I put up a personal page yesterday as a good dumping ground for my tunes, and just to have a personal presence.
www.myspace.com/screambloodyvirgin. Add me.
Heaven and Hell was sick last night. The set looked like a Gothic castle, with stone steps, and pillars, and engraved crosses, and cathedral windows. They did a few cheesy things with video projections, but the show looked exactly like it should. What a great job designing the stage!
The band sounded incredible. Geezer is a complete animal acting both as the foundation and as a second melodic instrument for Iommi to play against. The power and magic that is created when they play together is truly rare. Vinny Appice was good too. He's kind of a poor man's Cozy Powell. He got the job done, but there were very few "wow" moments from him. Dio's voice started out rocky, but once he got in the groove he sounded as incredible as ever.
Amazing how after 15 years they were able to just pick right up where they left off. The new songs are incredible. Long live Black Sabbath! Long live Heaven and Hell!
Protectors of the Realm, indeed.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Sing me a song, you're the Singer.........
Tomorrow is the Heaven and Hell show at Radio City Music Hall. Heaven and Hell is the lineup of Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio singing. The name was changed to avoid "market confusion" or because Sharon Osbourne said there was no fucking way you can use the name, depending on who you ask.
The one thing that is for sure is this is the best lineup the band has ever had, even without Bill Ward on most of the records. This is about as heavy as Sabbath ever got, and they managed to add a weird psychedelic decadence to the mix as well. I love how in the late 70's and early 80's psychedelic music went less hippie and more creepy. Think Hawkwind, Chrome, The Wall, and you get the idea. Listen to The Sign of the Southern Cross on the Mob Rules record. The way the guitars naturally decay into just drums and a Moog synth is electrifying. Anyone who doesn't believe you can get more power out of minimalism needs to hear this song. I have no idea what the lyrics are about. Normal Dio shit about riding across the rainbow countryside on a magical tiger or whatever. But it doesn't matter, it is really creepy, in the same way old issues of Heavy Metal Magazine are creepy.
Ahhh yes, Heavy Metal. I was thinking about the first time I ever heard this lineup of Sabbath. I was just a wee lad, probably less than 10, watching the film Heavy Metal, an Ivan Reitman animated film based on the popular series of comics. In the film's last segment you see a peaceful "fantasy" world. As the distorted and delayed bass of Geezer Butler fires up on ES150 a volcano begins to erupt with green gooey lava. As this short instrumental builds the green gooey lava starts rolling down the volcano and submerging the village's peaceful inhabitants. But the people aren't killed. They are transformed into mutated killing beasts! As these monsters start rising from the depths of this goo, ES150 has transitioned to the hard blues riff of The Mob Rules. As Vinny Appice's drums kick in and the song is full on the monsters attack! Who do they attack? Everything! Themselves. Non-mutants. Dogs. Women. Trees. Goo. They are now mindless killers destroying everything in large packs while Dio is screaming "when you listen to fools, the Mob Rules!"
Maybe there are some tracks on Sabotage that come close to this level of awesome-ness, but to me, these are the sounds and the visuals a band called BLACK SABBATH should have. It should be dark, and goth, and creepy, and really heavy. And I will be seeing them tomorrow. Amen.
Monday, March 26, 2007
The Studio, an Introduction.
Aside from all the funny secondary connotations of the name, I am calling the blog latency issues because there will occasionally be a bit of a focus on my "home studio." Of course since this is 2007, we are talking about a home computer and a couple of audio interfaces.
Latency refers to the time delay in digital audio systems due to analog to digital conversions, processing and conversion back to analog. The lower you set the latency in your Audio drivers the more instant the music sounds, but if you are running a lot of applications, can make things go haywire. The best way to stabilize a home studio is to increase the latency, which takes a lot of pressure off your system, but will produce a noticeable delay between you physically hitting a note, and hearing it through your speakers.
These posts may be long. Please feel free to skip right by if hearing a semi-techie bitch about his gear is not exciting to you. There is a funny piece right below about how I am considering falling in love with the State of New Jersey. Skip ahead, I won't judge.
So for the record, here is my current system.
AMD X2 64 2.4 GHZ 4200+ 2 gig ram running XP Media Center Edition
250 gig 5400 RPM internal Hard Drive (running my OS and apps)
250 gig 7200 RPM external Hard Drive (recording the audio)
Focusrite Saffire Firewire Audio Interface
M-Audio Axiom 61 Keyboard Controller
Software:
Sonar 6 PE w/related soft synths
Waves Diamond Bundle
Guitar Rig 2
NI Pro-53
NI B4
The first few experiments have been, shall we say, less than encouraging. The first hurdle was the Saffire. It would either recognize the signal coming into it, or Sonar attempting to recognize it, but never both. I would get errors that the SaffireControl software was unable to locate the interface. Didn't the weasel at Guitar Center sell me on Firewire because unlike USB 2.0 there is a continuous signal path between the device and the CPU? How come it seems like my interface will only recognize one path or the other, but never both. This is hardly "continuous." As I have come to learn, focusrite.com was one notch below useless, because the information on their site is so poor as to encourage you to do harm to your own machine. Upon independent investigation I discovered that by default, XP SP2 turned everyonejs Firewire ports to S100, regardless of their original spec. HOLY SHIT! So, I did some poking around in my machine and discovered something interesting. The Firewire port that came standard on my HP machine is by default S100 and cannot be raised. Fucking corner cutting. Did they assume no one would ever use Firewire since there are admittedly about 250 different USB 2.0 ports sticking out of my box? Maybe. However the Firewire port that is gratuitously on the back of my Audigy2 card was recognized by my machine as S400. Success!
Now my Saffire is being heard by everyone. This has turned out to be a mixed blessing. I have discovered that the instrument input on the Saffire hates my guitar. At least the bridge pickup. I put a really hot Seymore Duncan in a few years ago. It is about 4 or 5 dbs louder than the stock Ibanez pickup that I keep in the neck position. In a dubious cost cutting measure, most Ibanez guitars that roll off the assembly line have 2 humbuckers that aren't technically wired as such. They are instead wired in series, so you in effect have four single coils. Although I had the bridge wired as a true humbucker when the pickup was installed, I opted to leave the neck pickup in series. I like the sound. I don't mind the clean sound of a single coil. It sounds kinda strat-ish. But anyway. The Focusrite HATES the bridge pickup. If I leave the level at zero it still clips the level and produces a lot of distortion. And this pickup is PASSIVE. I tried switching to a balanced line input which does bring some sanity to the levels, but at the price of substantial tone. You can even hear it when I apply processing. There is no brightness left at all. So I am still working this one out. I cannot lose access to my awesome pickup. I tried distorting the neck pickup and it sounds like a distorted Tele. That might be your cup of tea, but if you are reading this you know the tea I like to brew, and that shit is LOUD BRIGHT AND GNARLY.
So there have been some monstrous latency issues and disk issues I am still resolving. There are mystery clicks I am still trouble shooting and eliminating.
A major victory I had was routing everything through the Focusrite. I tried to be cute and use the Audigy2 as my playback interface so I could use my default speakers. No dice. The WDM driver support sucks for the Audigy, and the Saffire is a bit wonky with ASIO. Routing everything through the Saffire using the WDM drivers, which Sonar greatly prefers anyway, has brought a much greater degree of stability.
Also, taking advantage of zero latency monitoring is helping. Instead of listening to my tracks being played through the DAW, I am listening to the untreated clean signal through the Saffire. For trying to play dirty this sucks. At least there is some built in DSP that you can choose whether or not to apply to what is being recorded. Therefore I can use their really shitty built in amp sim to at least get some life in the performance, but the sound being passed to Sonar is 100% clean and ready for real processing.
MUSIC IS BEING MADE. Samples will be up soon. My bass sounds incredible through it, my guitar's neck pickups sound great, and the Axiom controller has a pretty amazing feel. I love the semi-weighted keys so much I have temporarily given up my M-audio prejudice (and I am trying to ignore the fact that my PC only recognizes the board as "USB Midi Interface" and "USB Midi Interface (2)."
Hopefully by the time the Gods of Fire are ready to record a new album, or some tracks, or whatever the hell you do these days, this bright orange colored room I am typing this in now with wacky angles which hopefully will kill a lot of standing tones will be ready as an over-dub/mixing/post-production facility.
Once I find the battery charger for my camera, I will take some pictures of the room and post them up.
Latency refers to the time delay in digital audio systems due to analog to digital conversions, processing and conversion back to analog. The lower you set the latency in your Audio drivers the more instant the music sounds, but if you are running a lot of applications, can make things go haywire. The best way to stabilize a home studio is to increase the latency, which takes a lot of pressure off your system, but will produce a noticeable delay between you physically hitting a note, and hearing it through your speakers.
These posts may be long. Please feel free to skip right by if hearing a semi-techie bitch about his gear is not exciting to you. There is a funny piece right below about how I am considering falling in love with the State of New Jersey. Skip ahead, I won't judge.
So for the record, here is my current system.
AMD X2 64 2.4 GHZ 4200+ 2 gig ram running XP Media Center Edition
250 gig 5400 RPM internal Hard Drive (running my OS and apps)
250 gig 7200 RPM external Hard Drive (recording the audio)
Focusrite Saffire Firewire Audio Interface
M-Audio Axiom 61 Keyboard Controller
Software:
Sonar 6 PE w/related soft synths
Waves Diamond Bundle
Guitar Rig 2
NI Pro-53
NI B4
The first few experiments have been, shall we say, less than encouraging. The first hurdle was the Saffire. It would either recognize the signal coming into it, or Sonar attempting to recognize it, but never both. I would get errors that the SaffireControl software was unable to locate the interface. Didn't the weasel at Guitar Center sell me on Firewire because unlike USB 2.0 there is a continuous signal path between the device and the CPU? How come it seems like my interface will only recognize one path or the other, but never both. This is hardly "continuous." As I have come to learn, focusrite.com was one notch below useless, because the information on their site is so poor as to encourage you to do harm to your own machine. Upon independent investigation I discovered that by default, XP SP2 turned everyonejs Firewire ports to S100, regardless of their original spec. HOLY SHIT! So, I did some poking around in my machine and discovered something interesting. The Firewire port that came standard on my HP machine is by default S100 and cannot be raised. Fucking corner cutting. Did they assume no one would ever use Firewire since there are admittedly about 250 different USB 2.0 ports sticking out of my box? Maybe. However the Firewire port that is gratuitously on the back of my Audigy2 card was recognized by my machine as S400. Success!
Now my Saffire is being heard by everyone. This has turned out to be a mixed blessing. I have discovered that the instrument input on the Saffire hates my guitar. At least the bridge pickup. I put a really hot Seymore Duncan in a few years ago. It is about 4 or 5 dbs louder than the stock Ibanez pickup that I keep in the neck position. In a dubious cost cutting measure, most Ibanez guitars that roll off the assembly line have 2 humbuckers that aren't technically wired as such. They are instead wired in series, so you in effect have four single coils. Although I had the bridge wired as a true humbucker when the pickup was installed, I opted to leave the neck pickup in series. I like the sound. I don't mind the clean sound of a single coil. It sounds kinda strat-ish. But anyway. The Focusrite HATES the bridge pickup. If I leave the level at zero it still clips the level and produces a lot of distortion. And this pickup is PASSIVE. I tried switching to a balanced line input which does bring some sanity to the levels, but at the price of substantial tone. You can even hear it when I apply processing. There is no brightness left at all. So I am still working this one out. I cannot lose access to my awesome pickup. I tried distorting the neck pickup and it sounds like a distorted Tele. That might be your cup of tea, but if you are reading this you know the tea I like to brew, and that shit is LOUD BRIGHT AND GNARLY.
So there have been some monstrous latency issues and disk issues I am still resolving. There are mystery clicks I am still trouble shooting and eliminating.
A major victory I had was routing everything through the Focusrite. I tried to be cute and use the Audigy2 as my playback interface so I could use my default speakers. No dice. The WDM driver support sucks for the Audigy, and the Saffire is a bit wonky with ASIO. Routing everything through the Saffire using the WDM drivers, which Sonar greatly prefers anyway, has brought a much greater degree of stability.
Also, taking advantage of zero latency monitoring is helping. Instead of listening to my tracks being played through the DAW, I am listening to the untreated clean signal through the Saffire. For trying to play dirty this sucks. At least there is some built in DSP that you can choose whether or not to apply to what is being recorded. Therefore I can use their really shitty built in amp sim to at least get some life in the performance, but the sound being passed to Sonar is 100% clean and ready for real processing.
MUSIC IS BEING MADE. Samples will be up soon. My bass sounds incredible through it, my guitar's neck pickups sound great, and the Axiom controller has a pretty amazing feel. I love the semi-weighted keys so much I have temporarily given up my M-audio prejudice (and I am trying to ignore the fact that my PC only recognizes the board as "USB Midi Interface" and "USB Midi Interface (2)."
Hopefully by the time the Gods of Fire are ready to record a new album, or some tracks, or whatever the hell you do these days, this bright orange colored room I am typing this in now with wacky angles which hopefully will kill a lot of standing tones will be ready as an over-dub/mixing/post-production facility.
Once I find the battery charger for my camera, I will take some pictures of the room and post them up.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
On New Jersey
Before I write a lengthy post on the awesome fucking evening that was the Ross the Boss gig at Dingbatz I need to take a moment to reflect on Bon Jovi's beloved home state.
Why do I hate on Jersey? Because of the meatheads who infiltrate Manhattan and scream at the top of their lungs on the Lower East Side at 4 in the morning?
Am I hating all punk rock because of Good Charlotte?
Between really seeing Hoboken for the first time on Monday and my experiences last night I think my feelings on NJ need to be seriously re-evaluated.
The entire state is METAL. People live free or die out there. It is the last bastion of real Metal. LA was always the poseur state, and we all know how NYC goes down. I spend more time on dates trying to justify in terms the lady can understand that this doesn't somehow change everything else she likes about me.
Is Jersey happiness? Probably not. But if I lived there I could spend more time befriending members of Symphony X. And last night in the CVS at Rutherford I was able to buy two bottles of Passover Coke, one of which I am swigging from right now to try to get my scratchy blown out voice back in shape so I don't sound like Peter Brady at the office tomorrow.
Why do I hate on Jersey? Because of the meatheads who infiltrate Manhattan and scream at the top of their lungs on the Lower East Side at 4 in the morning?
Am I hating all punk rock because of Good Charlotte?
Between really seeing Hoboken for the first time on Monday and my experiences last night I think my feelings on NJ need to be seriously re-evaluated.
The entire state is METAL. People live free or die out there. It is the last bastion of real Metal. LA was always the poseur state, and we all know how NYC goes down. I spend more time on dates trying to justify in terms the lady can understand that this doesn't somehow change everything else she likes about me.
Is Jersey happiness? Probably not. But if I lived there I could spend more time befriending members of Symphony X. And last night in the CVS at Rutherford I was able to buy two bottles of Passover Coke, one of which I am swigging from right now to try to get my scratchy blown out voice back in shape so I don't sound like Peter Brady at the office tomorrow.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The Tao of Seth
As Jane was kind enough to remind me recently, the main tenet of The Tao of Steve is to "always be excellent in her presence."
This is, as we all know, very true.
If this was to be customized for me, it would read "always be singing Karaoke in her presence."
I do not fully understand the power my Karaoke singing wields. Right now I am like a character in Heroes just coming to grips with their special abilities.
There is still much to learn. However there are a few things I have picked up on. For instance, Karaoke Mojo is unique to Karaoke itself, and not the rock band, or performance in general. Also the Mojo works whether it is live band Karaoke or in a bar.
The X Factor is that I do best either in a private room or with the live band. Not so much the regular Karaoke bar, and I am not sure why. Also, why Karaoke? I do not have the best singing voice. In fact it is quite bad. Is it my song selection? The way I attempt to imitate singers? Perhaps it has very little to do with the actual singing and more to do with how I am when I throw in a little Mr. Roboto. I often impress the dudes in a room. Is that a turn on for the ladies?
This matter requires further investigation. For now, Namaste
This is, as we all know, very true.
If this was to be customized for me, it would read "always be singing Karaoke in her presence."
I do not fully understand the power my Karaoke singing wields. Right now I am like a character in Heroes just coming to grips with their special abilities.
There is still much to learn. However there are a few things I have picked up on. For instance, Karaoke Mojo is unique to Karaoke itself, and not the rock band, or performance in general. Also the Mojo works whether it is live band Karaoke or in a bar.
The X Factor is that I do best either in a private room or with the live band. Not so much the regular Karaoke bar, and I am not sure why. Also, why Karaoke? I do not have the best singing voice. In fact it is quite bad. Is it my song selection? The way I attempt to imitate singers? Perhaps it has very little to do with the actual singing and more to do with how I am when I throw in a little Mr. Roboto. I often impress the dudes in a room. Is that a turn on for the ladies?
This matter requires further investigation. For now, Namaste
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
A King of Metal
So this Saturday night, there is going to be a tribute to a fallen Metal Warrior who recently passed away while on the job. As far as I am concerned that is the worst way to go!
In tribute there is going to be a crazy Metal show at a place called Dingbatz in East Bumblefuck New Jersey where Ross the Boss is going to be playing a set of classic Manowar for the first time in America since 1987 or so. Who is in his band? Mike Sabatini, the drummer of NJ band Attacker, Mike Lepond, bassist of perennial prog favorites Symphony X (the Rolling Stones to Dream Theaters' Beatles), and Prometheus, the singer of my band Gods of Fire.
I missed the first rehearsal because at that point I had nothing to do with this show. Then I got the call last week to do heavy death vocals for the middle portion of Bridge of Death. After working with the band I am also going to be doing backups for Hail and Kill and Battle Hymns, although this will all be from the sound board, and not directly on stage.
OK. Last night was AWESOME. Just watching Mike Lepond set up his gear was so awesome I wanted to throw money at him. His warmups blow away most people at their prime. He is playing Joey Demaio's parts with ONE FINGER! And Ross....well...Ross is a trip.
Now don't get me wrong. He was really nice and a true Metal Warrior. He was also a founding member of Manowar. And if anyone reading this has ever doubted for a moment whether or not Manowar is "for real," let me just put those rumors to rest right now. Manowar are SERIOUS PEOPLE.
Fun facts I learned last night-
-Ross the Boss HATES King Diamond. Hates him. End of discussion. Do not bring up the King in front of the Boss. Apparently they had some squabble around 1983 during a British tour where Manowar would not let Mercyful Fate use their amps (Ross' 12 guitar cabs and Joey's 24 bass cabs) and they bailed off the tour instead of fighting Manowar physically. So...yeah. Ross HATES the King. I've got nothing.
-Ross the Boss LOVES Dimmu Borgir, even though they were worshiping some sort of relic back stage before going on.
-RtB was once voted the third best keyboard player in Germany. Who were the first two you may ask? I was curious too, I assumed it would have been Ralf and Florian but it turns out he was beaten by John Lord and Don Airey. I offhandedly remarked "well those two can't really be fucked with," and I mean, have you heard Deep Purple? Playing a few pads in a Manowar tune, and chasing Blackmore's leads in the live version of Child in Time from Made in Japan are really not in the same league. But with full confidence he looked me in the eye and said "I'm noone to fuck wit', neither!" Genius.
There was more. Maybe I'll post more at some point. Oh oh oh! He called Karl Logan "Jive," although he acquiesced that he plays the old Manowar parts better than anyone that has replaced Ross the Boss.
And why did RtB, 50% of the creative team of Manowar leave the band? There is no surprise there. It is the same reason you would. He was sick of Joey Demaio's shit. Joey, btw, if you have seen the new photos for God of War is looking more like Derek Smalls everyday.
So Saturday is going to RULE. You had to hear these people whip out Kill With Power. Holy mother God of Fucking Holy Metal Fucks! Seven Witches and Devils Island are playing as well. Should be a great time.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
First Post!
Anthropologists will discover in 100 years that I am Gay.
And drunk.
And that I was too dumb or lazy to figure out how to assign drum kits to the 8 pads on my fancy new Axiom 61.
On that topic, musical friends and pundits will be dismayed to learn I brought another M-Audio product into my home after the first disaster.
Yes, it is having driver issues. No, none of my programs recognize it as anything more than a "USB Audio Device (2)." Yes, I do have five days to get my money back. The keys feel AWESOME though.
I am going against my beliefs and will be out drinking tonight on St. Patrick's day. There are cute ladies who really need more Noam in their lives.
They have certainly had their fill of the Shybonics.
OK, I should have a blog mission statement? I'm going to discuss Metal, Blowjobs, Video Games, Music nerdery, TV nerdery, and any other damn thing that I feel like ranting about. Sometimes it will get technical. Sometimes it will not make sense. I may give up and stop blogging altogether.
And with that, I bid you good day, sir.
And drunk.
And that I was too dumb or lazy to figure out how to assign drum kits to the 8 pads on my fancy new Axiom 61.
On that topic, musical friends and pundits will be dismayed to learn I brought another M-Audio product into my home after the first disaster.
Yes, it is having driver issues. No, none of my programs recognize it as anything more than a "USB Audio Device (2)." Yes, I do have five days to get my money back. The keys feel AWESOME though.
I am going against my beliefs and will be out drinking tonight on St. Patrick's day. There are cute ladies who really need more Noam in their lives.
They have certainly had their fill of the Shybonics.
OK, I should have a blog mission statement? I'm going to discuss Metal, Blowjobs, Video Games, Music nerdery, TV nerdery, and any other damn thing that I feel like ranting about. Sometimes it will get technical. Sometimes it will not make sense. I may give up and stop blogging altogether.
And with that, I bid you good day, sir.
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