Steve Hillage” – “Fish Rising”, followed by what is probably his best-known work (and, produced with Todd Rundgren, using Todd’s new Utopia – Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton, and Willie Wilcox – as Hillage’s backing band on the record) “L” – these two releases are where you can really hear the confidence and power of his playing – and I would heartily recommend them to anyone!

I did own a cassette with “L” on it, years ago, so I was familiar with that one album, but never had a chance – until today – to hear Fish Rising, the two early albums, and the first of many, many live CDs that are in the box – this wonderful BBC Radio 1 In Concert 1976 that is playing – in glorious stereo, I might add (after a lovely across the kit drum roll – which just went across my brain in lovely carefully-drum-miked stereo).

I think I will leave the task of a full review to someone who knows more about this, for me, this was just a “way in”, a way to hear the development of this incredibly talented guitarist – who I was really, really fortunate to see both the Steve Hillage Band and Gong, during a very brief UK tour in 2008 – and he was remarkable in both bands – the perfect musical foil for the late Daevid Allen – and it was a unique opportunity, to first hear Steve and Miquette play solo Hillage material (which was unfortunately at the time, besides the obvious cover of “Hurdy Gurdy Man”, unknown to me) as well as, play as an integral part of Gong – this was a remarkable performance featuring most of the main figures in Gong history, including his long time partner Miquette Giraudy, Hillage and Mike Howlett as well.

So that is my most recent listening, previous to that, however, I’ve been revisiting my catalogue of XTC releases, trying to get caught up with capturing all of the additional music hidden away on the Blu-Ray discs included in each of these amazing “Steven Wilson” re-masters – and I guess I can say that I definitely am collecting Steven Wilson re-masters – starting with the King Crimson re-masters – the ultimate – King Crimson in 5.1 sounds absolutely astonishing – it’s so worth it just for that alone – but, there is always a lot of additional music buried on the DVD or Blu-Ray portion, and I’ve developed a unique way to capture this additional material

In assessing my XTC discs, I now have four Steven Wilson XTC re-masters:  Drums & Wires, Skylarking, Oranges & Lemons, and Nonsuch.  I realised that I had only partially done the work on capturing the extra tracks from three of them, so I set out to “right” this wrong.

I also have the same issue with my Gentle Giant, and Yes “Steven Wilson” re-masters – again, I have ripped the ordinary CDs, which contain some of the additional material – but, the additional music on the Blu-Ray has remained accessible only on the 5.1 system – which I can’t take out with me on my iPods.

So – I have developed a process, which includes templates of blank folders, and a template in SONAR Platinum for capturing the music from the discs.  I was wondering if anyone else uses a similar process to this:

 

ACQUIRE BLU-RAY AUDIO CONTENT WITH HIGHEST QUALITY POSSIBLE:

• Set up your blank folders using the template, which prepares you to “receive” WAV files of the tracks you are capturing, and then later, converting them into MP3 files for your portable device.

• Those folders look something like this (after conversion from the dummy template folders):

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc01-SWMix-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc01-SWMix-WAV   (Note:  These are from the CD, which is just ripped normally – not related to this Blu-Ray process)

 

Sometimes there might be two, or even three, CDs (which of course, are all ripped normally)  in which case, those would eat up the Disc01, 02 and 03 slots, and your Blu-Ray material would then start with “Disc04” rather than “Disc02” – you just have to adjust as necessary depending on the contents of the set.  Then, follows your DVD or Blu-Ray ONLY Content:

 

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc03-AlbumInDemo&WorkTapeForm-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc03-AlbumInDemo&WorkTapeForm-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc04-ExtraDemos&WorkTapes-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc04-ExtraDemos&WorkTapes-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc05-RehearsalsAtLeedsStudiosLA-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc05-RehearsalsAtLeedsStudiosLA-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc06-Videos-Mono-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc06-Videos-Mono-WAV

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc07-StereoInstrumental-MP3

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc07-StereoInstrumental-WAV

 

These folders are only one arrangement, of course, the folder set I come up with, ultimately, just reflects what music is available to me to extract from the Blu-Ray in question.  The set of folders above, is probably suitable, with possible minor alterations, for any XTC album.  Of course, something like “Drums & Wires” has many, many more folders that this example, because there are several different Rehearsal sections on that disc – hence, many more folders (12 in total I believe, or 24 if you count the WAV versions).

 

For King Crimson or Yes, it would be similar, but perhaps, instead of “Videos-Mono” you would probably get “OriginalVinylUK” and “OriginalVinylUS” and so on – so basically – anything that needs captured, you build a folder for.

• Then, you take a copy of your SONAR Template session (.cwp file) (or equivalent in whatever DAW you use), which is set up with many, many Audio channels – one of my recent efforts ended up at 98 channels – and these are pre-set to use the special S-PDIF “pure digital” input of my sound card – so the S-PDIF outputs of my Blu-Ray player are fed to a pair of inputs on the Sound Card – and all Blu-Ray recording is done via this “pure digital” route – directly from the disc, to the sound card, to SONAR – where I capture them as 48K 24 bit WAV files – the best I can do. The SONAR CWP should be in the root of your work folder, so you can view it and work with it, AND see the folder set shown above.

• Arm for recording, a single track, which will have a title such as

XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-UNTOUCHEDORIGINAL

• Put the Blu-Ray into the machine, and queue up the Original Master Mix (the Flat Transfer of the original CD with the original Mix) from the EXTRAS section of the Blu-Ray.
• Press RECORD on the armed channel in SONAR, and once you see the transport moving, then start the Blu-Ray playing.

 

• Leave that entire disk worth of music to play, while of course, SONAR is recording it in the highest quality possible – Input = S-PDIF and SONAR = 48K 24 Bit.

 

• Normally, I do not have to adjust the levels at all – for S-PDIF, they seem to be pre-set, and they always make a clean, but never too “hot” recording – it’s ideal. They just approach 0 db, but never surpass it – so, loud and clean.

 

• Once the Blu-Ray has ended, and you have your recording of the entire CD captured as a SINGLE large WAV file, you can now move onto the next piece of music, and repeat the above process on the next target disc (in this case, it’s Disc03, “Album In Demo & Work Tape Form”).

 

• When completed, you then move onto the PROCESSING part of the process, which is probably the most time-consuming and patience-testing.

 

PROCESSING THE FILES:

 

• In your SONAR .cwp file, you now have a series of large wav files, each one representing a disk full of music. Using the back of the box set or it’s booklet as a guide, I then create a single AUDIO track just below the main, large WAV.  That is set up quite simply, you won’t be recording on it, but you need to set it up so it is playing to Master, and thence out to your headphones or speakers, as you need to monitor this process (I use headphones to be the most precise possible).  Once you are happy with your new empty, Audio track, before we work on any music processing – count the individual tracks that are in this large WAV file, and use TRACK CLONE to make the appropriate number of copies of your new, empty Audio track.  If it’s a 15 track album, then I would create 14 more of these, by adjusting the Count of Clones in the Cloning Window.  Push the button, and SONAR (or your DAW) adds 14 empty audio tracks – and now you have 15 empty spaces for tracks.  Which already have their name template ready for a track number at the end – then, go back – and put in your track number and names:

 

• Return now to your single large wav track, and before you do anything, take a COPY of it, and PASTE it into your new first audio track – TRACK 01 – which will be labelled something like XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-01-GardenOfEarthlyDelights-OriginalMasterMix, and first, clean up the lead in – there will be extra space there, so you want to reduce that to a very short lead in, and make sure it starts fairly quickly – usually in under a second, so it starts like a normal CD would – immediately.

 

• Then, find the end of Track 1. Determine the best spot to SPLIT the tracks, so that Track 1 has a proper ending, and that Track 2 will end up with the SPLIT quite close to its first sound.  Once you are happy with this transition point, go ahead and SPLIT the track (leaving the first long recording UNTOUCHED – as the name implies!) always do your first splitting, on the SECOND one – the COPY!!!

 

• Once split, REMOVE the large chunk of remaining audio, which contains tracks 2 through 15, and MOVE them into the next track.

 

• Repeat the split, each time, leaving the remainder (of your large wav file copy, which gets smaller and smaller each time you split and move it down) and moving it into the next track.

 

• Once done, you need to clean up the end of the final track, just to make sure there are no surprises.

 

• At this point, you should be done with PROCESSING, and ready for OUTPUT.

 

OUTPUTTING THE FILES:

 

• Ensure that all tracks except your Track 01, “Garden Of Earthly Delights” are MUTED. This is crucial, if you leave anything with sound on it unmuted except for the ONE TRACK you are outputting, it’s sound WILL MIX with your track – thus, ruining it.

 

• Select the track with your mouse, then, EXPORT – and point the output to your pre-made WAV folder:

 

OUTPUT FOLDER:      XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-WAV

 

• Once the output has completed, check the folder for the presence of the file, make sure it’s there, and, named to your satisfaction.

 

• Repeat with each track, making sure that you MUTE the previous track, and unmute the one you are working on (or you get a SILENT output file!) – and that ALL tracks except the one you are currently working on, are always MUTED.

 

• Once the WAV files have all been output, for each Disc – save and back up the .cwp file, save and back up all Audio files created during the session (your large WAV files).

 

• At this point, you have the best quality, 48K, 24 bit WAV files of the individual tracks, SPLIT out perfectly in the steps above, ready to now transform into MP3 files so you can load them onto your iPod or other portable device.

 

 

FINAL PROCESSING:

 

• Using DVDSoft tool “Audio Converter” (or any decent utility that Converts WAV files to high quality MP3 files), set the type to your desired quality (I use “Lame Insane Quality 320 kbps Frauhofen MP3” myself) and point the output to the root folder above your WAV and MP3 folders:

 

OUTPUT FOLDER:      XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-WAV&MP3 (or whatever YOUR project folder is called – the idea being, we want the tool to output ALL of the MP3s, from ALL of the WAVs, back into the root of your Project, so you can then assign their internal names BEFORE they are finally split up, by you dragging them into their individual, pre-made “MP3” folders.

 

• Once your type and target folder are set in the Audio Converter tool, you can now drag the files you want to have converted, into the area at the top of the application where it says “DRAG AUDIO FILES HERE” or similar.

 

• Open your XTC-1989-1-Oranges&Lemons-Remaster-Expanded-Disc02-OriginalMasterMix-WAV folder, and select all 15 / however many you have of your WAV files with your mouse by using SHIFT-mouse, and then DRAG them across into the top part of the DVDSoft Audio Converter Application. I usually just do all of the WAV files as one giant conversion, so after I drag over the Disc02-OriginalMasterMix files, I then carry on, opening each WAV file folder next would be Disc03, then 04, etc., and dragging their contents into the DVDSoft Audio Conversion tool.

 

• Once you have the entire set of WAV files in place in the Audio Converter, re-check that your output type is correct (for me, that’s always highest quality, 320 kbps MP3), and that your target folder is just the root folder you are working in – and then press “Convert”. The tool starts working, taking each WAV file, and converting it into an MP3 file.   This can take quite some time, depending on how many hours’ worth of WAV files you have loaded into the tool – be patient, it will eventually tell you that the Process Is Complete. NOTE:  When it converts, it adds a “Comment” into each MP3 file – in the field “Comments” it puts its little advert “DVDSoft.com”.

 

• It’s harmless, but I don’t want it in my file, so the first thing I do, is select all items, while they are all still in the main folder, and I DELETE this “comment”, leaving the Comments field empty as it should be.

 

 

• While the MP3s are still in the main, root directory of your project, you should go ahead and add in your “Internal File Data” – I start out, by doing a few bulk updates – I select ALL of the MP3s, right click and select “Properties”, select the Details tab, and then, under “Album Artist” and “Contributing Artists”, I add in the band’s name (unless it’s already there). I also do a bulk update on any other fields that are the same for ALL of the files, such as “Genre” IF they are all the same Genre.

 

• After that, you can highlight each album, or each file, and make whatever adjustments you need to make the INNER NAMES meet your own personal Standards – I have very particular standards, which includes an Album Name that is preceded by a Year and Counter, so, “Oranges & Lemons” is actually called

 

“1989-1 Oranges & Lemons – Remaster – Expanded – Disc 02 – Original Master Mix – The Surround Sound Series” in my collection.

 

…or something like that – by dating these (using this YYYY-Counter template), I can force them to sort into Chronological order, based on the Album title – it works pretty well, but I did start out with that Standard some 9 years ago, so it would take anyone else a long time to institute – but a very good percentage of my existing MP3 collection does contain these dates.  I have even recently, been converting posthumous live CDs back to their performance date, rather than their more current release date – because let’s face it, there were not that many Gentle Giant live shows in 2006 or 2012.  But there are a LOT of shows from 1975, released in the last 30 years – well, I have managed to get them into chronological order with just a few exceptions where no data exists for the date of a concert.  Oh well – it’s the best I could do.

 

• From here, you would then rename each MP3 folder to match your MP3 collection – to whatever Standard you use there – and then copy them to your individual folders on your drive or drives. I am currently keeping seven copies of the MP3 on seven separate hard drives, and four copies of the WAV masters (because I sweated blood and time extracting these tracks!) on four separate drives – that’s my backup at the moment.   Because I am always short on disc space, I am going to reduce the MP3s down to four soon, to recover a lot of space – but, it was set up as seven and that’s how it was for the longest time…a lot of redundancy!

 

• Finally, once the MP3s are added to your collection – you can add them to ITunes and sync your device, or, put them on your non-ios device by drag and drop or whatever methodology you use – your MP3 files of rare Blu-Ray content, are NOW FINALLY READY for your listening pleasure – ENJOY!

 

 

So – back to reality – how’s THAT for a Process?  Since I had to do the content of Skylarking and  Oranges & Lemons during the last week or so, I used those experiences to build the Templates and work out exactly how the process should work, getting it down to a science – but not a quick one.  I recently used the new process on XTC “Nonsuch” – and it worked beautifully – it’s much better to have a consistent process for this, because it is pretty complex – as well as three of my four Steven Wilson Yes albums that still need the process done to them.  And one or two of my Steven Wilson Gentle Giant albums.  And ALL of my Steven Wilson Jethro Tull albums…including the brand new Stand Up – The Elevated Edition which sounds awesome, I might add!

 

I’ve got it down from days to hours now, but it can still eat up most of a day, just doing one “album” – because they usually pack a LOT of amazing music onto those Blu-Rays.  It’s quite amazing, to have a 20 disc version of “Drums and Wires” by XTC !!! Lots of choice there…

 

 

The only catalogue that is actually done – is King Crimson – that was my first Steven Wilson remix, the giant DVD release of In The Court of The Crimson King in about 2008 – hard to believe it (my obsession with the quality recordings that are any and all “Steven Wilson Mixes”) goes back that far, six years!

 

The problem is, to do this PROPERLY, takes a huge amount of time.  OK, ripping the music off of the disc, you can just start it and walk away, and do other work while it’s copying the content to that WAV file.  Repeat as necessary.   Sometimes, I just let three or four discs worth play into a HUGE WAV file, then, split it by album, and move them to their appropriate channel.  But once that easy step of transferring the music over is gone – well, then you are back to that horrible processing section, and cutting up different versions of the same album, or, massive quantities of Andy Partridge demos – it is very, very time consuming – and, I am a perfectionist, so if it isn’t perfect – I do it again – but, I am getting better at it…slowly.  It took me two full days to process all of the content on Yes’ “Tales From Topographic Oceans” – 2 whole days!  That seems to be what it takes, although maybe I could do one in a single day under the right circumstances.

 

I do want to get on with the Yes and Gentle Giant in particular, because both of those sport Stereo Instrumentals, which I absolutely love.  I’ve been listening to the Instrumental versions of Yes’ “Tales From Topographic Oceans” and they are fascinating and beautiful – you hear all kinds of things that the vocals hide – and I played “Ritual – Stereo Instrumental” yesterday on the 5.1 system – wow – it sounded fantastic!  Weird without any vocals – but, fascinating, especially hearing what Steve, Rick and in the case of Ritual, Chris are really doing – how it sounded before any vocals arrived – it’s just astonishing.

 

Now that I have finished XTC “Nonsuch”, so that’s all four of my SW XTC Discs  done – and then, eventually, to Yes and Gentle Giant – as for the Steve Hillage CDs that I just ripped – thank GOD it’s just all audio CDs in this set – no DVD or Blu-Ray content – so, that makes it so easy!

 

Until just now, I’ve never written down this process, and now that I see it in black and white, it just seems like going to extraordinary lengths to be able to hear rare music on your portable device – but, I have it streamlined now, so it does go a LOT faster using the templates, and my experience and skill at cutting up tracks, has gotten much, much better lately, so – it’s not quite as bad as it was.  But it is a LONG process by gumbo!

 

OK then, onto pastures new, now that you have learned one way, probably NOT the fastest way (I just know someone will come back to me with a tool that rips all audio from a Blu-ray or DVD with one button push) and it can even split up your tracks for you while cooking you a delicious breakfast – but I don’t know, mine does guarantee consistent, high quality, MP3s, built from the best possible, super high quality WAV file – for the level of technology that I have, it’s not too bad – it could be a lot worse!

 

For me, it’s just for the chance to hear this remarkable music, these musicological gems that Steven Wilson finds on these master tapes, and brings to us all – some amazing music has been unearthed just by his standard processes of “re-mixing” classic prog and pop albums.

 

Speaking of music, well, despite spending SOME time on Blu-Ray content – I have actually also been working on new music – in the studio, I have a new track, which I started a couple of weeks ago, called “On The Cusp Of Yesterday” which I am currently having a titanic struggle with.  The basic track has been done for some time, and, for some weird reason, the last one-minute guitar solo is also done.  So I needed to add guitars, from the beginning to the beginning of this existing solo, which is a bit challenging.

 

I spent an entire day (a few weeks ago on a Sunday, I think) adding some new parts, using a lot of truly beautiful H9 patches, a nice, ordinary clean delay into a hall reverb, not too ostentatious, but just nice – and then some other more strident patches – doing guitar over dubs.  All day, and, I wasn’t happy with the last…two or three overdubs.  Maybe the first one was OK, or maybe it’s just the second one…

 

I was so dissatisfied, because it just had not come out how I heard it in my head, which I didn’t even bother to make a rough mix of it with these new hard-fought overdubs, which were technically ok, but weren’t doing the job for me.

 

So the next time I got some free time to work on it, “On The Cusp Of Yesterday” got a new makeover – I actually decided to go ALL THE WAY BACK to the backing track, hiding all of my previous guitar bits, including the good ones – and I would try again, with that lovely clean delay to start – but this time, a clean delay into a beautiful SpaceTime patch.

 

I did several takes, some involving harmonics, others, strange chords, others, melodies and lead guitar.  Saved everything, but listened to nothing.  Now, I am waiting for another chance to go back and hear what I did – and I know that some certain bits – like the very end – came out REALLY well, there is some viable music there, and possibly, enough to flesh out part of the track, perhaps leaving some spaces for me to populate.

 

At the moment, I am just avoiding it, I am not sure where it’s going, the backing track is exceptional – drums, odd bass, really odd “keyboards” courtesy of “REV”, and a lovely violin.  A good solid track, and I really like it – but, for some inexplicable reason, I am not sure what belongs on top of it.  I am tending towards something quite ambient at the moment, rather than “normal” guitar parts (which is what I did the first time around, where I REALLY didn’t like the outcome) – I am liking ambient guitar parts at the moment, so that might be the way – time will tell.

 

Update: another session, I was able to take the recordings made the second time around, and produce a nice mix of “on the cusp of yesterday” from those – it’s come out really well.  Probably ready to be uploaded…which I still haven’t done, because I still haven’t decided about it…

 

Next – is something a bit unexpected, I am now at this very moment, revealing my plans for my next new “Eternal Album” which has turned out to be something I really did not expect AT ALL:  “Garage Band” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

How did that start? I had read somewhere on the Interweb, that Garage Band had had a really good makeover, and was a really cool way to make music now – and I can remember seeing Garage Band years ago on a friends Mac – and I myself have used it, I have a few songs made with it on an old Ipad, that I’ve never published – and possibly won’t, they were very early experiments, before I really had working with Apps down to a Science.

 

I decided to try out this new, improved Garage band, and wow – I was very, very surprised indeed!  It really has a lot of great features, and I think it could become my go-to place for working with samples – and that is what sets it apart, is the “Apple Loops” which are professionally-recorded bits of music, 2 bars of this, 4 bars of that, 8 bars of something really strange.  A lot of grooves, drum grooves, bass grooves, a lot of it is rhythmic in nature, including ethnic sounds from India, Afghanistan and even Egypt – and, a nice batch of African sounds, mostly drums – I have to admit, they have supplied a LOT of great, ready-made content, that you can fit together into tracks in a very easy, intuitive way.

 

I have thoroughly enjoy my Garage Band Renaissance or GBR, and I immediately started producing strange and wonderful hybrid piece of music beginning in mid-September and continuing to the present day.  And I finally did upload the first five complete tracks, to the new album, a few days ago.  I am also nearly finished with a sixth track, working title “preponderance”.  So the Garage Band Renaissance has been a real hit with me – here are the tracks:

 

Start Date            Title                                                       Containing

 

20160919             Hare Rama Buys A Llama               Drum Samples, Manually Played Bass, Grand Piano, Synth, Raucous Rhythm and Lead Guitars, Bizarre Guitar FX, and Bass Samples, Strings Samples

 

20160926             Opposites Attract                            Wonderful Pastiches of African Drum Samples, Ever Changing,

Manually Played Bass, Cello Samples, Afghanistani Melodic Instrument Samples, Sub-Bass Samples, Dub-Step Bass Samples, Bass Synth, Melody Synth, Reversed Melody Synth, Drum Kit Samples, String Section Samples.

 

20160926             Metal Crisis                                        (Altered version of abandoned track “Cuban Crises”) Drum Kit

(Metal) Sample, Metal Chug Rhythm Guitar Sample, Metal

(Metal) Sample, Metal Chug /Blues Lead Guitar Sample, Funky Clean Wah-Wah Guitar Sample, Beautiful Female Voice Singing “Oohs & Aahs” Vocal Sample, Funky Fender Rhodes Electric Piano Sample, Synth Sample, Additional Drum Kit Sample, Manually Played Bass.

 

20161014             Nambutamba Rain Shower         African Drum Samples (Many Different Ones), African Percussion

Samples, Mysterious Electric Piano Riff Sample, Mysterious Guitar Riff Sample, Mysterious Synth Chords, Additional Conga Sample, Rock Bass Guitar Sample, Drum Break Sample, Crash Cymbal Sample (Note: In the end, I actually did not play a single actual note on this, it’s entirely composed of samples – and also, it’s probably the first ever Ambient African piece of music ever made!)

 

20161017             Ten Seventeen (Aka “Nine Nine”)        Drum Kit Samples (Three Different Funked Out Drum Kit Samples, Manually Played Bass Guitar, Sarod Sample, Indian Drum Samples (Khol and Pakawaj Drums), Transport Stop Synth Sample, Voyager 1 Synth Sample, Vocalised Synth Bass Sample, Boogie Right Vox Synth Sample, Vigilante All Sample (String Section & Timpani Samples).

Update: after several more sessions, I FINALLY got the manually played bass guitar part how I wanted it.

 

I am very excited about working with Garage Band again, now that it has had such a brilliant face-lift, and I love how very simple it is to create very intriguing and interesting music, using mainly samples – something I’ve not done much of outside of Komplete – but that’s a very different world of sampling – the Native Instruments world – and I am afraid that Garage Band is not quite up to that standard yet :-).  But – it’s not bad for Apple!

I had a blast recording these tracks, the first where I used an IPhone instead of an Ipad – it’s not bad at all – I found it easy enough to do.  I do like the samples that Apple has provided, and the temptation to just sit and create, is overwhelming – they have a lot of great-sounding samples (and, some terribly bad or terribly cheesy ones, too) which make composing a dream – they even “theme” them together, so for example, you can put a bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar “together” and they play back a chunk of an imaginary song by an imaginary band.  Of course, I like to manually force them to match up with the wrong track, cross-breeding them rather than putting them all together as intended – intentionally misusing the pre-matched loops…but that’s just me.

 

 

I have already used that technique twice during the last five weeks of Garage Band work, myself; once on “Hare Rama Buys A Llama” and again on “Metal Crisis” – it works well, and I like it. For the latter track, though, I brought in additional bluesy lead guitars, and purposely “mismatched” those over the other, patterned rhythm guitars – and it worked fine, because the musicianship of this unknown guitarist, was of a high calibre, and his beautiful blues riffs could have “fit” almost anywhere….by purposefully mis-placing them, I created some impossible and very musical moments in this metal / beautiful vocals track – a strange experience, but well worth it – I like this track!

So really, I am right back where I started, with music on an Ipad, often, Garage Band is the first thing you learn, and in my case, I am no exception, I did work with it for quite a while, until ambient apps came along and distracted me – once I had Scape, and Mixtikl, and Drone FX – that was me, away from “normal” apps like Garage Band, and when I did use normal apps, I favoured Nanostudio (and I still do!) as well as learning how to sample from the Fairlight, and so on – I began a long journey of discovery, that has now, in 2016…led me right back to the beginning, to where I started in 2011 – back to Garage Band.  Who would have thought?

Not me.

 

Now that the new Garage Band Eternal Album is loaded up at last, I am off to work on the guitar system which is undergoing yet another massive upgrade…as usual.  A game-changing upgrade I hope, including Pedalboard Mark 68, I can’t wait till it’s all sorted out…

 

 

Happy listening!

 

 

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

journey through the past – gear evolution – getting my gear together

so as a teenager, I was very, very fortunate, to have been born into the time I was, when prog rock was king and instrumental prowess was respected. to have met and worked with so many excellent musicians, to have learned from some brilliant players – and friends – jim whitaker, joe norwood, rick corierre, and my best friend and the most amazing keyboard player I’ve ever known, the late, great, amazing ted holding – may he rest in peace. to have the time to jam, learn, share to our heart’s content – and just play. all the time! what a luxury – I was very, very fortunate.

and then…life happened.  I’ve been trying to puzzle out how to describe what happened next, and it’s not simple or easy – but basically, while I’d worked an assortment of jobs starting when I was 15, when I was 20, I reached the point where I really needed to work full time – so by accident, I got myself hired on at a place where a friend of mine, jon pickerd (aka pfingsten), worked.

little did I realise then, that this would occupy the next 11 – 12 years of my life, that I would very quickly rise up through the ranks from general dogsbody to running the parts department to eventually becoming the service co-ordinator and second in command of the entire business. nor did I really realise the impact of having a full time job, what a negative impact that would have on music – well, at least an impact on how much time was available to play music.

the first thing I needed to do, was sort out my equipment. I’d bought a beautiful ibanez destroyer guitar (near exact copy of a gibson explorer) from my friend joe norwood (an amazing blues and slide guitarist) with, strangely, a customised pickguard made by none other than my friend and former band mate, mitch chavira, who often was the bass player in the same band that joe norwood and ted holding were in (joe was ted’s brother in law, and they were in many, many bands together during this time) – mitch was at the time, working for a plastics or manufacturing house, and joe had him make a special custom pickguard for the guitar, which looks much nicer than the strange, stock white pickguard that ibanez put onto the guitar originally.

I also changed the pickups, a couple of times – ending up with d’marzio pafs (patent applied for humbuckers) – which are still on the guitar today, some 34 years later 🙂

since I was now working, and had a little bit of money, I slowly started to put together some decent guitar equipment for the first time ever.  during the teenage years, I had never really owned an amp, well, for a brief period I did own a fender super eeverb, but other than that, I’d never needed one, I would usually play through ted’s carvin bass head, into one of ted’s homemade speaker cabinets.  effects were limited too, although at various times I owned a tattered second hand, but proper, arbiter red fuzz face (the same one hendrix used – of course) and the thomas organ version of the vox wah (so, a direct copy of the one hendrix used – of course) – but other than that, the only other “effect” I owned was my reel to reel tape deck with it’s “delay” switch – that I used as a guitar delay! – in the ted rick & dave (& jennings) jam sessions.

so slowly, I built up some reasonable gear.  quite quickly, I realised (partially from a lot of very, very good advice from joe norwood, who by this time was working at a series of various guitar shops – and he would let me trade gear up, it was great having a “pal” in the guitar store, I can tell you) that I didn’t really want or need a “guitar amp” – what I wanted was a clean power amp and stereo speakers.  so I bought some really good quality 12 inch celestion speakers, and two cabinets, and joe installed them for me – so I had my 2 1X12 celestion cabinets, and eventually, I was using an A/B single rack space power amp with them. (of course, fast forward to now, 2012, and I am feeling like I missed out – I want guitar amps – a fender, a marshall, a boogie, a roland jc-20…the list goes on.  when I win the lottery, I shall have at least one of each of these!).

that way, I would use devices, whether that was a preamp (I tried many, including the boogie preamp – the silver one, whose name escapes me) or multi-effects units (I had variously, a digitech dsp-128, robert fripp’s old roland gp-16 as well) until I eventually, much later, ended up with a digitech tsr-24S – a 24-bit reverb and multi-effects unit! imagine that – which was the state of the art at the time.

as time went on, I began to get delays capable of more and more delay time.  after having the dd-2 for many years, with it’s one second of delay, I set my sights on a digitech 8 second delay – at that time, that was the longest time available in a decently priced device (although I found it to be very, very expensive at the time – I think perhaps $240.00? or thereabouts) – but I eventually did get it (thanks again to joe norwood), so to suddenly go from 1 to 8 seconds of delay – wow.  and, you could even loop with it, using the special footswitches.  heaven!

now, this description of dave’s gear isn’t really following a strict timeline, nor do I have any idea what devices I got when…I just know, that a long, long series of experiments, changes, always trying different configurations, eventually I ended up with…whatever I ended up with!  I have broken the time into roughly 9-10 year “chunks” so I can have a point of reference, but after a while, it all becomes a big blur of pedals, racks and controllers 🙂

so ten, fifteen years of trying out different gear, different ideas, until I got a sound I was happy with – stereo, always, although that was mainly for my own listening pleasure – I see no point in having auto-panners, choruses, flangers, phasers, or reverbs if you can’t hear them in true stereo – no point at all.  playing guitar in stereo was rare back then – most players still used the “guitar plugged into fender or marshall or whatever” model that had been the standard for so long – but joe norwood was one of the first to have a stereo rig (with not a guitar amp in sight), and I immediately followed suit – and, joe – thank you!

I never looked back. it really was a case of searching for the right gear for the right sound, and over the long haul, as my playing evolved from regular rock guitarist into ambient loop guitarist, the gear slowly mutated with me – so I ended up, in my 30s, with – finally – some half decent equipment.  about time!

I didn’t have a lot of money, so there were a lot of things I would have liked to have tried, but never did – particularly effects, effects with mysterious and wonderful names, like “electric mistress” or “doctor q” or “memory man” – but over the period of the   “second period of gear evolution”, which I am placing very roughly at 1979 – 1988 (so, age 21 to age 30, approximately), I owned mostly boss stomp boxes at first, starting with things like the ce-2 (my first chorus, ever) and then the bf-2 (my first flanger, ever) – and at that time, in my early to mid 20s, these were like technological marvels compared to what had been available in the 70s when I was a teenager – I can remember being so, so thrilled, particularly, with the bf-2, that I plugged a microphone into it and sang bill nelson’s “uhf” into it, using the resonance control to make my voice sound like bill does on his vocal (note: I just found the tape of this, and while it doesn’t really sound like bill’s uhf…it sounds very wickedly cool – I loved that song, and now, my bf-2 could make me sound just like bill! astonishing technology.

I felt no compunctions about recording vocals through a stompbox – I didn’t know any better – and it sounded good to me!  so I just…did it. now, I probably wouldn’t do that – I would add the flanger after recording the vocal, of course, during post-processing, having recorded it “dry”.  but sometimes, not knowing that you “don’t do that” – was a great way to learn, and I achieved some remarkable sonic highs using these most primitive stompboxes to effect and treat tracks and even whole songs.

following these now-primitive modulation devices, after the chorus and the flanger, came the heavy-hitters – delays.  I went through so many delays – again, started with the most basic one, the dm-2, which did well under a second of delay – but still, a stomp box that was quality for it’s time, and eminently usable – I recorded not just my guitar, but also vocals with it…and then, a couple years later, I was thrilled when the dd-2 came out, because it boasted one full second of delay – and loop – unimaginable!  that was really impressive, and I actually had both pedals in my rig for a long, long time.

then there was the distortion side.  I tried many fuzz boxes and overdrives, and I used, variously, the boss hm2, the heavy metal pedal, and another one whose model number escapes me – maybe a dm-2…I think at one point, I may have had as many as eight boss pedals (why not?) hooked up in a long, long line – I also had a vibrato pedal, a vb-2 (of course!) and I am really not quite sure what else.  always a wah of some kind, usually, a clone of the cry baby – nothing fancy.

I did also at one point fairly early on, maybe even during the “first period of gear evolution” from 1971 – 1978 (so, from age 13 to 20, approximately), a mu-tron wah-volume, which was a very modern device, it was pretty cool.  I have no idea what happened to it! I do remember using at one very good live recording session with my friend rick corierre (of “ted, rick and dave” fame), a friend from junior high school who was an excellent drummer – we did several takes of the jimi hendrix song “drifting” which I then took home and overdubbed vocals on – such a beautiful, beautiful song.

mostly, though, I was into boss pedals, the small stomp boxes – they were relatively cheap, very durable, small, portable (although I can remember spending so many hours messing with making them powerable – making sure each power lead was exactly the required length – I almost never use batteries in effects) because back then, you could only really buy an adapter, you didn’t have products like the voodoo labs power supplies that they have now.  so many an hour was spent soldering connectors onto zip cable, and making customised extension plug strips full of adapters for pedals.

if you currently had eight pedals in your pedalboard – then you had extension strips with eight individual power supplies, each with a custom length cable to minimise hum and noise.  a nightmare to build and keep running, but I got pretty good at it in the end.

speaking of pedalboards – well, I will need to create a special edition of the blog that deals with pedalboards, because right up until 2005, when I stopped, I spent a huge amount of time, designing, re-designing, building, and re-building pedalboards.  I learned, and learned, and learned some more – what works, what doesn’t, and so on.  and slowly – the boards got better and better, the sound got better and better, and I made progress. I tended to photograph each one, so hopefully I can create a “stafford pedalboards through the ages” photo page on the audio companion page.

some of the first ones were horrible!  very primitive, I really struggled to make them work, but as I went on, eventually, I hit on a very simple but effective method of making them…in brief, a thin rectangle of plywood, spray painted black (several coats, so it would stay black as long as possible – they got beat up pretty quickly) – double-sided tape – multiple power leads from a single supply – short, custom length cables – and that was that.

so when I think of this decade, I think of slowly improving gear (and consequently, slowly evolving and improving sounds…) and a lot of hard work, designing pedalboards to handle whatever the latest technology was…routing considerations…cables, cables, cables, I used to make all my own cables so there would not be one inch of unneccesary cable in any of my boards – so that was hours of work in itself, and I became quite adept at making cables.

as time went on, better power supply options appeared, better routing options – better switching options – so it would be, ok, first, we have this a/b switch, so there can be two paths within one pedalboard – genius!  maybe one for the distortions and the modulators, and one for the reverb – or some other mixtures – like having two pedalboards on one, that you could switch back and forth between.  and then, a couple years later, another miracle product – the a/b/c switch – wow, three paths, really useful.  and for the rack mounted effects, special 3-switch digitech prorietary switches (I had two of them on my board, with 3 switches each) so I could control my rack devices from the floor…heaven.

of course, it wouldn’t be until the “third period of gear evolution” roughly 1989 – 1998 (from age 31 to 40, approximately) that we had things like dedicated MIDI pedals, when we then got complete control of rack devices, but, whatever the method, I was always the king of the pedalboard, because I wanted the flexibility of sound, and it was critical that both hands were free…