Notes_Norton

"Gangster Of Love" - Johnny "Guitar" Watson Too bad Johnny is gone, he had a real "fun" approach to music.

Nice guitars! Thanks for the pictures. Notes

"The World Is A Ghetto" - War

Of course, forum rules, if we don't have pictures, you don't really have them ;)

Night On Bald Mountain - Modest Mussorgsky We all know this from Disney's Fantasia

"Going Down Slow" - St. Louis Jimmy Oden wrote it and sang it first, it's been covered by hundreds since then, Bobby Bland, Howlin' Wolf, Eric Clapton, BB King, Freddy King, Albert King, etc. (sorry about the long winded posts - I'm an amateur musicologist and love the continuum of this art)

That's what de-feeted you (one good groan deserves another)

I have a MIDI studio, and don't do that much vocals here, but I play live a lot in places where noise can be a big problem depending on the wiring of the places I play. Here is some advice, if you already know this, feel free to ignore: 1. If you have a choice between balanced and unbalanced cables - always used balanced. Simplified explanation: Balanced cables invert the signal on one conductor and re-invert to recombine at the other end. Any noise that enters both conductors cancels itself out when re-inverted at the end. 2. Clean power. If the power in your studio is not clean you will have problems. If you're serious, and electrician can be worth the money 3. Power conditioner. I use a power/line conditioner and plug everything into it. The conditioner boosts temporary brown outs and suppresses surges. Plugging everything into the same conditioner minimizes the potential for ground loops. At home I plug everything into the same heavy duty UPS as it serves the same function. 4. Make sure there are no light dimmers around or motors on the circuit. I'm sure there are others who have better suggestions than mine out there. My philosophy is to eliminate the problem rather than try to mask it. I can do that in my small MIDI studio. But playing live means I have no control over the power so a lot of masking is necessary. We play one hall about twice a year where I can't keep the hum out. I need to put my guitar on humbuckers, single coils roar. There is something wrong there, even their house music hums. I can keep the hum at a minimum, the conversation in the room masks the hum, but I know it's there. If I didn't have balanced cables wherever I can, it would be terrible I'm sure. I suspect the line conditioner helps too. Notes

We never get children on Halloween, but I buy a lot of candy just in case. And when they don't come, somebody has to eat it ???

"Here's That Rainy Day" - Jazz Standard m/w by Jimmy Van Heusen /Johnny Burke one of my favorite versions is by Stan Getz

I go for medium priced cables. The cheap ones fall apart, the high end ones are over-engineered past the point of diminishing returns IMHO. That point of diminishing returns is that X amount of additional money spent gives you less benefit for every X amount of money spent. Since the closing of my local mom & pop music store, I've been getting my cables from Sweetwater. Their "Pro Co" brand has nice connectors, good shielding and a lifetime guarantee. I've had good luck with Hosa cables and some other brands. Long ago I bought a "Radio Shack" brand and it was too low end. The phone plugs fit loosely in the jacks causing a connection problem. That was decades ago, I never went back. I bought a "Monster" cable once and decided it wasn't worth the price for me - YMMV. I closed a cable in the lid of a road case, it left me without a spare, and the only thing I could find was the Monster brand. I carry a spare of every cable at all times. The show must go on, and to miss a gig because a cable failed is not an option. It was a 25', 1/4" phone plug cable to feed a monitor. I used it to replace a Planet Waves brand. No audible difference except the price. I eventually had to replace plugs on both, and the Planet Waves was much easier to replace the plug due to a more cooperative shield. Both had approximately 100% shielding and the same gauge center conductor. The dielectric looked to be made of the same material. Yes I know I can send the cables back for a replacement, but for 15 minutes work I can put a new plug on and not pay shipping charges and wait weeks for a return. I took electronics in college, communications option - radio frequency, especially. What I learned about coax is that if you have a good conductor, proper dielectric around it, and a good shield around that, the differences become minimal. Now if there is a kink in the cable, all bets are off as the propagation depends on that center conductor to shield distance. This is especially true with radio frequency signals. I don't know how much effect it would have on audio frequency, but I'm sure it would be much less. I don't know about 200'. I would never use anything that long unbalanced. I have used 100' balanced XLR conector cables to powered speakers (two 50' cables daisy chained) and didn't have a problem. If you find the Wire World cables and if you can hear the difference, let me know. Well that's my recommendation. I'm sure others will have other opinions. Notes

They have an app for that so sit tight. It's called app-tight. @ craigb, put the cow on a trampoline and you'll get a milk shake. I'm just ruminating here. Notes

My weekend is ruined. Two outdoor gigs and a Potential Tropical Cyclone bearing down on us. It'll be a tropical storm tomorrow and go up the coast just east of us. Enough to give us hard rain squalls without warning - we can't risk our gear and nobody is going to want to eat and drink outdoors while we are under a tropical storm watch predicted to be warning by sometime tonight. Bapu, enjoy your 3 day weekend.

Stratus clouds? Get Off My Cloud - The Rolling Stones

To steal a line from Joni Mitchell It's music without the muse

I fork-got what this thread was about anyway.

"(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" - Originally by Fats Waller but this Louis Armstrong recording is more famous:

I like sham-poo better than real-poo

Rambling nonsense I hope, because that's more entertaining to me than Kanye's "music"

Ah, the "Three Kings of the Blues" - fine guitarists all. This post is going 'black and blue' (and that's a good thing IMHO)

Time for some jazz. Mr. P.C. - John Coltrane Dedicated to his bass player, Paul Chambers. Lambert, Hendrics and Ross put some vocals to it and had a nice go with that song

Or a flutist

Tuesday Afternoon - Moody Blues

"Ride Like The WInd" - Christopher Cross Lyrical association: And I've got such a long way to go (such a long way to go) To make it to the border of Mexico So I'll ride like the wind Ride like the wind Whether you like the song or not, you gotta agree, the session musicians and production are all superb.