I've had this thought recently:
Cynicism is the language of the hopeless.
Discuss amongst yourself, at your leisure.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Matador Records loses vinyl masters
Well, sadly, I've just found out that Matador Records, an indie label, lost their vinly masters for their entire pre-2006 catalog.
This is sad news. It's sad because I'd be sad if it happened to me. It's sad because I know what it means.
Recordings go through a number of stages: planning (or lack thereof), tracking (recording), mixing (manipulating), and mastering. Mastering is the essential step where the recording is eq'd, compressed, and touched up *for a particular playback medium*. That's the important thing. Mastering is not, at its most basic, the final buff and shine, but rather the last check with the engineer to make sure that the specs are still right. You create a Master. There will be a different master for each playback medium. Vinyl, CD, DVD, SACD, cassette tape, 8-track, etc. Each of these playback media has technical limitations and so the Master must have the best possible sound within the technical limitations.
These are separate from the Mix Tapes or the Tracking Tapes.
Basically, losing the vinyl masters means that in order to cut the albums again on vinyl, a Master engineer will have to be given the Mix Tapes and paid to re-create a vinyl master. The recordings aren't lost, it's more like having a car without an engine. It's a big, expensive hassle.
And a real bummer.
This is sad news. It's sad because I'd be sad if it happened to me. It's sad because I know what it means.
Recordings go through a number of stages: planning (or lack thereof), tracking (recording), mixing (manipulating), and mastering. Mastering is the essential step where the recording is eq'd, compressed, and touched up *for a particular playback medium*. That's the important thing. Mastering is not, at its most basic, the final buff and shine, but rather the last check with the engineer to make sure that the specs are still right. You create a Master. There will be a different master for each playback medium. Vinyl, CD, DVD, SACD, cassette tape, 8-track, etc. Each of these playback media has technical limitations and so the Master must have the best possible sound within the technical limitations.
These are separate from the Mix Tapes or the Tracking Tapes.
Basically, losing the vinyl masters means that in order to cut the albums again on vinyl, a Master engineer will have to be given the Mix Tapes and paid to re-create a vinyl master. The recordings aren't lost, it's more like having a car without an engine. It's a big, expensive hassle.
And a real bummer.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Ruminations and Ruminants
If I was more clever, I'd have made that the title of my blog. Perhaps and album title someday.
Recently, my cousin came up to help us castrate, tag, vaccinate and move cattle to some wheat grazure. It was threatening rain. We failed. It rained.
Last Saturday, a heavy thunderstorm drifted in while we were building a corral (that we realized we should have built before attempting the aforementioned activities with my cousin). I thought it was going to just miss us. It did not. We were out in the pasture and as we headed back into town, what appeared to be rain up ahead turned out instead to be nickel-sized hail. I've never been in hail of any substance before, and I can assure you that the crack of ice-balls whapping up against the windshield and sheet meat is entirely disconcerting. We turned around and high-tailed it out of there. We had to make for the farm, to try and get in the shed, dodging precursor hail the entire time. Our shed is sort of a Quonset hut type structure, large enough for a combine, two tractors, and a two-ton farm truck. We nestled the pickup in between everything and shut the door and Wham-o!, the hail started pelting the metal shed, making an obscene racket. There is something unnerving about being attacked from the sky. It seemed like there was an army of tebuchets in the heavens loading up ice-balls and whistling them out at us. It's probably the first time I've ever had a "nowhere to run" experience. I kept thinking, "I'm glad we're in this pickup." "I'm sure glad to be in this shed." "What would I do if I was a cow right now?"
So that was exciting.
We finally got the corral built today. It's a poor man's corral. It's shoddy. We had to use line posts as corner posts and the barbed wire just bends the posts when you try to tighten it. So everything's kind of just leaning eschew, looking bad. We bought some gate-type panels to use as a pen and runway to the portable loading corral. Tommorrow we have to put posts in to anchor the panels and then we'll be ready to work the cattle. *Unfortunately*, all this has taken so long that the wheat has headed out and we can't put cattle on it now. So the whole point of this is for naught, except we still needed to work them, so it's still useful for that, but all that electric fence is useless now. It'll be handy sometime, no doubt, but not soon.
This morning we found out that my Aunt Margaret died. It was unexpected. The funeral will be here in Alva, so I'll be seeing my cousins this weekend. It's sad. It's sad, no so much for me because she's gone, but just her life in general contained the sadness of a life never fully realized. Not a bad life, nor a bad person, or anything like that, but it was never what it could have been and I would have liked to have seen that change. Of course, for my cousins, their mother is gone and that's hard. I'll miss her, too. But mostly I'll miss what could have been, I think. I'm confident that death has been sweet to my Aunt and that she's better for it, but, you know, we don't live outside of time like she does now. For us, everything goes on incomplete and imperfected and disjointed.
Cheers to you and yours,
prewett
Recently, my cousin came up to help us castrate, tag, vaccinate and move cattle to some wheat grazure. It was threatening rain. We failed. It rained.
Last Saturday, a heavy thunderstorm drifted in while we were building a corral (that we realized we should have built before attempting the aforementioned activities with my cousin). I thought it was going to just miss us. It did not. We were out in the pasture and as we headed back into town, what appeared to be rain up ahead turned out instead to be nickel-sized hail. I've never been in hail of any substance before, and I can assure you that the crack of ice-balls whapping up against the windshield and sheet meat is entirely disconcerting. We turned around and high-tailed it out of there. We had to make for the farm, to try and get in the shed, dodging precursor hail the entire time. Our shed is sort of a Quonset hut type structure, large enough for a combine, two tractors, and a two-ton farm truck. We nestled the pickup in between everything and shut the door and Wham-o!, the hail started pelting the metal shed, making an obscene racket. There is something unnerving about being attacked from the sky. It seemed like there was an army of tebuchets in the heavens loading up ice-balls and whistling them out at us. It's probably the first time I've ever had a "nowhere to run" experience. I kept thinking, "I'm glad we're in this pickup." "I'm sure glad to be in this shed." "What would I do if I was a cow right now?"
So that was exciting.
We finally got the corral built today. It's a poor man's corral. It's shoddy. We had to use line posts as corner posts and the barbed wire just bends the posts when you try to tighten it. So everything's kind of just leaning eschew, looking bad. We bought some gate-type panels to use as a pen and runway to the portable loading corral. Tommorrow we have to put posts in to anchor the panels and then we'll be ready to work the cattle. *Unfortunately*, all this has taken so long that the wheat has headed out and we can't put cattle on it now. So the whole point of this is for naught, except we still needed to work them, so it's still useful for that, but all that electric fence is useless now. It'll be handy sometime, no doubt, but not soon.
This morning we found out that my Aunt Margaret died. It was unexpected. The funeral will be here in Alva, so I'll be seeing my cousins this weekend. It's sad. It's sad, no so much for me because she's gone, but just her life in general contained the sadness of a life never fully realized. Not a bad life, nor a bad person, or anything like that, but it was never what it could have been and I would have liked to have seen that change. Of course, for my cousins, their mother is gone and that's hard. I'll miss her, too. But mostly I'll miss what could have been, I think. I'm confident that death has been sweet to my Aunt and that she's better for it, but, you know, we don't live outside of time like she does now. For us, everything goes on incomplete and imperfected and disjointed.
Cheers to you and yours,
prewett
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Zap!
I've spent the past few weeks building an electric fence with my dad in order to graze off some wheat we have that is laced with jointed goat grass, a pernicious weed. It's taken *forever*, for various reasons, and we just got it finished today. It works. We know because it's very easy to test: Apply finger. If you yelp, it works. :)
I've been buying a lot of musical equipment so that I can start playing out. In the past, I've always borrowed a PA system, but now I'm going to have my own. Simple, small, it fits me. Just put the finishing order on for some bulk cable to make speaker cables out of. I guess that's not all I need, I still need a power amp or a powered mixer, whichever is cheaper, but I've got the power amp narrowed down to an Alesis RA-100. It's normally used for studio monitors, but I think it'll work just fine for my needs and will be able to serve me double duty. There's a load of them on Ebay. New bookshelf speakers to use as monitors, new headphones, new PA speakers, cables, lots of new toys!! :)
Had some trouble with the bull calf the other day. He's not been cut, so he's starting to feel like a ladies' man. Jumped the fence (since the cows in our herd don't give him the time of day) to make some new friends. I thought he'd been stolen until I found him. So we had to get him back and close him up in our corral (a portable deal). Grounded! No TV, No internet, no phones, nothing for a month, mister!!
Sometime soon, my cousin will come up and we'll cut and tag and brand the calves and put them all on the wheat. I'll be pretty happy when we get this all done, finally. They're all long overdue to become steers, especially that bull calf (my father calls him "the prince"), but since the calves all belong to my uncle, we can't do things on our timetable.
Pizza Hut has cut me back to 3.5 hours now, so I'm thinking it's time to blow this town. lol. California, ho!
I've been buying a lot of musical equipment so that I can start playing out. In the past, I've always borrowed a PA system, but now I'm going to have my own. Simple, small, it fits me. Just put the finishing order on for some bulk cable to make speaker cables out of. I guess that's not all I need, I still need a power amp or a powered mixer, whichever is cheaper, but I've got the power amp narrowed down to an Alesis RA-100. It's normally used for studio monitors, but I think it'll work just fine for my needs and will be able to serve me double duty. There's a load of them on Ebay. New bookshelf speakers to use as monitors, new headphones, new PA speakers, cables, lots of new toys!! :)
Had some trouble with the bull calf the other day. He's not been cut, so he's starting to feel like a ladies' man. Jumped the fence (since the cows in our herd don't give him the time of day) to make some new friends. I thought he'd been stolen until I found him. So we had to get him back and close him up in our corral (a portable deal). Grounded! No TV, No internet, no phones, nothing for a month, mister!!
Sometime soon, my cousin will come up and we'll cut and tag and brand the calves and put them all on the wheat. I'll be pretty happy when we get this all done, finally. They're all long overdue to become steers, especially that bull calf (my father calls him "the prince"), but since the calves all belong to my uncle, we can't do things on our timetable.
Pizza Hut has cut me back to 3.5 hours now, so I'm thinking it's time to blow this town. lol. California, ho!
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Let's get philosophical
Anyone catch the Olivia Newton-John reference?
There's something I think about from time to time. It is this:
It is impossible to completely understand or describe something greater than oneself.
One of the questions that arises from this is, "What is something greater than oneself?"
I have not prepared an answer to this question.
Here's my point:
The most accurate map of the Earth is the Earth itself. That is, there cannot be a map made that more accurately describes the Earth than the object and presence of the Earth itself.
Similarly, the most accurate description of who I am is myself. No words, pictures, or other devices can more accurately describe me than I, myself.
So, in order to completely describe (if not understand) something, you have to be it.
I think this is profoundly important.
Another important thing:
It is not impossible to know (as in, "relate to") something greater than yourself, although it is impossible to completely know something greater than yourself.
I can know the Earth, if only partly. I can know another person, again, partly. I cannot know another person more completely than I know myself.
An interesting question is, "Can one completely know oneself?" I have not prepared an answer to this question.
I think this is also profoundly important.
An example of my point regarding these two ideas:
It is impossible to completely understand or describe or know the Truth. It is not impossible for me to know the Truth, but impossible for me to completely know the Truth. This has profound implications. Even if you know the Truth about a certain thing or situation, you will never uncover the complete Truth about something, yet most people are satisfied at some point that they "understand the Truth." But the difference between an "acceptable" understanding of the Truth and a complete understanding of the Truth can be substantial. For instance, the difference between the acceptable understanding of the truth that my car is not operating correctly and the complete understanding of the truth of what is wrong with my car could be many hundreds of dollars in repair costs and time.
Similarly, and here is where I originated my thoughts today, is the idea that The Bible is not a complete description of God. Only God can be a complete description of God. And while there is evidence that the Bible does describe God and describes him accurately and saliently, it is still a far cry from God Himself. And while it is possible to know God, to know God completely is impossible. These things have profound implications for followers of the Biblical God. Profound implications that I think are far too often ignored.
This applies to all followers of anything. I think humanity has a tendency towards following no one but their individual selves, regardless of what they claim or believe to follow.
Humility is the prize of the wise.
There's something I think about from time to time. It is this:
It is impossible to completely understand or describe something greater than oneself.
One of the questions that arises from this is, "What is something greater than oneself?"
I have not prepared an answer to this question.
Here's my point:
The most accurate map of the Earth is the Earth itself. That is, there cannot be a map made that more accurately describes the Earth than the object and presence of the Earth itself.
Similarly, the most accurate description of who I am is myself. No words, pictures, or other devices can more accurately describe me than I, myself.
So, in order to completely describe (if not understand) something, you have to be it.
I think this is profoundly important.
Another important thing:
It is not impossible to know (as in, "relate to") something greater than yourself, although it is impossible to completely know something greater than yourself.
I can know the Earth, if only partly. I can know another person, again, partly. I cannot know another person more completely than I know myself.
An interesting question is, "Can one completely know oneself?" I have not prepared an answer to this question.
I think this is also profoundly important.
An example of my point regarding these two ideas:
It is impossible to completely understand or describe or know the Truth. It is not impossible for me to know the Truth, but impossible for me to completely know the Truth. This has profound implications. Even if you know the Truth about a certain thing or situation, you will never uncover the complete Truth about something, yet most people are satisfied at some point that they "understand the Truth." But the difference between an "acceptable" understanding of the Truth and a complete understanding of the Truth can be substantial. For instance, the difference between the acceptable understanding of the truth that my car is not operating correctly and the complete understanding of the truth of what is wrong with my car could be many hundreds of dollars in repair costs and time.
Similarly, and here is where I originated my thoughts today, is the idea that The Bible is not a complete description of God. Only God can be a complete description of God. And while there is evidence that the Bible does describe God and describes him accurately and saliently, it is still a far cry from God Himself. And while it is possible to know God, to know God completely is impossible. These things have profound implications for followers of the Biblical God. Profound implications that I think are far too often ignored.
This applies to all followers of anything. I think humanity has a tendency towards following no one but their individual selves, regardless of what they claim or believe to follow.
Humility is the prize of the wise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
