Had one of those crazy busy weekends.
NERD
It all started on Friday at the AES (Audio Engineering Society) Show at Moscone Center in downtown SF. It’s the nerdiest audio nerdfest I’ve ever been too, and it goes down in SF every other year (alternates between the Bay and NYC). I have to be there for work, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get certain degree of personal satisfaction out of it. I record bullshit at my modest home studio (Maxin’ & Relaxin’ Studios, Oakland CA), and play in a three-piece rock band, so audio geek shit is kinda interesting to me…at least, in a much as it relates to what I’m doing.
After running through all the dope boutique outboard studio gear, new microphones, and niche software plug-ins, I found myself short of interest. This took all of five hours. Not that there wasn’t some excitement afoot — DigiDesign’s ProTools 8 and Cakewalk’s Sonar 8 were released with much fanfare, but since I use neither in my studio, those demos were of cursory interest to me. Still, it’s not like I was there against my will.
I had plenty of opportunity to get my nerd on, and the Universal Audio both alone made the whole day a worthwhile venture. The top-notch pro-audio manufacturer was showcasing all kinds of crazy-awesome stuff: new UAD-2 cards, which I’m told they can’t make fast enough to keep up with demand (and I believe it, I have a UAD-1, and I freakin’ LOVE it); the 710 Twin-Finity tube and solid state preamp and DI; the LA610 MKII channel strip; and the Moog Multimode Filter plug-in for the UAD-1 card (I know where my next $200 in nerd-related expenditure is going).
I looked at — and at times tried (and invariably failed) to find the rational to invest in — a lot of other cool stuff too, like Eventide‘s digitalModFactor effects pedal, which, among other things, allows users to update it by downloading new software from the internet; Radial Engineering‘s Phazer Box and new Phazer Bank; Line 6‘s Pod Farm amp and effect modeling software; and handheld field recorders — the Marantz PMD60, and the Sony PCM series handheld devices, which are both pretty cool (Marantz wins; the Sony doesn’t record to MP3).
ART HOUSE MUSIC
Since I spent the day looking at all the shit people use to make music sound good, I figured I’d go to a show and watch some people actually play good music. After AES, I headed over to Less Respect $tudios, drank beer, watched Olberman and listened to G-Pek play with his new Serato set-up for a few hours while a crew gathered. Eventually we made our way to 111 Minna to catch the homies TopR and Grand Invincible. It was starting to rain, but that didn’t keep people from hitting the spot; it was already kinda jumping off when we got there at about 10:30, and it just got more and more poppin’ as the evening dragged on. SF’s own Melina Jones set it off, and she kinda killed it. Grand Invincible — DJ Eons and Sacred Hoop’s Luke Sick — laid down the smokey golden era jams and TopR is still pissed at the world, and really good at explaining why. Good rap show.
Bonus: Half of the art currently on the walls at 111 Minna — which is primarily an art gallery, for those of you who aren’t knowin’ — is by Henry Lewis, the painter and tattooer who has been working on my left arm sleeve. It’s been a while since I’ve seen his painting, and it’s better than ever. Check it out this month at 111 Minna.
NERD, PART 2: UNDERGROUND SOUND
Saturday afternoon, slightly hung over from the night before and tired as hell from having to get up at the crack of dawn and get on a day-job-related conference call, Colin and I hit Mr. Toad‘s in SF, where we met mastering engineer Ben Adrian to sit down and master the new Ovipositor record, Oakland Minor. The subterranean mastering suite is dope, a simple setup with a single mastering station, a small couch, muted moveable sound walls and carpet, and two huge, really great sounding Dunlavy SC-IV monitors.
I know the record isn’t ever going to sound as good as it did coming out of those Dunlavys, but it sounds pretty good in my living room, in my car, and coming out of the puny computer speakers in my office, too, so I know Ben did a good job. We’ll be working pretty hard to sound that good when we play live again in December at the Hemlock.
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