CD sound quality

It's amazing how any discussion of CDs rapidly turn into CD vs Vinyl. The argumy ent usually goes "But there's been studies! It's scientific!" vs "But I prefer my vinyl." The thing is, the arguments tend to miss the point. For instance, vinyl bass response is often actually dreadful, but pleasing to the ear.

An awful lot of the perceived problems with the CD format actually are problems at source. For instance, early digital recorders had lousy clock jitter. This resulted in the well-known "CDs sound lifeless" problem. Furthermore, a lot of transfers onto CD were originally done from extremely poor third or fourth generation copies of the original tapes.
Overall, the situation is better these days, however the amazing habit of over-mastering has resulted in a whole new set of too-loud no-dynamics recordings. Try playing some RHCPs next to The Band and you'll see what I mean: The Band sound infinitely better, and it's not down to the quality of the music.

So are CDs technically better than Vinyl? Yes they are, but the industry has gone a long way to making them sound worse.

Come on you rolling minstrels

It's been a very long time since I've updated this blog. Quite a lot has happened, including the death of my long term relationship. One way or another, I've been desperately unproductive.

There's nothing quite as unfashionable as folk-rock. It's not even possible to be into it ironically. You've more chance of seeing the Blessed Virgin Mary in your local Woolworths than a woman of child-bearing age in a folk club. However, I've always made a point of listening to different musical styles, and found Fairport Convention's first album for a fiver at the local HMV.

Wow.

Strictly speaking, the first album isn't what English people would describe as folk. Actually, the story gets incredibly complicated, involving constant line-up changes, solo projects, a coach crash and various other details, but the point is, even when they were mostly doing Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan covers, Fairport Convention were a great band. Small Faces great.

I now own the first five albums. Each one challenges me to rethink what the band was, exactly. Well, by the fifth album, there's only two original members left, and neither of them are playing in anything like their original style. A number of them became great songwriters, which makes the band leader's decsion to go off and perform ultra-traditional music even weirder. Sure, there's something a bit weird about listening to old songs about girls who fall in love with fairies, but listen to the tune and tell me it isn't great.

Point is, Fairport Convention are like the Velvet Underground. You get listening to them, and sooner or later, you're going to have to pick up a guitar and actually write your own stuff. Frankly, it helps to have an acoustic, but once I started, I taught myself a couple of Fairport numbers, and then got down to business. One song took two weeks, another one.

Sadly, now I have to block the creative flow for a while and record the damn things. But, for now, Simon, Richard, Ashley, Judy, Ian, Sandy, Swarb and Dave, thank you so much.

New songs I've written:

• Ask Me Again
• Moving On
• Cruithne
• Counting The Sheep
  

Old songs I've remembered:

• Sleep Now
• Bitter Bloom

The results are in...

...and I didn't get anywhere at all. To be honest, the more you realise just how many massively talented people there are out there making music in their flats and bedrooms, the less you feel surprised by this. I felt pretty bad last year, because I really believe in the music I write. This year, I'm much happier accepting that there's plenty of other great music out there.

Back from Edinburgh

Just been to the Edinburgh Festival. A truly amazing place, and something I can recommend to anyone. Mostly I went to see comedy, but it's the plays that really stuck out in my mind. How to Act Around Cops especially.

It's amazing how many extremely talented musicians you can see in a week, playing joke songs and/or getting audiences of thirty. There's no justice in this world.

Finished something!

Actually, there is a positive aspect to getting new toys. Some of them actually inspire you. In this case, it's been B4, the hammond organ that's part of the Komplete 2 package I bought the other day. All I can say is "Wow".

Now, I've never owned a hammond organ so I couldn't tell you how good an emulation it is, although judging by comments on the web, it's pretty good. What I can tell you is how alive it sounds compared to the sampled organs I've been using before.

Now, plenty of people will tell you B4 is a bit long in the tooth and is in dire need of an update. They'd be right. But the point is that playing it made me immediately want to get it into a tune. That got me back to doing "Rebecca & Me", which I've now managed to finish.

Boy that feels good...

In other news, some other woodies seem to be evaluating the tree in my garden as a nesting site. Turns out a friend from round the corner has been feeding the magpie. The idea was that the magpie wouldn't feel the need to kill anything. Pity the magpie didn't understand the deal.

Spending too much money

Now, there are many things I need to get for my music set up. Absolute top of the list is a decent set of speakers. Just below it is an audio interface to replace my busted 6fire. I'm still thinking about a better microphone, the list goes on. Even if I were to be thinking of enhancing the computer side of the equation, a UAD-1 card would have been a much better idea.

So just having spent £350 on Komplete 2 isn't entirely bright. Well, frankly I can afford it, it was a great deal and I will find a use for it all. Certainly the Hammond Organ is going to get some fairly immediate use.

However, the truth is, I didn't need it and simply bought it because I like toys and I like a good deal. One of my guiding principles is not to mess around with stuff I don't need. I pretty much broke that today. Still, I'm going to keep my eye out for a deal on a UAD card.

Anyway, it's just arrived and I can't wait to play with it. My time would be better spent finishing "Rebecca and Me", but there you go...

Dead Baby Birds

None of this has very much to do with music. Sorry.

Title says it all really. I've had a really tough time recently and this just summed it up. Two wood pigeons decided to nest in a tree outside my house. They had two squabs, who were just getting ready to fly. They got attacked by a magpie when their parents were away. One had its throat ripped out, was thrown onto my path, and was left twitching and covered in flies when I found it. The vet had to put it down. (They didn't charge anything, I'd have paid.)

That bird was the lucky one. I hadn't realised, but its brother was still in the nest. The parents weren't coming back and the magpie came back for it. It probably suffered for ten hours before it died.

The mother came back the next day. You wouldn't have thought a wood pigeon could cry, but it sure sounded like it.

Spoke too soon...

Of course, my problems couldn't be solved that easily. Turns out the EnergyXT work-around only works before it is registered. So fixing the project file became a fairly high priority. Luckily, overwriting every previous instance of amplitube and deleting a few unused project tracks seems to have knocked some sort of sense into it.

EnergyXT, although it didn't solve my problem, is pretty damn cool. A lot of pro-guitarists use signal-splitting weirdnesses and guitar doubling to get the sound they want on their records. If you know what you're doing, it's actually pretty easy to simulate that sort of wiring in EnergyXT and get the same effect with a lot less pain than cranking around in Cubase would take. On the other hand, the Cubase built-in effects aren't available, which highlights my need for a good set of third-party effects. That powercore looks nicer by the minute...

All of which, in total, means that I have spent over a week now worrying about technology rather than music. Not a good feeling, all in.