September 28, 2008: I spent this weekend trying to recover data from a failed hard drive containing over 200 GB of recently recorded material or dumps of older recorded material.  I had good backups of maybe 1/3 of the files, fortunately including all of the new compositions and the various files associated with their digitization and mastering.

The lost material was recent dumps of 4-track and stereo tapes of Violence and the Sacred concerts and rehearsals.  Of course I still have the original tapes so it’s no problem to do the work again, just the time lost.  Since I still have a lot of work to do on the website redesign (including the mechanism for purchasing Rusty Pile: due to be out next week) I would be sitting at the laptop anyway, so I might as well have tapes dumping to the computer in the background.  As long as we are surrounded by as many computers and display terminals as possible, and have limited options or perceived need for human interaction, everything is OK.

Gone away

The hard disk problem could have originated when XP seemed to freeze during a disk defragmentation about 4 weeks ago.  Then again, that may have been a symptom of a failing drive.  Oddly, it let me continue to write material (which I did enthusiastically) but when I finally got around to backing it up to another disk, the source disk would randomly freeze during copying.  I was able to salvage some material by copying directories one at a time.  Chkdsk also froze at 8%.  Eventually the computer stopped recognizing the drive which was a relief since it was 4:00 AM last night.

The obvious lesson: make copies of everything immediately after recording.  Other lessons: maybe buy better quality hard drives, although my experience has taught me that most such problems are completely random.  I believe however, that we can have a psychic connection to electronic equipment which influences how such equipment behaves, including its reliability.  Maybe it’s just the nature of our connection to the electric universe.  Regardless of what it is, I think I have been extremely lucky in this regard over the years.

Connection to the Universe

September 23, 2008: Yesterday the production house called saying that the CD was ready to be picked up.  John and I barreled down to the Queen’s Quay in separate cars and fought over the last parking spot.

It turns out however that there were printing problems and the whole run of covers needs to be redone:

1. The was an ugly pink “hickey” on most of the covers, in the title Rusty Pile.  For a definition of hickey see this.
2. The cover was distinctly purple, not blue as we’d seen in the proofs.  It looked OK, but not that strong overwhelming blue we want.

So they’ll reprint and repackage everything.

On the plus side, we took 3 disks away and the sound and CD transfer (or whatever you call it) is really quite good.  It seems to sound better than I’ve ever heard it, although those might be the words of the vile voice of vanity.

September 22, 2008:  Today I went to look at a Moog Minimoog for sale locally.  For a while now I’ve been keeping an eye out for some additional analog synths.  I’m very happy with the results I’m getting from the MS-series but occasionally I think: “I want something that sounds different”, or “everything is starting to sound the same”.

My expectations for the Minimoog were high, given everything I’d read about it, but I left a bit disappointed.  Clearly it was a powerful machine that sound-for-sound exceeds the MS-20 or MS-50.  But ultimately it seemed very similar in capabilities to those beloved Korgs, such that I couldn’t justify the cost.  And, given the flexibilities that the MS machines offer (patching, external triggers, integration with the SQ-10) it seemed best to do nothing.

So tonight I’m looking at other machines: Roland for example to see what’s out there.

The production house says that Rusty Pile will probably be ready later this week.

September 8, 2008: This month the house is full of flies. It’s been a wet summer, supposedly perfect for breeding. So today is poison spray day.

On Saturday PB and I went to a screening of experimental film at the Toronto film festival. The main impetus was the first showing of Violence and the Sacred acquaintance Chris Gehman’s beautiful film Refraction Series.  I was also particularly impressed with Pat O’Neill’s Horizontal Boundaries.  Very engaging with an excellent soundtrack.

Thanks to an very helpful article on the Home Recording BBS, I resolved the pitch control problem with the Tascam 246 I bought back in February.  Tonight I’ll start dumping Arkinoid, et al. to the computer.  I might be a good idea to service the 246 prior to doing this; we’ll see how it goes.  Still waiting for the CD.  Here are some more pictures to fill and pass the time:

Tyranny of Language

Permanence

Progress

Faith

Refined

Studious

September 1, 2008: I’ve finished dumping AKAI MG614 tapes to the computer.  The next step should be about 30 tapes recorded on a Tascam 246 (including the Teddy Bear, Arkinoid, and Lost Horizons concerts), but the 246 I bought off some fellow on Craigslist in February has a problem with its speed control.  With “speed control” not engaged, playback is about 10-15% too slow.

I could get this fixed.  Ted loaned his 246 to a friend about 10 years ago.  He’s supposed to return it to us, which might be the easier path.

In the meantime I’ve dumped many regular speed tapes of different sorts:

• various improv group rehearsals (good for insertion/slice up in other contexts).
• concerts in Montreal and Toronto, including the last Viosac show at the Music Gallery.
• Santa Satan’s Holiday Hellocaust metal master tape .. still sounds pretty good, though silly in places.

I’m also working hard on revising the Viosac web site in preparation for Rusty Pile.

Headache today, dull and lifeless … went for a walk down to the swamp.

Nothing!