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Paul Wesley

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Paul Wesley

  1. I keep an a.m. radio on in my laundry room, just because I sort of want to hear what kind of messaging the olds are hearing. And I got to tell you, even though I already know I'm stepping into a firehose of bullshit, I am still frequently floored at how profoundly poisonous his message is to this country.
  2. Trump getting interviewed in Virginia. Press asking questions that effectively equal “Will there be a peaceful transition?” He starts out with surprisingly normal answer. Ten seconds later he singles out Philadelphia as a place that cheats in elections. “The history of Philadelphia politics... No, I don’t put people on their honor code.”
  3. i e you can infer negligence by the very nature of the accident (am I getting this right, lawyers?).
  4. I agree with all of this, except I think the most explosive outcome is one where Republican governors or legislatures declare a state for Trump, with Trump clinging to a razor-thin margin, and hundreds of thousands of legally-cast ballots waiting to be counted. There are four or five states - Texas among them - where this is a completely plausible outcome.
  5. I'm assuming your first sentence was supposed to say "where." And you're right that there aren't a lot of examples, primarily because civilized democracies A) are committed to peaceful transfers of power, and B) historically, citizens of a country may hold different opinions from one another, they generally agree on reality and facts. And I feel like I woke up in an America where neither A nor B are true. Also, Ireland's "troubles" occurred in a well-funded, well-trained 1st-world country. Again, I said I hoped you were correct. I just think the notion that events like governor kidnappings or bands of Al Queda-looking pickup trucks intercepting a bus full of politicians -- the idea that's just going to suddenly stop happening after a passionately contested election... it's wishful thinking. Peace.
  6. I really wish this were correct. But that's not how modern conflict zones work.
  7. 100% If it were OSU on offense on the same play, we'd get endless "concern trolling" from Huard Just asking questions, you know
  8. Players have been doing that for 20 years I have never, ever seen it flagged
  9. It would be like if Jefferson Airplane **non-ironically** released a lecturing song called “Just Say No” during the Reagan era.
  10. So, assuming you've got those dynamics plus the Shure drum mics, here are my two budget-conscious recommendations: 1) You're gonna want something for vocals. Like I said on the other thread, I'd get an RE20. It's just not even fair that they only cost $350 or so. You could put it in front of the kick drum on an aggressive rock song, and then pick it up and put it on a stand and sing a whispered, intimate, soulful lead vocal into it, and it can sound GREAT on both. 2) At some point, it would be nice to have a ribbon in your locker. I mean, if you're sending aggressive rock guitars to digital converters, ribbons do something to that signal that you want... sort of rounds it off in a way that keeps the aggression but loses the unpleasant harshness. Ribbon mics were mostly a historic footnote until recording mediums went from tape to digital, and shortly after that, the Royer 121 ribbon mic became a worldwide studio standard for electric guitars. Royer now makes a model called R-10 for $500 that to my ears sounds identical to the more-expensive 121. There are ribbon mics now for every budget. Cascade Fatheads are pretty cheap and have become popular (I've never used them). There's a Nashville-based mic maker called Stager who is still kind of a new company, but I've heard rave reviews about Stager mics from engineers who know their shit. They also make a model for around $500. Just to back up a bit and explain those two choices, here's why: You can use your home rig to record your demos, work out parts, play around with instrumentation and arrangements, etc. When you're ready, book a studio, hire a great engineer, and cut your tracks. You can rent as big a room as you need... one with a grand piano, a B3... whatever backline you specifically need. Then take those tracks home again (this is where the RE20 and the ribbon come in) and do your guitar solos, overdubs, harmony vocals, etc. Maybe hire that same engineer to come to your house for half a day and give you advice on guitars and vocals. Then you're off the clock. If you're doing a lot of acoustic instruments, I agree with jj that a small diaphragm condenser like Josephson would be great.
  11. Agree with all of jj's thoughts on this post, but I'm quoting this because I did EXACTLY the same thing. I got the Neumann home and felt like I had joined the big-boy recording club, and was pretty disappointed by the mic in all kinds of applications (vocals, acoustic guitars, piano), and finally sold the fucking thing years later.
  12. AUTF, I didn't know such a mic kit existed, but I like this decision.
  13. jimmyjazz is giving me too much credit. That session was engineered by my frequent partner ( www.charliekramsky.com ) and not by me. FWIW, the mics on that session were likely: Beta52 and fet47 on kick, 57's on snare, 421 on each tom, probably a miktek C5 on hat, Coles 4038 on overheads, Dragonfly deluxe stereo pair on rooms. AUTF, the advice from the other guys above is as good as anything I could offer. It's good to hear that you have reasonable expectations ("demo worthy"), because I've also tried to record drums at my house, and the results were pretty meh, even with what I thought at the time was a decent-sized living area. There are just way too many things to overcome -- no proper listening environment, no isolation from control to live room, inexperienced engineers (me), and a boxy-sounding live rooms with poor acoustic properties. So my microphone advice in general: - Don't spend too much on mics, especially right out of the gate. Something on the kick, a stereo pair of overheads, maybe a top snare. 20 hours of experimentation moving the mics and kit around will take you a lot further down the sonic road than will writing a giant check to Sweetwater. - In general, everyone who starts recording at home runs out and buys a mid-level large diaphragm condenser. Most of those sound awful. It *seems* like you're using what the pros use, but in reality they're a very poor value for the money, and they're really good at getting more of your bad-sounding rooms to tape ("tape" includes whatever software you've chosen). I was guilty of this as well. I bought and sold a LOT of large diaphragm condenser mics in the $500-$1500 range.... AKG, Neumann, etc. A lot of bad decisions. I should have listened to the engineers who were giving me the exact advice that I'm giving now. - High quality dynamics are a much better value ESPECIALLY if your room doesn't sound very good. There's no shame in a Shure 57 (buy only from reputable dealer... fakes are everywhere). An RE20 will serve you well for the next 30 years, and they're fucking fantastic vocal mics. There's a reason you see them all the time in front of radio DJ's and podcasters who have any reasonably-sized budget. There are a lot of other dynamics that you could deploy both on drums and in front of your guitar cabinets. - Along those same lines, a pair of ribbons could serve you both as overheads and on guitars. - Very rarely is a specific microphone the secret sauce in a signal path. There are few exceptions to that statement, IMO. - Have fun. Try not to let the technical bullshit distract you too much.
  14. Yeah, it shouldn't be hard to make Cornyn look like the empty-suit take-away-your-healthcare bootlicker that he is.
  15. Sure. I mean, I've never heard that argument. But sure. Yeah. Also, don't drain that long 3 because then the other team gets to take the ball out of the net and *whammy* you're back on defense. The horror.
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