Category: Audio, Music and Hi-Fi

Finishing

I am excited by new things and new projects. I think our popular culture encourages the new, the clean, and the shiny. This is particularly true of the tech industry, as well as fashion and media – but it also applies to any new endeavour.

I have started this blog up about a million times. I have started writing a book. I have started a podcast and a career in consulting. I have started all sorts of things. But once I start something, 2 questions quickly pop up:

  1. how do I want to keep them going? and,
  2. how do I want to finish them all?

Keeping them going is very tricky and smells something like hard work. There is always resistance to keeping something going. Always a need to be whipped or carroted into it. Formulating your own practice and habit and process is likely the answer. But this is easier said than done.

A less frequently discussed problem is that of finishing something well. We don’t learn often about how to best finish things off, how to put something to rest, or how to sell out or walk away for good. How to let something die.

I have finished a few relationships, a few jobs and a few sports careers successfully in my life to date. But for the really important stuff, entropy requires us to prepare for potential disorder and chaos. In practice this probably looks like a clear plan to move past the practice/habit stage and to enter the “finishing” stage. A plan with fallbacks and contingencies along the way. My finishes have been more ad hoc and improvised to date. I’d like to change that, though.

Stalked by Neil Young

At some stage I liked too many Neil Young songs on Apple Music. Each week my phone offers me playlists full of songs it thinks I would like to hear. Without fail, each and every week it puts multiple Neil Young songs in each playlist. No matter how many times I tell it to ´undo favourite´ for the artist and all his songs, his high-pitched and (let´s face it) kind of annoying voice keeps popping up.

I love Harvest and After the Gold Rush. Solid albums. But that´s about it. I can´t take this much Neil on a weekly basis.

Happy Tuesday Chimps.

Music on this Monday

I’ve added three tracks to the chimpwithcans playlist: Link

Genesis, “Turn it on” – a track which rocks and which I wish I played back in the day because of the drums. And those crazy skipped beats! Oh man I gets me this one.

The Cars, “I’m not the one” which has a very modern synth and electronic beat for such an old track. Mellow and excellent!

Finally I have included the new one from Arcade Fire, “Unconditional II (Race and Religion)” because it’s a new Arcade Fire track and it includes Peter Gabriel!

I took three old tracks off too. Out with the old and in with the new!

Happy Monday, chimps!

Drumming memories.

Drums are clunky and clumsy to sit down to. Bits are threatening to fall over, poke your leg, clatter and clash in a big noise. But once I do sit down, it feels like a beast is at my beck and call.

Everybody has something that eases their mind. Different people are affected by different things. Some friends have told me surfing does it, others running, others fine art and drawing. We are all so different, but everyone has something they absolutely love and fall into so deeply that they don’t even notice time passing, or tiredness, or anything else but the task at hand. I have a few things. Golf. Motorbikes. Fly fishing. Music.

The problem is, I stopped playing drums. I got busy. Then I grew older and got REALLY busy. And then I forgot what it felt like to sit at the very bottom of a song and push the other instruments forward. Control the tempo and the sound. For me, there is really nothing like it.

My friend came to town the other day and we met up at a guitar shop. He wanted a Fender to pass on as a family heirloom. I tested some out with him, and I played drums as he strummed the blues. I remembered that great feeling all over again.

I need to start playing regularly.

Happy Tuesday chimps!

Boyhood and Classical

When I was a boy, my mother used to sing in a choir. She would go to evening practices and perform classical pieces such as Handel’s ‘Messiah’. At the time it was not so obvious what the appeal was. I could see how the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones had an effect, but the slower and more formal music seemed all too stuffy, dull and boring. My friend and I were once dragged to a concert which we filmed, adding a tagline to the video which read “Party Time” sarcastically. We were bored boys.

Nowadays I am just beginning to understand the appeal of classical music. It can be magnificient. Uplifting. Lush.

One thing it requires is patience. If you can turn on a piece of classical music and just sit still and listen, before you know it you are loving the feelings, emotions, harmonies. Like a painting laid out infront of you it becomes the only thing that you have in your head. Sometimes it takes away the rest of the world. These moments are just lovely and unique to the genre for me.

I have just found Spotify’s Classical section and highly recommend the following playlist:

Power cuts

Picture my panic. It is Saturday evening, the kids are all asleep after a hard day without their mother, who’s away this weekend. Just when I thought I could relax and stream some music, the power went out. Got to love Eskom and African power utilities.

So I went into scramble mode…my phone still had battery, but no data left to download or stream anything. Dammit.

My laptop battery is dead. I was beginning to lose hope, and then I spotted the iPad.

A quick startup showed full batteries. Now was there any music? Only one album downloaded: Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’

That’ll do pig….that’ll do. My brain is heaving a sigh of relief as Thom Yorke groans in my ears.

On a side note, how does this band get away with such ridiculous music? It strikes me they are impossible to cover….They are the only band that could ever play these arrangements and sound any good.

But sound good they do!

Happy Saturday chimps.

Inputs and outputs

I set up my third (I know!) Amplifier today in the man cave. It is the only Grade A amp I own and it is now doing the LP player duties. This means my streaming amp has been relegated to an “Input AUX” on the class A amp. Audio talk, but it got me thinking about priorities.

If you have many responsibilities in your life, and you are struggling to handle all the input signals and get all the outputs you want – then maybe you need to focus on the quality / important inputs and relegate the other stuff. Sort out the important things first and only then look to do anything else.

At the moment, my life is a list of important things and little time for recreation. Being conscientious and organised about priorities is perhaps one of the hardest things for me, but when I do it, it reaps instant rewards.

In the audio analogy, I sorted out the wheat from the chaff, the high res from the low bitrate, the analogue from the digital, the good from the crap – and this means I am now experiencing the best audio source (LP’s) through the best amplifier, and the others are taking a back seat for another day.

It’s not much of an analogy, but the bigger point is that life is about options and sacrifice. You have to choose your sacrifice. Choose it wisely and complete the plan. Then reassess.

That’s the plan.

Happy Thursday chimps.