more graph humor and song chart memes

Four people were killed in the area of Little Sioux Scout Ranch about 30-45 minutes North of Omaha. 96 Scouts were attending a leadership conference when a Tornado reportedly hit the camp, destroying many buildings and leaving trees felled. It is being reported that up to 40 other injuries have been reported with 4 persons taken to Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City Iowa and one person sent to the Creighton Medical Center in Omaha for medical attention.

The tornado hit at ~6:30 to 7:00 tonight with Emergency crews mobilized soon afterward. One storm spotter was in a vehicle reporting while the tornado hit the vehicle and turned it 180 degrees. The storm spotter has survived and the vehicle sustained heavy damage.

Having spent several years in scouts and camping at Little Sioux  it kind of hits home. My thoughts are definitely with the families of those scouts.

“Fair trade” appears to be a noble assembly of words. We all trade and it should be fair, right? A quote, which I can not adequately attribute to a proper author, was told to me that generally questions the premise of fairness: “Fair? to whom?”(1)

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Having an active musician as a roommate has some of its own challenges. My new roommate refuses to use earplugs when she performs while I’m the dork with the white plugs gently tucked into my ears at her shows. Now growing up, I always had to be told to turn the volume down. Now I’ve met someone who pushes the volume up higher than I ever dare to go. In fact, I’ve had to tell her to turn down some music when it was over the peak threshold of having some semblance of anything but noise.

Maybe I’m just getting old. At the same time, I’m learning a newfound respect for my hearing. You see, I have good ears. When I am actively listening to something, I’m quick to find the nuances and subtleties of a performance. I delight in hearing the guitar pick hit the string or the snare wires bouncing against the resonating head of a drum. These are the subtleties that are often lost when you crank up the volume to a point where you can hear the main intent of the musical piece but end up lacking the performance.

This isn’t limited to my roommate who equates volume to having positive traits to a musical piece. The record industry has been pushing up the volume on mass-produced media since the 1970’s. So with roommates like my own - you end up with a “loud” recording, cranked up into the stratosphere. And it sounds like shit.

I’m not a huge audiophile by any means although my feet are headed in that direction. I finally picked  up a record player (an old Dual with a nice, heavy, wood base) and I’m beginning to fall in love with music again. But that isn’t quite the road I’m going down with this post. I’ll leave the analog/digital debate alone and just hit on the issue of loudness.

The Chicago Mastering Service has a great article on loudness: the history, the “appearance”, the effects. Most people could care less; most people don’t realize that it has happened. So be it. But when you pop in track and give it a listen and then have to reach for the volume control on the next track, you are generally responding to these subtle changes in recording volume. As the internet have given rise to music sharing, if you strapped on an eye-patch and sailed the seas of music piracy, you often find significant leaps in audio quality between tracks. One example came from a hard to find hip-hop single I wanted. After searching record stores and digital music venues to buy it and came up empty handed, I went found a copy of it on a sharing site. The only problem is that the EQ was so blown out and volume cranked up that when burned to CD and played in the car, the song lacks any worth. I immediately have to re-adjust my stereo every time I want to hear the song and suck as much bass, volume and mid-range out as possible to make it listenable.

Or how about those of you who listen to music in the car and want to turn it down to talk only to find the minimum volume threshold is still too high so you have to turn it off to talk. This is the loudness problem in full effect.  If you need some evidence, then I suggest you do this:

Go buy “Rid of Me” by PJ Harvey. It is an excellent album that should be in every music lover’s arsenal of tunes.  Pop it in and give it a listen. The first track will show you the nuances of low volume. You can crank your volume control up and still listen to it with all of the subtleties embedded in the song and it is still at a comfortable level. Turn it up so you can hear the voice in the background singing “Lick my legs, I’m on fire”… etc. at a comfortable level.

Now take that disc out and put in any modern pop/rock album off of a major label. Do not adjust the volume. 99% of the time, the volume will blow you out of your chair and have your ears bleeding in minutes.  Ever wonder why I’m a huge fan of the band Shellac? As a drummer, I believe Todd Trainer’s kit is the best recorded kit in the history of music. I can pop in a Shellac album and with virtually no tweaking other than pushing the volume nob up - get to a point where I can fee the air being pushed by his bass drum. Every crack of the snare is as if it is right in front of me. If I close my eyes, I’m sitting in the middle of Shellac, in the studio, playing each song for me. I can hear the copper pick hitting each string.  I can feel the bass guitar booming in my chest.

You don’t get this with sausage-factory mastering and engineering. You don’t get it by simply cranking up the volume on the final output of a disc or album. You need to put volume in the hands of the listener who can then pluck out the volume of choice.

After a long haitus, I’m back to posting. I was gone on sabbatical and attempted to divorce myself of the Internet as much as possible.

What’s new:

I bought a Honda Ruckus and I’ve been riding the hell out of it. I bought it for the fun of owning a Ruckus, not for any other reason. Although the ~100mpg I get is a definite bonus after buying the X-Terra in January.

I joined the Omaha Scooter Club

I moved to the Southeast end of town on the edge of the Field Club neighborhood. My new roommate is a drummer so it is working out pretty well now that I can play my full acoustic kit. Samantha (my dog) now has a backyard to run around in.

I finally bought a new bed. After sleeping on the old mattress and waking up with horrible pain from misguided springs, I felt it was  time to shell out and get a new one.

Still planning on being a lawyer. I had to post-pone my test date until October but I’m still in the ‘09 cycle so we’re OK on that front.