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Paul Wesley

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Paul Wesley

  1. I am hearing you say "TwoRock Studio Pro 35," and yes, you should.
  2. "Upside down and backwards!!!" I just heard that description on a podcast, applied to another lefty guitarist who restrung a right-handed guitar... with the net result that he's playing the guitar pretty much the same way as everyone else. Stop it already. (trivial things that make you surly)
  3. God bless Anderson Cooper for this. 99% of the time politicians go on those shows and lie, they get little or no pushback from the host because the network knows they'll never get that person (or any spokesperson for the party they represent) on again. As a result, outright lies and disingenuous arguments get treated the same as good-faith engagement. For whatever reason, Cooper felt unrestrained here to give the appropriate response... especially the last 10 seconds or so.
  4. There are definitely a lot of great mix engineers out there. It's not that. My short answer: Real music - like real life - has to have a lot of moment-to-moment variation in volume. That's dynamic range: the difference between the quiet instant and the loud moment (like a drum hit). Great mixes have a lot of dynamic range. But here's the tension: What you perceive as "volume" or "loudness" isn't the volume of those quick, transient moments (like a drum hit). Instead, it's sort of the *average* across time of how much power/energy the music has. So if you were scrolling through Apple Music or Spotify, and one song kept a lot more dynamic range than the rest, it would instantly sound really weak/soft/quiet compared to everything else. An artist can make his song louder by giving *all* of the moments more volume/energy. But when you do that, it's at the expense of dynamic range. And here's the important thing: music without dynamic range takes on a harsh, constant, buzz. And squashing the dynamic range MUST introduce some level of distortion, where the sound waves get clipped or squared-off instead of their natural sine shape. Music without dynamic range is fatiguing... like a chain saw. This phenomenon is exactly why commercials are both 1) louder, and 2) sonically obnoxious and annoying. Anyway, it's been hard to stop. Since dynamic range compression (a big part of mastering) will change the way something sounds, mix engineers will preemptively squash their mixes before the mastering engineers even get it. Mastering engineers complain that they can't "master" something that already has no dynamic range. Artists who get their mix back and then audition it against all the modern music out there will complain that their song is way too quiet and needs to be louder. The problem has saturated pretty much every form of music consumption with the exception of vinyl. Streaming services use algorithms to level off everyone's music to the same loudness, so even artists who fight to keep dynamic range in their mixes will get their shit SQUASHED in the final step of consumption, and there's nothing they can do about it. Terrestrial radio is the worst. Radio stations want to be LOUDER than the next one on the dial, so they add insane amounts of leveling that sounds absolutely awful. I would argue that all of this is one of the major reasons why music has fallen off the map of importance. It's consumed in ways (no dynamic range) where it has no chance to deliver a powerful, transcendent experience with an emotional punch. Sorry for the long response. I'm sure the engineers can take issue with my use of words like "power, volume, level, loudness" - those words each have very precise scientific definitions that aren't interchangeable... but you get the idea. This quick video gives a pretty good visual representation:
  5. The band that gave us my favorite Beavis and Butthead moment:
  6. I saw her there in either 84 or 85, with Joe Walsh opening (turns out they were an item at the time, but I don't think the public knew that).
  7. There are worse mistakes to make when you're 17. That one's not gonna message you on Ancestry.com.
  8. Last month my wife and I were traveling (she surprised me with flights and tickets to the Peach Bowl), and we had a few hours to kill before we were meeting some friends for dinner. So we looked up movies nearby and ended up going to see the Dylan movie... it was pretty "meh." 1. My wife kept leaning over and whispering, "He (Chalamet) has zero charisma" (she was right). 2. The moments when Chalamet tried to be the most Dylanish Dylan - delivering something sneering and defiant - those were just cringeworthy and painful to watch. 3. Joan Baez's ass should have gotten a Best Supporting Actress nomination. I may have whispered this to my wife (I was right). Anyway, I thought that whole crash-and-burn failure of a creative endeavor was over and behind me.... but this evening I was fast forwarding through last week's SNL because I wanted to see the news. I paused while fast forwarding, because "Oh, I wonder who the musical guest is." "... Timothee Chalamet!" And I was treated to yet another helping of this guy doing a third-rate Dylan impression. I truly wondered if it was "for real." Like, is this supposed to be good? Or is it a bit? Anyway, I said this about Bon Jovi doing his pandemic song on Colbert a few years ago, and I'm saying it again now, "You are killing what very little is left of rock music."
  9. Paul Wesley

    RIP John Sykes

    Never knew his name... but it's crazy to have that many memorable guitar hooks in one track. The intro, the fills, the clean parts in the middle... brilliant stuff.
  10. Yeah, that was one of them I was thinking of. It was pretty flagrant PI.
  11. I can't remember which NBA coach was complaining about Pat Riley's teams - I think this was when Riley was in Miami - but he said something to the effect of, "I think he (Riley) is a genius. You just foul the other team on absolutely every play, and the refs just aren't going to call them all." That seems to apply to the Ohio State pass defense. In our game, they got flagged several times - including on back-to-back plays in the 4th quarter - but there were a bunch more that could have (should have) been called. Tonight the Ohio State DBs are wrapping up Notre Dame's receivers on just about every drop back pass.
  12. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/t-pain-mark-zuckerberg-get-low-cover-1235166186/
  13. This. Perfectly analogous to Simms in 99. The top QB in the country - who could have gone ANYWHERE - joins a UT that had been floundering and underperforming, and makes it a LOT easier for Texas to recruit five-star guys on both sides of the ball. The monster roster that went 25-1 over 04 and 05 might not have been assembled without that (unlikely) first domino. Hopefully the analogy continues with a Texas MNC here in the next couple years.
  14. Today I learned who Nate Smith is, and also that he sucks.
  15. "Gee, our old Lasalle ran great." I lived my whole life (until today) without knowing what they sang there.
  16. Yeah, I may be with you on that.
  17. I'm probably in the minority here, but: 1). Really not interested in Arkansas as a permanent rivalry game. IDGAF about how big the game was 50 years ago. TCU was also a big rivalry at times in our history. Totally not excited to play the pigs every year (though they would absolutely love it) 2). I'm as big a fan of college football as you'll meet, but we've already reached a point where we keep adding games that mean less to your ultimate season results, and asking kids to risk serious injury up to 17 times. Texas has been fairly healthy this year, but we're seeing some cumulative injuries to guys like Bond (who is a shadow of the threat he was back in September). We just saw Georgia lose at least two starters for the season in what was a fairly inconsequential game as it relates to a MNC (yes, winning your conference counts for something). 9 SEC games + conference championship + 4 playoff games... I think 17 games for 20-year old kids is pushing it. One partial fix is to keep an 8-game SEC schedule but punish teams in the tiebreakers who play Lamar or Texas State for their OOC. I understand our conference mates would vote that down by a wide margin, but it would arguably be good for college football as a whole by making for more Texas v Michigan as opposed to Bama v Mercer.
  18. Calm and detached pregame Dvoracek: "Texas is a great program with amazing players and a great tradition." 4th-Quarter, one-score-game Dusty: "OH MY GOD THAT SHOULD BE A PENALTY ON TEXAS!!!! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!! THIS IS NOT FAIR!!!! FUCK THIS FUCKING PROGRAM!!!"
  19. Funny how Herbie calls out all the borderline holds on one team...
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