DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Perhaps I was caught off guard because I don’t often listen to the radio. Perhaps the millions of people who do listen to the radio are accustomed to this sort of thing, inured to the constant commercial braying of it, but my virgin ears still sometimes react involuntarily with shock and irritation.

Here’s my message to radio commercial producers: playing cellphone ringtones at the beginning of your commercial is a guaranteed mechanism for accomplishing two things:

1. Getting my attention.
2. Winning my contempt.

I was driving downtown when the commercial aired. The ringtone sounded just like my cell. They even managed to put some reverb on it so the phone sound seemed to come from elsewhere in the car than the speakers.

I reached spastically for the cellphone as I continued to navigate a left turn across the path of oncoming traffic. Simultaneously, I later thought, some percentage of other drivers listening to the same radio station were spastically reaching for their phones too. And I realized, there’s an ad producer somewhere congratulating himself on his clever trick of jarring listeners out of their commute-induced reveries… and across the county there are a couple thousand momentarily confused drivers narrowly avoiding accidents, picturing this self-satisfied but sadly deluded ad producer and thinking, “asshole!”

Apple announced the 2005 winners of its annual Design Awards.

The description of the “Tiger Adaptation” category winner, a file-transfer program called Transmit, made me laugh:

Transmit makes FTP/SFTP/WebDAV file transfers incredibly Mac-like, easy, and almost fun.

That would be a good tagline for this very website: “Debris.com! It’s … almost fun.”

Always on the lookout for a more efficient way to operate, I waited until June 11 to set some goals for this year. My theory is that now, midway through the year, the process should be only half as much work.

I actually started to do it in January, but I felt like the guy in the center ring of the circus, juggling two plates, a chainsaw, a torch, and an apple. Becoming a father, to extend the metaphor, was like trying to take a bite of the apple but nearly setting my face on fire.

After six months of cleaning up the detritus of broken plates, mashed apple, and smoke damage, I finally accepted that there isn’t a magic solution. There is only focus.

So, I’ve all but given up reading the news. Instead I rely on a few trusted advisors to tell me the things I’ll probably care about. (Oh, the irony!)

I’ve only baked bread four times this year — about a third as much as last year by this time. I still like the idea of homemade bread, but I’m trying to spend my time on forms of art that have a longer shelf-life.

Fortunately, even with my new and improved focus on other things, I’ve been able to keep up with my rigorous blog publishing schedule.

If you haven’t been by the site for a while, don’t feel bad… neither have I.

It might have been post-vacation blues. It might have been the thousand emails waiting for me upon my return. Wait, I’m exaggerating — it was only 967.

Shopping definitely had a part to play. As has the studio setup, which I’ve finally made serious progress on, even though all the boxes haven’t arrived yet.

More news soon. In something less than 11 days, I promise.

I’m in gear-buying mode, as I prepare for another month of recording. Recent research has revealed the folly of previous purchases.

Last year, I recorded drums for five songs, as chronicled here in excruciating detail. I think I captured workable, but not stellar sounds from my drum kit. (You can, in fact, judge for yourself, as I posted some early mixes: Bleed, Groove95, Cincinnati Summer, Best in Me, Ode to Soup.) This time out, I’ve upgraded a few key pieces of equipment. [Note to future self: I already know I’ll write this exact same article again next year.]

I was using AKG C1000S mics for drum overheads. Of all my mics, I was the least pleased with the sound of these, and so I started my upgrade process here. The question I asked was simply what mics should I use?

Net.wisdom says that the Oktava MK-012 is the best cheap drum overhead mic. And you know where that led me. But finally I did order a genuine pair of Russian “OktaBa” mics and shock-mounts. If I have time I hope to post an A/B comparison of the AKGs and the Oktavas.

I tracked my drums with compression, because I figured it would be easier to spend $100 on a compressor than spend five years learning how to hit each drum with exactly the same force every time I hit it. Not using compression risks clipping, which could blow a take. Or, alternatively, recording drums without compression requires dialing the gain back so far (to accomodate the risk of a louder hit) that the signal gets lost in the noise.

Anyway, after about 10 minutes of exhaustive research, I’d decided on a dbx 286, which is a 1U rackmount compressor/gate device that enjoys great reviews on the dbx corporate website. It has the added attraction that it can be picked up used for less than $100, in fact for about $40 if you happen to buy from someone who ships it with literally no padding inside a box from a microwave oven and who agrees to refund 60% of your purchase price as compensation for the years of abuse endured thereby.

But like the C1000S mics, the dbx 286 has a lousy reputation within the community of online audio engineers — a reputation best summarized as “the first thing to sell to finance an upgrade.”

The low-cost compressor with the best reputation is the RNC — which, ironically, a coworker had suggested to me before I bought the dbx. Anyway, I’ve ordered two RNCs (one for the kick and one for the snare) and I’ll likely add a 3rd if I feel the need to compress toms or overheads too.