Notes_Norton

Actually "Mellow Yellow" and "Electric Boogie (Electric Slide)" are songs about women's erotic toys. Oh Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison The song that still gets the retirement crowd dancing.

Seriously, I think another bass player played on the later Beatles' recordings. Anything the real Paul has done before or after sounds to me like an entirely different player, in tone, technique and ideas. IMO there is nothing wrong with hiring studio musicians to play your parts, but I'd like to know who it was. On with the game Leather And Lace - Stevie Nicks and Don Henley We learned this one for a wedding many years ago and they are still married. They own a restaurant and still hire us but we don't play the song anymore.

I've got twins. One standard Parker Dragonfly/Maxxfly and another custom made with Duncal P-Rail pickups. The P-Rail axe is my gigging guitar, the other my practice at home guitar

I liked his early stuff better, before he got real famous to the general public, but I'm so very glad he was finally recognized and got the appreciation he deserved. Another of my favorites of roots R&B would be Bobby "Blue" Bland. I prefer the early stuff recorded on the Duke label. Buddy Guy on the other hand seems to be timeless. Blues is one of my 100 favorite kinds of music. ;) Notes

I had a radio station move so close to my home, if the tower fell, it would come close to hitting us. Nothing could keep the signal out of my gear. I called the FCC, and the radio station and the FCC used the same engineer. I ended up moving, but it was only a rental so it was no big deal. ------ As far as sound in concerned, nobody but you and .0001% of the word will hear any difference. As long as the cable is at least mid-priced and the external shield is 100%, I'm OK with it. As I said before, if I can go Balanced, I do. Playing live, 60 Hz hum is the biggest problem. Lights on dimmers, marginal wiring in the venue, ice machine on the same circuit or what have you. I found for me: 1) Plug everything into the same line conditioner 2) Keep cable runs as short as possible 3) Use mid-priced major brand cables As long as it isn't humming, the audience doesn't know the difference. If I were recording, I might have different preferences. Insights and incites by Notes

OK, the raw MIDI files are done, and I'm back. The rest of the project can be done in bits and pieces. In answer to the Lionel Richie "Truly" post, I submit the greatest song by the best Beatles imitation band ever. Not only do they sound like The Beatles, but from this musician's point of view. they are better musicians than The Beatles. But of course, they are not the originals, but only a copy. Lies - The Knickerbockers

Girl Talk - written by Neil Hefti The song has been described by Michael Feinstein as the "last great male chauvinistic song written in the 60's" You can't get away with lyrics like this today - and you shouldn't be able to either They like to chat about the dresses they will wear tonight They chew the fat about their tresses and the neighbor's fight, Inconsequential things that men don't really care to know Become essential things that women find so ap-pro-pos, But that's a dame, they're all the same it's just a game they call it Girl talk, girl talk And so on.....

Of course they lack toes, they have hooves.

If I could predict what is going to be an instant hit, I'd go into the consulting business. There are people who would pay Big Money for that info. ? I've got one user style "disk" done, I did that in July and the beginning of August. I've got some good ideas for another. The done disk is rock, and the one I'll probably do next will be fusion jazz or smooth jazz. Leilani is working on two fake "disks" and we send them out to subcontractors to choose styles - if I did them myself, I'd pick my own styles because I know them best. I want the style chosen to be the best for the song, whether it is a PG Music or a Norton Music style. Once I get the basic framework done (MIDI files to import into the Band-in-a-Box StyleMaker app) I can start importing snippets at a time. But the recording the MIDI files for the styles I need takes time. I do the drums, bass, and comp instruments in real time. (I play sax, wind synth, flute, drums, guitar, bass, and keys in varying degrees of proficiency). Often that means practicing something I want to import until I get it under my fingers, then recording it. That's why I need huge blocks of time with no distractions. I think I'll start this on Monday, maybe do some organizing late Sunday. So if I'm AWOL a few days, I'll be back. I don't think I'll be missed much. The thing is after 27 style "disks" of up to 30 styles per disk, it gets harder and harder to do something different and worthy. I get inspirations from songs, auto-play keyboards, music books, or whatever. At this point, I'll record things, and throw away most and only keep what I think is either different or a strong enough variation to be worthy. After all, when done, they will have my name on them. I started doing this in 1992 selling them on floppy disks (5.25" and 3.5") and now they are instant download. Disks are history, but I still call them disks because I don't know what else to call them. But I guess that's OK, we still dial phones even though phones don't have dials, and make mixtapes even though cassettes died a long time ago. Notes

Beautiful Saturday, the storm turned away, the gig is still canceled and I don't get to work. Too bad, working is the most fun I can have with my clothes on. OK it's time to start writing aftermarket software for Band-in-a-Box. Once I get started, you probably won't hear from me for a few days as laying the groundwork is time intensive and needs a big chunk o time. But It's the slow season here until the rainy season is over late October and the northerners start coming back down, so it's a good use of my time. And I enjoy it as well (although it's not as much fun as gigging). Notes

"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