I know I talk about music and great artists I have worked and played with over the decades. During all that time I had my share of more-than full time jobs. I started with plastics and the injecting molding industry. I went from being a ‘hopper boy’ to a plant manager. Later I got into sales – service – and managing with a few other trades thrown in there.
I retired from work a bout 4 years ago. Now it is time I retired from the music business as well….
I have gathered all my recording gear. Packed up my vintage keyboards and guitars and have the drums all torn down and headed toward shipping boxes. I will keep my songwriting instruments and gear I can’t part with yet. I will list the rest of the gear for sale on Sweetwater’s Exchange platform.
If you know a musician give them the link below. They might thank you for it!
I recorded a nice version of this song to share with all. I edited the lyrics a bit to make things match a bit better but I like the final arrangement. I also had a little fun with some of the percusssion tracks. The chimes and hi hats are from a MIDI keyboard, but the bongo like percussion starting about the middle of the song I am using the top of my Yeti mug – filled half-way with green tea to be exact – as the drum.
Here is ‘Caretaker’:
‘Caretaker’ (C) MSK 12-31-2023
As a biproduct, I wanted to see if the spatial audio affects mixing with ATMOS would work with a YouTube upload.
So I made a video (pictures is all) and posted it to see if my surround sound home theater system will be enhanced using ATMOS for short videos. You will not hear anyting in the mix move at all until the end of the song. But I want to see if it distributes the channels automatically. So, before I test it and find out it doesn’t work and delete it, you can hear the ATMOS mix and pictures of my studio rooms. Or better yet, close your eyes and try to imagine where each player (instrument) is sitting on stage. With ATMOS, they could be……… behind you or ……… on a ladder in front of you. Or sitting next to you.
Again using Dolby Atmos for the spatial audio mix, I have another song for you to listen to. Using headphones will give you the best dimensional effect, though the speakers will also reflect some clarity and each instrument or vocalist will be heard a bit easier and clearer – more distinct.
I imagine this to be similar to being in a small crowded room with lots of people talking. It is hard to make out any of the conversations going on around you. Now, Imagine the room much bigger and everyone spaced further away from each other and you. Now you can hear conversations and know who is laughing or singing. Something like that. Instead of mixing so all the instruments are ‘sitting on top of each other’ in the stereo field, the listener can be part of – or completely removed from the sound scape. We can now give the listener the illusion of sound coming from anywhere in the ‘room’ we create.
Here is another song I wrote and recorded recently called “The Dream”. The spatial effects in Atmos do indeed, give a new dreamy sound to the mix.
I mentioned before that one of the more painful things about getting old is inheriting stuff from your friends that are either no longer able to access older technology or loved ones that checked out of life before you do.
Recently, many wonderful musical things of no real value have found a home in my house. Some make noise, some record noise, some avoid noise, but all have been turned into music by friends of mine for decades. The memories and cave-man-level responses to sounds from the past hits me hard. You probably grew up hearing these sounds, but you might have been in the womb or soon after to this world when hearing them. These toys literally created most of the pop – rock and country music you grew up to. The list is too long for TV and commercial applications.
Anyway, unless you know what this stuff is (and things weren’t small in those days) and how to make it work it might as well be a pyramid that becomes nothing a storage problem. As usual, I digress.
Recently, I was given half a ton of old 45 rpm vinyl records.
But not the ones you buy at a store. To avoid another really interesting connected tangent, I will simply say that these came from a company where my wife worked. It was one company and then absorbed then another company and Clear Channel picked them up when their critical mass became too big to ignore. I apologize for the brevity, as most people won’t be interested, but they conducted surveys for radio stations across the US.
They condensed the song – ALL of the songs you would likely hear on commercial radio decades ago – to a 5 or 10 second “hook“. Whatever it was that identified the song to listeners was the hook. They conducted thousands of live – in – person paid surveys across the country to get listener’s opinions of the NEW artist or POTENTIAL new hit. These are not for sale and not available at the stores. My people know I can still use vinyl and other technologies but more importantly I can take care of them.
This brings me to another tangent I cannot avoid. So many of the treasures I have been given are no longer operable or salvageable. A little more thought in storage would have turned so many of these treasures into true gems. Rust, mold, misuse – no use, all take their toll. My stuff still works. From the time I was in high school forward. I bought good equipment and accessories and I took care of them because I knew I could not afford to replace them.
I finally get to the point to this post. I have hundreds of records. My wife worked for years watching literally thousands of bands and their best efforts to make it big. Yes, I heard many of those as well. Some were interesting, some were cool and most were painful. But the thing I am getting to after listening to each 45 record after the other is a simple but powerful message if you are trying to ‘get a deal’: Don’t spend all your energy creating the GREAT HOOK. I hear failure after failure after failure trying to be something you are not. Maybe you have to be cute or edgy to get noticed. Just make it your own edge.
ANY of these bands produced records and demo’s that are much better than my in-home singer/songwriter efforts. They have money and backers and investors looking for the next best thing. But the great hooks are organic and time-locked so you are chasing a dream. So much potential dedicated to making your band sound like someone or something else already out there. Tofit the cookie-cutter rather than make the cookie shape. It could be said I make the cookie shape and I am not famous. Mine is not a formula for success.
There are famous artists in this small collection so many do succeed, though I see so many failures because they are trying to find the magic lamp. Stop looking for it and create one for yourself. If it was that easy I would not be sitting here, lol. In the future I will share some of these records. They are not for sale, but I am not sure that means they are not for share.
Here is a record by Gipsy Kings I thought was pretty cool.
I posted thoughts much earlier about Super Black Holes, and have waited for the launch of the James Webb telescope for a pretty long time. Hubble showed us amazing things. Many confirming Einstein’s theories. It forced us to see our universe is expanding rapidly, rather than slowing as expected, in all directions at the same time. Constellations, star clusters, galaxies and eventually suns and their planets will grow further and further apart. The stars and galaxies we see now will not be visible from Earth in just a few eons. (and they were so much closer eons ago) This will never end – speeding away – light constantly retreating. Our universe will get darker and darker, all matter – including black holes, will burn out or blow up, until there is no energy – anywhere.
But if my earlier theory has any merit, this might not be the end. In short, I suggested we are NOW in a black hole. With no proof whatsoever (#noproofwhatsoever) I suggested dark matter and dark energy are converted from regular matter when sucked inside a black hole. This is why our universe continues to expand. Literally everything we see or can detect is matter jettisoned through the Event Horizon with nothing to slow it down. One big sneeze from each black hole. Countless more black holes created as material is ejected – or pushed into a separate universe……?
I love science fiction and can recommend a few books almost as old as I am. I would love to write a novel on this subject but the next step is to think that OUR universe is expanding and will eventually die, but if intelligent life can manage to cross back through the Event Horizon, through the other side of a black hole, we may find a totally different universe that is quite stable or just plain weird. Who knows!
I suggest we can become that intelligent life.
PS I hope the new attempts to recreate the genius of “Dune” and “The Foundation” live up to the hype. These are treasured ideals for me, not just books on a shelf lol!
Thank you for listening.
My wife Ellen and I giving our grand kids a glow stick show in a dark roomCollision of Star Clusters of glow sticksglow stick Nebula
The pictures remind me of other visual games we would play and eventually showed our grandkids, but that is a different post.
I posted a poem earlier called “Let You Go” https://midimike.com/2020/07/07/let-you-go/ that I really liked. While I was working on writing the music for these lyrics I got side-tracked. I had recorded a few MIDI drum parts and had a guitar theme I liked playing on my Martin Acoustic/Electric guitar chained together trying to get a feel for the song.
A good friend called me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to have his old MIDI studio gear. No instruments or toys will be orphaned if I can help it so I drove over that day. We chatted for a while and I left with a van full of what most people would call ‘ancient’ gear. This is the stuff hits were made with. Everything you heard growing up using electronic drums or synths used these gems.
I got home and hooked up a few pieces like a kid not knowing which present he wants to open first. DAYS LATER I opened up my recording project again and played with a vocal effect toy I had not gotten to yet. Not wanting to stop an idea I was working on I started recording in another section of the session. As you will hear, I decided not to sing the chorus parts. Instead I used some of the lyrics to do a chant-style intro and outro.
After juggling the original music around I started to work on a melody for the lyrics. I used some of the chant themes so the melody took shape pretty quickly. Not wanting to overdo the vocal effect, I just used reverb on my voice. Then I added some MIDI bass guitar sounds and put the pieces together.
Next, I added a little MIDI piano in the chorus sections and sprinkled through the end of the song. Then I made some stupid editing error and trashed all of the drum tracks!!! Redo the drum tracks and a few days later I have a rough mix for you.
As some of you will know, a rough mix is probably the last one I do! LOL.
Here is “Let You Go” as it stands today. I hope you enjoy this one.
Following my earlier video project for Cincinnati Microwave Inc., I helped in another project for the new version of the company now called Escort Incorporated. I was an employee during the collapse, and it took a couple of years before the company built itself back up and I was re-hired. New owners but it still had the same family feel as more of the original employees returned to work.
In this project I was asked to write music for the soundtrack of a short info-commercial for Escort Inc. I also assisted where I could and eventually appeared in the video as well.
Our company designed, built and sold radar detectors for decades. For years it was a factory-direct order stream. No real resellers. We held a majority of the patents in the industry and manufactured them locally in southern Ohio. I worked in the Call Center starting part-time in Sales and then managing the Sales and Customer Service Departments over the years.
Out newest model was named the “Passport Max” referring to the maximum range it had. Our detectors had great range compared to most competitors, but this was the best to date.
From my Roman Catholic upbringing I think about religion a lot. I went to Catholic schools and attended church every Sunday, school days and holidays. I was an altar boy for years when we used Latin in our responses. I do not say we spoke it…. and dreamed of being a brother or priest. My favorite saint was Saint Francis of Assisi. He was considered to be somewhat of an outsider, but that was fine by me!
I couldn’t help myself. Looking around things just didn’t add up.
God is all knowing. God is kind and honest and good. God sees all. God created the heavens and earth. God knows what has been and what will be. God is kind and gentle and loving. WE are made in his image. WE shall rule the earth. WE are the center of the universe The earth fixed on its pillars does not move. The sun and stars race across the sky for our entertainment.
The bible is presented as ‘the word of God’. Why would an All-knowing being reference geocentric views that will be disproven in a few short millennia? Is this God’s Mighty plan?
You might deflect by saying that god works in mysterious ways. Maybe. It could be argued that these references are simplified stories to tell his children. Sure. But this is more than a point of view. Humans with little science and mathematics could not possibly know this to be true.
God would know if he made it. This would be one more in a long line of seemingly unbelievable tenants of faith. And when humanity achieved the technology sufficient to the task we would be affirmed in our beliefs. Instead, we see time after time the references in the bible and other teachings directly contradicting science. This is but one of many errors religious teachings present as fact.
The bible and counterparts were clearly not written by god or from his hand.
Was this the Mighty Plan?
Does't this seem a little odd?
Let me help you understand
There never was a god.
I usually did not have to search for new projects. There were plenty of musicians, bands and performers that did not have a lot of resources – or cash – when starting out. Working at the local music store chain, I was lucky to know some great players, writers, and musicians of all sorts. l am attracted to talented people of all kinds. I often wish listeners of my music would give me the benefit of the doubt that I gave to many of the people I met and came to appreciate. I realize my songs are not always ‘radio worthy’ or commercially viable, and always hoped someone would look beyond that and realize the songs I offered for what they could be if recorded professionally and marketed on a large scale. Maybe that day will still come, but back then there were a number of artists that I could help take the next step.
Word got out that I had an understanding of technology and could usually pick things up quickly. I absorbed owners manuals, dedicated time and when possible drafted other talented people to make projects work. One of the fun and exciting things I got to do was shoot and edit live musical band performances. MakeShift Kreations was an early company name I came up with using my initials: M S K. I believe this was filmed way back in 1988!!!
Using the same video and editing suite from the cable company available for local access channels that I used for my first conceptual video: “Walking Man” I learned how to use multi camera filming and video editing techniques. In some situations I offered to do videos for friends as this was a new (again, at the time!) medium and was very expensive for most bands. In Part I, I would like to present the video I made of Mara, a local band with highly talented musicians. My wife Ellen and I did all the camera, editing and post production work. These are their original songs performed live over a two-night period. It was a lot of work, but I learned a lot and had a great time.
Please use the following link to see the Mara: Part I video:
Most of the connectors used for outputs will be 1/4″ male jacks. These can be for ‘grounded’ (three-wire) or two-wire cables. To make this part confusing, the cables can be made or changed with adapters to almost any connector type. For long distances we prefer grounded or three conductor-wire cables as the third wire is used to take common signals from the other two wires, and ‘dump them to ground’. Common signals would be interference and noise as the plus and negative wires are carrying the signal from the board. The result is good signal with low noise introduced. Guitar and keyboard cables typically go shorter distances and typically have a higher or stronger output signal than a microphone for example. The cables in the snake will use three wire grounded shielded cables even if they are 1/4″ male connectors.
So we might expect to have an XLR connector for the Main Outs to the Main House power amps, but this is not a guarantee. If 1/4″ jacks are provided it is recommended to use grounded three wire cables.
Most cables will provide a male connector on one end and a similar but female connector on the other end. Male connectors are often used to connect to In-Puts and Female connectors are often used to connect to the Out-Put. The male connector of the microphone cable connects to the mixing board In-Put and on the other end the female connector will connect to the microphone out. Generally speaking there is little advantage plugging an in to an in or an out to another out. I like to state the obvious LOL!
The mixing board will give us a Main Left and Right out, and probably a Mono Main Out. These will be connected to the Main or House power amps. During an event, the amps are usually turned all the way up and the House volume is ultimately controlled by the Main L-R faders on the mixing board. This is why it is important to turn the Master Volume Faders on the mixing board all the way down whenever connecting or disconnecting equipment or making dramatic changes.
Depending on the board size and configuration you may also have a 1/4″ Direct-Out for many if not all input channels. (this is REALLY cool for recording and a lot of other creative uses…) These can be really handy for independent channel recording, triggers, audio effects and alternate mixes to name a few. Basically connect these to external recorder, processor or triggering gear as needed. I will give some examples as the series expands to other main topics. You will also have a number of Sends that are used for a variety of tasks and have different names, but with a few configuration details are for the most part the same thing. Effect Sends, Monitor Sends, Auxiliary Sends, Sub Sends are splitters; they split the signal – keeping the one going to the House or recorder – and allowing you to send a lot or a little of that signal to the Send of your choice using the Send knob. As in the Monitor amps and House amps, the volume knob will ultimately be used to send the proper signal level to the external (and internal) devices or effects. If you ‘send’ this to a digital delay, it may also have its own input and out put level knobs.
You may also have a two-track input and/or out put. This is for playing stereo audio devices and for a straight stereo record out option. Handy to listen to practice tapes, intermission music, PA system tests and other performance related media.
MidiMike 