Mile Zero
no matter where you go, there you are
Mile Zero is the personal website of Thomas Wilburn. All statements and opinions here are my own, and do not represent the views or policies of my employers at Congressional Quarterly, Ars Technica, or other publications.
I'm looking for a blog-style tool that will allow me to alter timestamps anywhere between 0AD and (say) 2099. I have a fiction experiment in mind, but I haven't been able to start it because the opportunity cost of hacking Blosxom turned out to be too high. Any ideas?
17:44 x Thomas x /fiction/brainjuice x link x 1 comment
Just finished interviewing these guys for NoVA Magazine. They're younger than I am, but their business (a staffing agency for students, by students) is a great idea in an area like this where good internships and experience can be hard to come by.
00:00 x Thomas x /journalism/articles x link x 0 comments
Open Mike Snapshots: Notorious
"Good job with that Black Keys song," says the impressively inoffensive young man who preceded me. (It's important to understand, at this point, that the eight songs before I got up to play had been acoustic numbers. And not just any acoustic, because it's not like that's a rarity at open mikes, but songs that were guaranteed to leave your pulse at a comfortable resting rate without alteration or acceleration. If there is a beneficent deity, may he save us from acoustic singer-songwriters. After that, I could have played a heavily distorted Mary Had A Little Lamb and still rocked the joint. But that's an entirely different parenthetical discussion.)
"Thanks," I say. "It's a good song."
"I've seen you do it before," he says. "At Iota a couple months ago." Which stuns me. I didn't think anyone was watching me at Iota--there weren't that many people there, and I thought I bombed completely. I say as much now.
"Well," he replies, "you're the guy with the bass guitar and the looper. You kind of stand out, you know?"
Oh. Right. Good point.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/performance/impressions x link x 0 comments
Open Mike Snapshots: Superstar
Let's call him Bentley, names changed to protect and all that. Every week, he's at the coffeehouse open mike playing originals on an old, slightly out-of-tune acoustic. Bentley's about sixty, maybe as young as fifty, but it's hard to tell. His white hair is cut close, with a carefully trimmed beard. When he plays, his hands and his voice both shake. He never smiles. Instead he stares straight ahead and sings in a voice that is thin and urgent. Some people have a stage presence, but Bentley doesn't, and you feel uncomfortable with him while he performs.
Bentley's dad comes with him each week, in a polo shirt, white tennis shoes and a grey meshback cap. He is every little old man I've ever seen, and where Bentley always seems like a bitter ball of shame his dad has a blast. When I finish my three songs and sit down, he taps me on the leg and says: "You done good. That's what the sergeant use to say. That was the highest praise that sergeant ever had to give you. You done good."
Bentley doesn't know what to play for his third song. His dad rasps out: "Play 'Doo-wah-diddy'" and then cackles to himself. "It's my favorite song," he confides to us. Bentley looks at the back wall and begins the song. He sings:
"Pickin' and a-hittin'/I'm playin' my guitar/Hopin' and a-dreamin'/that one day I'll be a star."
When he repeats this at the end of the song, Bentley's father (who has been singing along during the chorus) calls out, "You are a star, Bentley!" with a total lack of self-consciousness. His son does not react.
11:52 x Thomas x /music/performance/impressions x link x 1 comment
One of my favorite bands, Clatter, has updated their website. It's a beautiful design, based around images from their farm in Missouri. You should check them out, if you haven't before. The band is composed of two married musicians, Amy (bass, vocals) and Joe (percussion). They're fantastically talented musicians who support each other well onstage.
Clatter has been a real inspiration to me. I picked up a lot of unconventional techniques from Amy, including fingernail strumming, which is a big part of my sound. Most importantly, Clatter is a two-person band that doesn't suck, and there are no guitars. Most solo bassists play jazz (Michael Manring) or crazy pyrotechnique stunts (Vic Wooten), which is great if you're into that kind of thing. Unfortunately, I'm not. Amy's bass playing isn't flashy, but it's solid and it rocks out. It really helped to have that as a model when I was forming the concept for my solo stuff.
And they made it okay to use a ton of distortion. I'd kill to have her amp setup--an SWR with 8x8 cab for the clean sounds, plus a Super Redhead just for effects and a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier guitar amp set to obliterate for distortion.
There's a CD, which is great for bassists and non-musicians alike, and a DVD, which is oddly mixed but a lot of fun. I think you should buy them.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/artists/clatter x link x 0 comments
Sure, it's been a bit quiet here. The pendulum of my personal obsessions has kind of swung away from Mile Zero. But it won't be quiet at Stacy's open mike tonight, and Dremo's tomorrow night, since I'll be returning after a long absence to my wandering Pretentious Solo Project.
That was terrible. I'm sorry. Don't worry: eventually my full attention will return soon, I'm sure--probably after I get this second NVM piece filed. Since I'm getting back into music, I may start posting "sketches" of songs to fill the gap, if anyone's interested.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/performance/gigs/open_mikes x link x 0 comments
It's been relatively slow here at the office, and nothing else quite as interesting is on the schedule. So I'm going to go ahead and call this month's best new World Bank presentation on B-SPAN as Jared Diamond's presentation on Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. He's a bit dry, but the material is fascinating--a great historical explanation of why WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE if we don't shape up.
19:49 x Thomas x /bank/events/bspan x link x 1 comment
Here's the reason for such light posting lately, to be printed in full in Northern Virginia Magazine:
George Mason University's story is tied inextricably to the region it calls home. As the area grew and prospered, Mason grew with it in a symbiotic relationship. Thanks to its pioneering economic work, Mason may now be known as the Virginia school, but a better name might be the Northern Virginia school...
Unless something changes, you'll find it in the April issue--albeit probably a bit shorter than its current 1671 words.
23:56 x Thomas x /journalism/articles x link x 1 comment
00:00 x Thomas x /random/personal x link x 0 comments
Just like a scene from an intrigue film
My car got towed last night. From my own lot. Where I have a permit.
I parked in a visitor's spot. We don't have many of them, so I left the car there for 20 minutes while I waited for a guest, and when I looked back it had vanished into thin air. Picked up by the vultures who circle in steel trucks. For those of you playing along at home, that makes the score: Thomas, 0, goddamn vultures, 105 bucks.
None of which has anything to do with you people, of course. I'm just still pretty pissed off about it, and it helps to write.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/personal x link x 0 comments
The Skeptics Circle #26, available at Skeptic Rant. Many good articles.
I'm terribly bad at consistently announcing these things. May I suggest you check out the Circle's homepage, Circular Reasoning, if you need more of your critical urges scratched.
00:00 x Thomas x /science/skepticism x link x 0 comments
Crooked Timber's seminar on China Mieville, including his response to the essays.
This is posted for the members of my book club, since we're reading Perdido Street Station this month. Good reading for anyone who's enjoyed Mieville's fiction, though. It contains spoilers, so don't read if you haven't finished the book yet.
00:00 x Thomas x /fiction/litcrit x link x 0 comments
Dave Neiwert has been serially presenting a research paper on the Minutemen this week (as of today, there's at least one more installment to go). You know the Minutemen: they're the New Militias, born when the old "militias" (read: scary, gun-toting rednecks) became widely known as too dumb even for self-respecting scary, gun-toting rednecks. Left without the laughable fantasy that Bill Clinton would send black-suited troops through the streets of rural America to confiscate their weapons and force their sons to marry homosexuals, a new organizing principle was needed. Illegal immigration fit enough of the paranoid/racist vibe, and supported the vigilante delusion of grandeur that some people use to confirm their manhood.
Hence, the Minutemen Project. A bunch of scary, gun-toting rednecks hanging out on the Mexican (and, in an instant of fleeting semi-rationality, Canadian) border. Promising that where the gov'mint has failed, they will keep us secure from brown people taking our high-paying yardwork and custodial jobs. I know I feel safer already.
I hear the questions now: Thomas, these Minutemen sound like just the thing for those empty Saturday afternoons that I've been spending watching taped American Idol episodes, listening to Toby Keith and cleaning my many semi-automatic weapons, but I live in Northern Virginia! The area has become increasingly friendly to its booming Hispanic population, and my blatantly racist legislation keeps failing. What can I do? It looks like my only other option is to harass day workers in Herndon, to no effect.
In all seriousness, what annoys me about the Herndon Minutemen is that they've taken the prototypical liberal immigration argument ("Why not go after the businesses that are breaking the law by hiring illegally?") and actually implemented it, albeit through thuggery and intimidation. When it was revealed that Wal-Mart had been systematically exploiting illegal laborers to lower costs, the chorus from the left was to prosecute Wal-Mart, not the workers, for breaking the law. But either way, let's face it, the poor slob with the mop and bucket still ends up out on the street trying to support his family.
And look: I've just got nothing against that guy. I don't see any reason that he should be hurt. Granted, that's easy for me to say, because I'm a knowledge worker who works for an international organization. He's not threatening my job--if he were capable of doing the work I do, he almost certainly wouldn't be here illegally. So talk is cheap.
At the same time, take someone who can be hurt by the day-laborer system: construction workers, maybe. Their unions are being undercut by the threat of cheap labor. The immigrants are also getting shafted, because they're being employed without benefits or fair wages. Leave the law unenforced and everyone loses, except for the employers. Enforce the law, and business maintains the status quo while the full burden falls on the illegal immigrant--and like I said, I've got nothing against that guy. I don't see why it has to be a zero-sum game. It's only made that way because we've created the artificial distinction of "citizen" and "illegal." Documented and undocumented. Mine and yours. Business can exploit that distinction, and in turn exploit their employees.
With regards to employment, remember the lump of labor fallacy, which mistakenly asserts that there is a fixed amount of labor available in any given economy. In the case of immigration, as Max Sawicky notes, increased immigration does not correlate to fewer available jobs. Those immigrants are also consumers, who will buy goods and require services, including housing (construction). There is no ceiling on the number of potential jobs. Clearly, it goes without saying that I'm in favor of very open borders. With that said...
Discussion question: why do we need citizenship anyway?
17:06 x Thomas x /politics/issues/immigration x link x 1 comment
I'll kill and eat the next person who dares to disagree that The Who was the greatest rock band of all time. Everyone clear on that? Can't say I didn't warn you.
Listen to either of the CD releases for 1970's Live at Leeds with headphones on. On the left is the crisp bass grind of Entwhistle, who had a pick tone most of us would kill to cover. Townshend's on the right--someone in the Musicplayer forums once said that every time he plays a chord it's a whole orchestra, and that's about right. Moon drums like they were a lead instrument, and Daltrey--well, what else can you say about him? All the good stuff about classic rock vocals without the embarrassing tics of most singers. Plus, it's Tommy. You will love Tommy. It is so commanded.
They make mistakes all through the recording. That may be what I like most about it. They're not usually glaring mistakes, because The Who were great musicians at their best live, but the flaws remain. The bass hits a glaring wrong note at the start of Summertime Blues, for example, and the singing is a bit shaky at times. On the remastered version you can even hear Keith Moon drop his sticks into the kit at one point, and the rest of the band snickering at him while he grabs a fresh set. These moments, combined with the ridiculous banter in between songs, remind you that what you're listening to was created by real people, playing the hell out of their instruments.
Recordings nowadays are really slick. I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course. A lot of art goes into even just basic rock recordings. Samples, clever engineering tricks, vocal and guitar overdubs to thicken the sound, tons and tons of compression to keep it punchy. And it sounds really great, don't get me wrong. Combine that with ProTools, where you can cut and paste the parts of the song, quantize them to make them fit a regular beat, and technically our music has never sounded better. More violins! More vocal chorus! It's platinum, baby!
Now, it's really trite to complain about how computers have made it easy to produce more complicated, more crafted music. It's one of those Luddite urges that we all succumb to from time to time, and it would honestly be a bit hypocritical of me to repeat it here. After all, I do my recording in a digital environment, and build my music on a 24-bit looping (copy-paste-paste-pause-paste-paste-ad infinitum) pedal. However, let me offer a weak excuse for my trite and hypocritical complaints: it's not the production per se that I object to, it's the perfection.
I like to hear when the musicians are a little loose in their timing, when their playing is a little unpredictable. Part of the reason is that it's more inviting to the audience: even if there's no way that I could ever play or sing the way that the Who did, I don't feel completely intimidated by their musicianship. I can rock with them. The high standards of professional production, in comparison, can put off amateur musicians who don't feel like their abilities are up to that level. Music, even good music, doesn't have to be hard. Everyone should be encouraged. It's also easier to hear someone having fun when they haven't gone through seven takes getting it exactly right. And music should be about fun, or anger, or whatever emotion you decide to apply. Particularly rock music, which should involve cramming energy into a song until it barely holds itself together.
When post-Zeppelin rock became too polished and the musicians too godlike, punk rose up to oppose it with sloppy and simple songs. Now "punk" bands have that same flawless sound, if not the same breathtaking technique. More mistakes! This should be our rallying cry. More glorious screwups and inspiring recoveries! Real rock, as Bonnie Raitt said recently, isn't much without the "'n roll" that's supposed to follow.
Oh, and the other great triumph of Live at Leeds? About half the songs on there are covers. I'll see if I can write more about that later.
01:05 x Thomas x /music/recording/production x link x 1 comment
Microsoft Word is clearly a tool of the oligarchs
Why is it, do you think, that every time I see Lyndon Larouche's supporters protesting somewhere, all their signs are clearly made with posterboard and sharpies? Did Larouche just not defraud enough money to buy an inkjet printer? Perhaps we have finally found a group that is too crazy for desktop publishing.
And every sign looks like it was written by the same person. There's probably a class they have to take on socratic handwriting, scheduled right between Anti-semitic Raving 102 and How The Queen of England Deals Drugs 301.
For once I was glad to see a Secret Service officer in the Cosi next door, just in case they got violent.
00:00 x Thomas x /dc/annoyances x link x 0 comments
Didn't they play the Patriot Center?
The spammers aren't getting any smarter or more convincing, but their latest gambit amuses me greatly: funny names used to sell me "Software."
Penknife Stultification would be an awesome name for a band.
13:18 x Thomas x /random/tech/spam x link x 1 comment
The albatross around the neck of Brokeback Mountain is that it is "the gay cowboy movie." I hate to say that. It's not the fault of the director, or the actors. It's a product of our unfortunate political climate, I think. And it means that you spend the first half-hour of the movie wondering when Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall are going to make out. Granted, in a perfect world a lot of people would still be spending the first thirty minutes wondering, but it'd be of their own volition.
Brokeback continues on to be a fine film, even a powerful film. It reminds me very much of Ennis, Ledger's character. He doesn't talk much, he doesn't really make eye contact with people, and he's not terribly good at figuring out his own drives. Like Ennis, Brokeback Mountain mumbles along without drawing your attention to its craftsmanship. It's not flashy. But Ang Lee basically asks us at the end of the movie to look back across its arc, and I was a little surprised at how deeply it resonated for something that seemed very humble as I was watching it.
I'm reminded of last year's Saving Face, which faced similar barriers as "the Chinese lesbian movie" (I could probably write a whole other post on why one of them is about gay cowboys and the other is Chinese lesbians). Both movies work better if you can ignore the PR and watch them as the genre films they actually are. This isn't to say that the homosexual aspects of each aren't important, since both of them integrate those aspects into the plot and into the characters. But it's a far cry from, say, Bound, where the lesbian relationship is almost completely a gimmick that cashes in early and is then discarded. Even if that movie treated sexuality respectfully (again, another post completely), its meta-thematic representation was exploitative. I think that the public labels for Saving Face and Brokeback Mountain are attempts to trivialize films that are willing to handle sexuality the same way they address any other aspect of character.
My inner optimist hopes that enough people will watch Brokeback that the narrative will be turned on its head. Instead of being the "gay cowboy movie," it'd be "the movie that everyone said was just gay cowboys, but was actually really good." It's not going to magically spread tolerance on its own, but it might crack the market open just a bit.
My inner pessimist says "Sure. Just like the waves of tolerance that swept America after Philadelphia and Will and Grace. How'd that 2004 election work out for you?"
16:11 x Thomas x /movies/commentary/independent x link x 1 comment
I don't think RSS readers are for me.
That is all.
10:40 x Thomas x /random/tech x link x 1 comment
I think it was Lowtax who observed (although most of us have probably realized this at some point) that the problem with the Internet is the way it brings crazy people together.
No. The problem with the Internet is the way it brings crazy people into contact with me.
Sorry for the random posts. I promise I'll be more interesting at some point.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/tech x link x 0 comments
Electroplankton comes out today in the United States (it'll be on shelves tomorrow). Obviously, I recommend it to musicians and open-minded gamers. It was my first software import, and since the US doesn't seem to be getting the special edition package with headphones and a Iwai-designed box, I think that was a pretty good deal.
Here's a retrospective: Electroplankton still isn't a game, and people who try to review it as such are still missing the point. When Davis complains about the lack of replay value, or the fact that you can't save the music (except through the analog hole), he's trying to fit it into a mental framework that's ill-suited for its purpose. Gamespot has no more business trying to review Electroplankton than Keyboard Magazine should be reviewing Dance Dance Revolution.
I haven't hauled it out for a while, because I've (as usual) gotten distracted with other projects. I did try to do some soldering work on the adapter for the microphone the other evening, but my ColdHeat iron just doesn't have the juice to get it done, and I've misplaced my plug-in iron. The contacts on the adapter are also only a few millimeters wide, and I'm just not that dextrous, frankly. It's forcing me to consider the idea of using the software more as a beatbox and lo-fi sampler than as an actual performance looper, at least until better hardware arrives in the US. However, I continue to believe that the potential is great for combining EP with live performance, especially if you could get the visuals projected up for the audience.
Previous posts on Electroplankton:
Initial impressions
Composing with Electroplankton series
Update:
The Electroplankton manual, translated from Japanese but retaining the hand-drawn charm of the original, can be found here. I like Iwai's notes at the end, for a glance into his mental process when he wrote each piece.
16:29 x Thomas x /gaming/society/art x link x 1 comment
Mentioning Hideki Naganuma's work got me nostalgic, and both Jet Set Radio soundtracks are less than $20 together here.
They get played in the Dreamcast first.
10:51 x Thomas x /music/artists/naganuma x link x 1 comment
First Judah thinks the bounty man is human, but he accepts his commission with a guttural alien chuckle, flexes his neck and closes his eyes in ways that mark him as abnatural. He rides something that is not a horse but a vague equine semblance, the impression of a horse, a horse burr under the skin of the real. He shoots with a matchlock pistol that spits and mutters and is sometimes a rifle and sometimes a crossbow. He will not tell Judah his name.
They run together on their horse and their horse-bruise through the plainlands in the ripples of the rails, lands not colonised but infected, as life once infected rockpools. Four days of tracking with ideograms of hexed dust and the bounty-man finds Oil Bill, confronts him in a quarry. The white stone is marked, crosshatched with chisel lines, which make a grid behind the bandit's head.
--You, he shouts at Judah with the rage of the stupid betrayed, and the bondsman kills him and his weapons eat the corpse.
Iron Council, China Mièville, page 188-9
10:39 x Thomas x /fiction/writing/quote x link x 1 comment
Top Ten Names China Shouldn't Give Its Gift Pandas
(In response to this story, wherein China will send two baby pandas to Taiwan as tokens of good will. Their names are, as of yet, undecided.)
10. Mr. and Mrs. Mao
9. "Xiao Yun, Destroyer of Worlds, Tyrant of Evil, Desolate Waste at the Center of all Virtue" and "Fluffy"
8. Buttersticks
7. Buttertubs
6. Really, anything to do with butter
5. Number 16 and Number 19 (their current names! I kid you not!)
4. Ringo and Paul
3. Supply and Demand (oh, that communist humor!)
2. [censored] and [censored] (these were suggested by the Epoch Times)
1. Two names? Oh, no, Lao Wai. To you, there may seem to be two animals, independent from each other. But we assure you, there is actually only One Panda.
Got better answers? Drop them on us in the comments.
00:00 x Thomas x /random/comedy_and_tragedy x link x 0 comments
Something Awful's Worst Gaming Articles, 2005
I agree with pretty much all of it. Even the part at the end when they mock the Escapist. Part two is here
I try not to rant about this too much nowadays, but the real problem with game journalism, as I see it, is the people who call it journalism. For the most part, "game journalists" are reviewers who have decided that they're going to elevate the culture through reviews. It doesn't work that way. First of all, you don't see reviewers in any other situation claiming to be journalists. The review is not the same, bluntly speaking, as actual investigative work. They did not have to call sources. They didn't have to verify facts. They didn't really have to synthesize anything. Writing for Consumer Reports, to draw an obvious analogy, does not turn you into Dana Milbank
Second, the review is the problem. Trying to analyze and fix the problems inherent to gaming culture with a review--no matter how clever it might be--is like an arms dealer protesting against war. It's counterproductive, and stupid. You can't enlighten anyone when your entire publishing industry is a poorly-disguised marketing ploy--and make no mistake, that's exactly what it is. Perhaps the assumption that gaming even really has a "culture" is to blame. Is it really that different from online behavior, which is not that different from offline behavior? I don't think having a jargon should really make a hobby into a "culture." It's a grave misuse of the term.
Games are artifacts of a wider culture, not something exclusive to their own community. Right now they are mostly commercial artifacts, due to the lack of a coordinated independent scene for gaming. This should be obvious to anyone who's a critical observer. Writing reviews for this community is a niche role and a necessary one, but it's not really journalism. I'm a little offended by the implication that it is. As David Neiwert observes, the standards may have degraded somewhat, but that's not an excuse. Athenae wrote a while back that "'Journalist' is a term, as a former editor used to tell me, for somebody who worries about his clothes too much." I don't like to think that, because I feel strongly that it should be a term that means something more, that means something about the Truth with a capital T. But for the current crop of people writing about games, it certainly seems like the case.
17:53 x Thomas x /gaming/media/online x link x 1 comment
Television shows should stop mucking around with broadcast and just go straight to DVD, available every month at a local TV Store. Thanks to Netflix, I've been catching up on the television that I never watched when it was live, and the experience is simply much better. The lack of commercials creates a better flow, the picture is sharper, and I can watch as much as I want whenever I want. Perhaps the best part is that the uninterrupted versions run 22 or 43 minutes (depending on its original length), which is a perfect bite-sized chunk of entertainment. I can't always find the time to watch a movie--but I can usually set aside less than an hour to watch some Battlestar Galactica or Arrested Development.
Speaking of Galactica, there's only one bad part to it: thanks to this show, I will either have to reserve my Fridays or get a Tivo. I've watched the previous two seasons over the last couple weeks, and it is phenomenal. The acting is uniformly quality, the production doesn't cut any corners, and the themes are more subtle and human than most science fiction--or most television, period--ever manages.
In contrast, (sacrilege alert!) I don't understand the fuss behind Firefly. I'm only a few episodes in, but I doubt I'll make it through the whole series. These are stock characters placed in uninteresting moral dilemmas, and the whole western theme is gratuitous (cheap production values don't help). I think Firefly makes a mistake common to sci-fi television: it assumes that we are more interested in clever devices and hypothetical problems than the people in front of the camera. Galactica's greatest strength is that its conflicts don't usually revolve around fighting Cylons. They involve power struggles, love triangles, and opposing philosophies--the kinds of bricks that great drama has been built from for centuries.
10:52 x Thomas x /movies/television/galactica x link x 1 comment
For a short time, Four String Riot was the top result for "solo bassist" on Google, thanks to all those Music Thing links. I'm still no. 2 or 3, depending on how you look at it.
For the record, however, most of the other results are much better musicians than I am, and some of them even beat me at my own game (Steve Lawson, you rock). The Internet has never been much of a filter for quality, obviously.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/management x link x 0 comments
Single pickup, active three-channel EQ preamp with slap switch, 34" scale length. Built largely out of synthetic materials that won't react to the weather. Comes in white, blue, red (faster), and black (louder). Twenty-five frets on the G string. Twenty-seven frets on the E. Beautiful access to the upper part of the neck.
So now we know where my freelance pay is going.
00:00 x Thomas x /music/tools/bass x link x 1 comment
Federal Holiday Photo Backlog: It kinda dominates the room
My brother gave me a Coffin Case for Christmas.
12:58 x Thomas x /random/personal x link x 1 comment
Maybe at the grocery store, I don't know
Can anyone let me know if they see these guys on newstands in the DC/NoVA region? I've got some really interesting freelance assignments due to them in a few weeks, and I'd like to look the print version over to see what the style is like. Right now I'm assuming that it's a kind of Washingtonian vibe, and I'm planning the articles accordingly.
00:00 x Thomas x /journalism/writing x link x 0 comments
Conversation after my open mic last night with a guitarist in the audience:
Me: (confused look) I'm sorry...?
Guitarist: (examines looper) Well, you're using the DL-4, right? Yeah, I've got the same pedal. But usually it slows down.
Me: (still confused) You're using the sample function?
Guitarist: Uh-huh.
Me: Well, that doesn't slow down. There's no feedback function on the Line 6.
Guitarist: Yeah, but when I play with a drummer it starts out okay, and then the loop slows down.
Me: Then your drummer's speeding up. Is he playing with a metronome?
Guitarist: No, man, he's a jazz drummer, he's rock solid.
Me: Well, something's off. I mean... Look, do you practice on your own with it?
Guitarist: Yeah...
Me: I don't know what to tell you. The loop needs to be very precise.
Guitarist: Right. I guess so. I love the sound of the pedal, but it keeps slowing down...
If you decide to do what I do, and by all means you should because it's a great way to practice and build a sense of rhythm, learn this well: the loop does not change. It does not slow down. It does not speed up. That is the whole point of a loop. And because it is mindless, the loop is god. It takes time to get used to playing over samples, because they won't react to you the way a regular band does, but it will teach you to be a better listener, and I've noticed that I've gotten much better at maintaining a tempo since I started.
You have to get it right the first time, and then change to fit the loop if necessary. Because the loop will not change to fit you.
I'm willing to bet that drummers and many bassists especially have trouble with this. As the rhythm section of a traditional band, we're used to setting the dynamic--which is great, that's our job in that role. When you play with a loop, your role must, to some extent, become more of a soloist/accompanist. No matter how solid you think you are, the loop does not slow down.
18:31 x Thomas x /music/technique/looping x link x 1 comment
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Federal Holiday Photo Backlog: Waiting for Panda
We are waiting to see the baby panda!
The pandacito is not waiting to see us.
Here is the other cage where the panda is not waiting to see us. Using advanced computer technology, I've placed a circle around the place where, if there were a panda, he would be at maximum adorableness.
This is as close as we got. Some people apparently get paid to watch the pandacito on closed-circuit TV. The rest of us just cry bitterly and then visit Pandafix.
00:00 x Thomas x /dc/photos x link x 0 comments
Federal Holiday Photo Backlog: I think we can say it's a trend now
The Apple Blossom Mall in Winchester, Virginia, also known as the saddest mall in the world, now has a bubble tea stand. Previously, there was a stand selling confederate flag paraphernalia. Progress?
00:00 x Thomas x /random/personal x link x 0 comments
