DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Once we began using my growing collection of tech-conference tote bags as earth-friendly grocery sacks, I realized that the good folks down the road at O’Reilly could promote the effort by using real reusable bags instead of the inexpensive cotton/canvas totes that are the current conference standard.

I found a strong candidate at reusablebags.com: the Earth-tote is a $20 nylon sack that mimics the form factor of traditional foldable paper grocery bags. It has a lifetime guarantee! Which means, among other things, that the handles won’t pull off if you try to carry more than a few kilograms of food. Double one of these superbags, and you could carry home a stockboy to put your groceries away for you.

The Earth-tote is made from 600 denier coated Cordura nylon, which is actually a stronger fabric than the body of my old Aerostich Roadcrafter motorcycle suit. So, not only can you carry your organic produce home without poking yet-another paper-or-plastic finger in the eye of Mother Nature, you can drop your groceries on the highway at 65 mph without so much as bruising a single locally-grown Fuji apple.

Wait, you don’t drive to the grocery store, do you?!?!?!

In a fit of late-night eco-angst, I sent a thoroughly unsolicited email to one of the conference guys at O’Reilly suggesting that future conference attendees would be better rewarded with a dedicated, lifetime-guaranteed, truly reusable shopping bag, which no doubt would look fabulous with the O’Reilly logo stamped on the side. I was surprised to receive a thoughtful reply a couple days later: my suggestion has been passed along.

I’ll find out in October if it got any traction. The conference team gives away books like there’s a fire in the storeroom, so I surely hope they’ve found a way to justify spending 0.71% of everyone’s Web 2.0 Conference admission fee on an Earth-tote.

Ever since the story of the 100 MPG carburetor, I’ve been wary of miraculous claims of fuel-saving inventions. A reasonable person has to think that after 80-plus years of development, the world’s engineers have done just about everything they can do to wring a few more MPG out of the internal combustion engine (ICE). If nothing else, the success of recent hybrid models proves that the best thing you can do to improve the mileage of an ICE is to turn the damn thing off.

A recent article in Popular Science made me question the facts. It’s a story about Somender Singh, a mechanic from Mysore, India, who claims to have “conquered the internal combustion engine.”

His invention is not a miracle carburetor. It’s not a device at all. If anything, it’s something you’d take away rather than add to an internal combustion engine. And the result, Singh claims, are phenomenal:

• improved fuel efficiency (up to 25%)
• increased torque
• reduced idle speed
• reduced operating temperature

It sounds miraculous. Either this is the best-kept secret on the planet, or a load of crap.

Here’s the original PopSci article:
Obsession: Mr. Singh’s Search for the Holy Grail

Here’s the website of the inventor, Somender Singh:
http://www.somender-singh.com/.

Here’s the invention, in seven easy steps. Don’t forget your Dremel tool:
How do I cut a groove?

During my recording session last Fall, I used a pair of AKG C1000S mics as drum overheads. I bought them on the recommendation of some website or other, several years ago, and always believed them to be great without having any basis for judgement (or, perhaps more to the point, any budget for an upgrade).

Subsequent reading, especially on the old Tape Op message boards (R.I.P.!), revealed a mass of bad will toward this mic. Here’s a representative review of the C1000S: “I keep them around in case I ever need to loan a microphone to someone I don’t like.”

While upgrading my studio this year, I replaced the C1000S mics with a pair of (genuine Russian) JSC Oktava MK-012s, based again on web reviews, although in this case a lot more of them. When I first wired up the MK-012s, I was playing and monitoring through headphones. I was so shocked I stopped playing — compared to my memory of the C1000S, the Oktavas sounded like I’d removed three sheets of tissue from the mic capsules. The presence and transparency of the Oktavas blew me away. Suddenly all those mean reviews of the C1000S seemed justified. Suddenly, I felt I was really hearing my own drum kit.

I finally took the time to put together a couple simple comparisons of the MK-012 and the C1000S. Just for fun, I included a 3rd pair of mics too. The two sound samples below include 4 bars of each of the following mic pairs, in this order:

Drum Overhead Mic Test 1 (MP3)
Drum Overhead Mic Test 2 (MP3)

I recorded these tracks in separate passes, about a minute of each pattern for each mic pair. From each pass I selected a 4-bar pattern with no unusual transients. I normalized the excerpts, then combined them in Pro Tools, exported as AIFF, and converted to high-quality VBR MP3 via lame.

In all cases I used the Focusrite [Update: Focusrite designed the mic pres in the Mbox, but not the ones in the Digi 002.] mic pres built into my Digi-002 Rack. I used no EQ or compression, which would have masked the differences in the signals. The only change to the signal path between each of these tests was the amount of gain applied via the mic pre: the Oktavas need no gain; in fact, I can clip them with a rimshot when the gain knob is zeroed. The C1000S needs several dB of gain. The 635a needs a whole lot more than that. No, these aren’t scientific measurements — it’s probably sufficient to say that, if anything, the MK-012 is relatively hot (which is why they supply a -10dB pad), but all three mics are well within the range of a typical mic pre’s gain stage.

Coming into the test with the burden of my bias, I expected the C1000S to sound like an AM radio compared to the Oktavas. These expectations were not justified. The Oktava is superior, but the C1000S isn’t the dogmeat mic some folks say. But it would take a more skilled engineer to make it sound good, and it might never sound as good as the Oktava.

Here are my impressions: the MK-012 (the first third of each of these two clips) is brighter, with smoother high-end response and a wider dynamic range, than the C1000S. The C1000S has a colored top end; I don’t like what it does to cymbals — they sound distant and pangy. The MK-012 has a more appealing, more transparent sound. The EV 635a doesn’t really belong in this test. This mic doesn’t have near as much range as either of the condensers. The lack of high end response is obvious here.

I can hear that the C1000S is more directional than the MK-012. All three mic pairs were set up in the same position, yet the drum kit seems to change size over the course of each clip. Curiously, even though the stereo field in the C1000S samples is wider, I prefer the Oktava’s imaging. The Oktava samples sound more natural. This may be a side-effect of what I perceive as very rough high-end on the C1000S, though.

It’s instructional to listen to short excerpts of the second clip, from the last, then middle, then first third. The 635a has a nice lo-fi thump on the toms. The C1000S, in contrast, brings in an appealing high-end slap (plus about 20dB of cymbal). Then, changing to the first third of the clip, what I primarily hear is a whole load of low end — the kick and toms suddenly have body. Also the hi-hats sound less brittle in the MK-012 track.

Repeating this reverse-order test with the first clip, I hear less-pronounced differences. The kit sounds far away and muffled in the last third of the clip, due to the omnidirectional pattern of the 635a. In the middle third, I hear a top-endy sound; the drums have snap but no body. In the first third, the kick drum has a full, round thump, perhaps surprising for an overhead track. The snare is brighter, poppier, more present than on the C1000S track.

Overall, I’m happy to say I can hear why engineers have been raving about the MK-012 for years. These Oktavas are great-sounding mics: they deliver a full, balanced kit sound with no EQ.

A final note on these tests: all mic pairs were placed in the “recorderman” position. It’s possible that other positions might be more suitable for some of these mics. For example, the 635a’s would have sounded much better had they been placed inside the foam-lined mic case, with no cables attached. Heh.

This one-bar groove begins as an inadvertent copy of the one I called Herman Matthews’ Grimace, filtered through a couple years’ faulty memories and the undeserved sense of new invention. The second half of the pattern goes linear, and ends up somewhere altogether different.

The quarter-note bell ride is still here. The offbeat high-hat is still here. The ghost notes are still here. Yes, there is a strong family resemblance, right down to the monobrow and the dull stare.

    1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +     (1/4 = 110 bpm)
RB  x   x   x   x   
SD   oo   O  o o  O
KD  o  o      o  o
HH    x   x   x   x 

I’ve created drum tracks for four songs by a local songwriter named Michael Capella. His material tends to be folksy, occasionally wandering into the country.

The last of the four songs is an exception. It’s a bit of an epic, for this genre anyway, clocking in at nearly 6 minutes. It’s more complex than most singer-songwriter tunes I’ve heard, with frequent dynamic shifts, solo breaks, syncopated rhythms, surprise choruses, etc. Knock one beat off of any bar in the entire song and it would just about qualify as acoustic progressive rock. (By which I mean, in part, the song is entirely in 4/4.)

I liked it immediately. It fills that uncomfortable chasm in my mind that can only be bridged by complicated music.

I was especially excited about the prospect of coming up with a complementary drum track when I heard the song’s ending, which literally screamed for a drum solo. I mean, sure, I’m a drummer and I hear these opportunities every four bars. But this one couldn’t be missed.

The composition process started as it usually does; I typed up an arrangement chart to map out the various sections of the song, with time and vocal cues. These notes became obsolete quickly, as page became covered with scribbled notes, none of which I could read at 137bpm.

So, I retyped the chart, incorporating the important new directions and omitting the cruft.

A week later, the new page was covered with another round of scribble — new details, new ideas, changes. By then I’d memorized the first half of the song, but still I wasn’t able to play one clean take; I couldn’t decipher my notes quickly enough while playing. It’s a concentration issue that I have not yet mastered. (Can you concentrate on one thing, keeping your mind from wandering, for six minutes? (I know people who can’t get through a sentence.))

The next step was to ditch the one-page detailed arrangement chart for a handwritten 2-page outline in large block letters, legible from three feet even with my failing eyes.

(It was supposed to fit on a single page, actually, but it overflowed. Conveniently, the first line on the 2nd page corresponded to the point in the song where I moved the ride pattern to the china cymbal on the right side of the kit, which — even more conveniently — was the only other place I could hang the 2nd page of notes anyway.)

With this expanded guide (and a few more trials, natch), I was able to record several clean takes.

I overdubbed the outro drum fills. At first, I recorded each one individually, then stitched them together digitally. But once I was finished the result sounded sterile and lifeless, so I chucked it and played them again, straight through, except for that hairy double-bass-triplet one in the middle that I can only nail occasionally. I feel a lot better about the result, which you can hear right now (you’ll have to imagine the guitar part):

Let It Ring (drum outro, rough mix) (Copyright © 2005 matthew mcglynn)

I can’t publish the whole tune, but you’ll be able to hear it when the CD comes out next Spring.

(The other three Capella tunes I worked on will be on a second, or rather a first CD, which should be out in November Spring, 2006.)