Project Squawk Begins

My work as a recordist on Saturday evening and Sunday morning (part of the Founders’ Day festivities) has inspired me to attempt to learn a little more about the voodoo magic that can be accomplished in a home stuido with one of these little fellas.   One of my co-workers is married to a fellow who also likes to mess around a wee bit from time to time with bleeps, blorps and squawks. A few years ago, when I was still a footloose and fancy-free bachelor with nothing better to spend my hard-earned dough on, he sold me one of these second hand.  I had quite a bit of fun fooling about with it;  I demo’ed one or two songs I had written that were to be recorded by the band (back in the days when it seemed like my bandmates were still interested in that sort of thing), and I did another couple of little parody songs (à la Weird Al) in honour of certain special occasions at work(a mentor’s fiftieth birthday, a colleague leaving for a new and better job, etc.).  I have now purchased the KORG D16 (pictured at right) from the same fellow;  I gather from the emails we’ve traded back and forth on the subject that he just hasn’t been using the equipment in the last year or two.

You may recall that I am the Reigning Monarch of Project Commencement;  finding myself with a new piece of equipment and an insufficient number of distractions (this blog, computers, digital photography, doing stunts on yard machinery*), I have resolved to learn how to become more technically proficient at engineering, mixing and producing audio recordings.

The first tentative (and admittedly very decidedly non-technical) step towards that goal was taken last evening;  I waded in to the storage area of our house (a small storage locker sized room behind the garage that permits us to store our accumulated curiosities and whatsits in a non-subterranean manner, unlike those of you with basements) and began searching for my DigiTech Studio Quad 4, a multi-effects processor that offers some cool fully programmable tools and effects like compression, reverb, a rotary speaker simulator and others.  Three hours – and a very large pile of discarded packing material – later, I managed to excavate the storage unit to the point where this particular relic could be recovered (as thrilling as this process sounds, I do not believe I will be anxious to add “storage unit archaeology” to the list of things at which I am a dilettante).

What a surprise I got when I opened up the little box into which I had secreted this most useful little gizmo.  Sitting there on top of it was a piece of equipment that I had forgotten I purchased – a Behringer MDX 1400 Compressor (pictured below with the DigiTech Studio Quad 4).   I had to sit and think for a second about how and when I acquired this thing.  After a few minutes’ careful reflection, I recalled that the very weekend of my first real “date” with Spouse, I had been hanging out at Long & McQuade in Burlington;  I had, the very Saturday of our first date, purchased a companion to the Apex 460 Large Diaphragm Condensor Microphone I already owned.  All the better to record a stereo mix in  a spaced pair configuration.  While heading to the counter to plop the cash down for the second Apex 460, I passed a stack of the MDX 1400’s:  Messrs. Long & McQuade were having a sale.  The MDX 1400 was (and still is, unless its undergone a radical transformation while in storage) a stereo compressor – i.e. it is capable of processing two separate signals at once, typically one from a left channel microphone and one from the right.  As I was imminently about to become the owner of a matched pair of recording microphones, and the device needed to further enhance and beautify the signals they would be sending down the signal chain was sitting right there in front of me at a reduced price, I recall the spatial, economic and technical symmetry of it all being a little too much to resist.     I may have blacked out for a moment;  perhaps it was non-insane automatism, I don’t know.  All I can tell you is that, despite the fact that 460 #2 had very clearly taken my little studio well over its prepared budget for equipment capital expenditures in that fiscal quarter, I ended up standing at the cash checkout with a box containing the device tucked comfortingly beneath one arm, while the other arm extended a hand bearing a credit card groaning under excess strain.

A few minutes later, I was standing outside in the Saturday afternoon sun waiting for a taxi.  I was warm and somewhat euphoric from the spasm of gear acquisition.  The telephone rang and it was Spouse, inviting me to a barbecue at her place, an event which marked the beginning of our courtship.   The 460’s and the MDX 1400 did get unpackaged, set up and taken for a trial run or two – once or twice over the next couple of weeks.  They mostly stood idle, though, while Spouse and I negotiated the beginning of our path together.  When I moved in with her, they were packed into boxes and stored in the basement, as our little house in the City was far too compact to accomodate any home recording projects, as these have a habit of generating a considerable mass of wires, cables and cords, the various ends of which are distributed with entropic inevitability towards walls (and their power receptacles), cabinets and desks (on which effects, recorders and control gizmos stand flashing with input and output ports waiting for precious signal path) and a metallic forest of instruments, microphones and their stands.

Some months and years have passed now, and Spouse and I are happily settled together.  I always knew that I would come back to recording music;  that’s one of the reasons we were determined to end up in a rural area (all the more difficult to annoy neighbours in the course of the creative process).  It is time to set up this gear (in Mission Control at least initially) and see – or perhaps more properly, hear – what can be done with it.

I am going to attempt to incorporate two of my interests in this way:  as I explore the technical issues and experiment with the gear, I am going to attempt to document my results here.  I find that I learn things better when I am forced to sit down and concretize my thoughts about such things;  by summarizing and describing my efforts, I hope to reinforce the technical knowledge I gain.

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* attentive readers will note that I did NOT mention either my “lawn mower video” or the account of July’s fishing shenanigans, both of which are still in the mysterious project queue of my mind and both of which would quite obviously qualify as Part of the Kingdom of Inchoate Projects;  each of these undertakings bears some thematic relation to the more generalized list of  “Time Sucking Things I Piffle About At”, so I thought I’d try to keep the list – and the sentence – somewhat shorter.  You know, quibbling about such things might itself qualify as a time-wasting obsession – maybe you attentive readers share a bloodline with the Monarch.