I awoke from a dream in which none of the local newspapers had been delivered…
When we got to the shop, I opened the drop bin to find that the local papers had not been delivered.
Dreaming the future sucks all the surprise out of the day.
Category: Diary
If you are a regular reader of this blog you have probably realised that I have a bit of a weak spot for music technology. If you are like me and have limited musical talent and ability, I cannot emphasise enough how important it is for you to scout around and find new ways of making your playing appear more interesting. This can be done by a multitude of ways; some practise, some have lessons, but I just hide behind a vast array of electronics in a pathethic attempt to add colour to my guitar playing.
Where is this going? Well, I am always on the look-out for new gizmos to either bring a new sonic array to my arsenal of sounds or to inspire new tunes. Last year, it was the Boss SL-20 that really floated my boat. The idea behind that pedal was to bring the “slicer” effect to the guitar, an effect that has existed for a while in synthesisers and been used predominantly in the dance music genre. It takes the sound source and cuts it into pieces and broadcasts it rhythmically, slicing it up and broadcasting a pulsing cut-up sound. It’s hard to explain further than that really. Anyway, the SL-20 was interesting to me because it also brought a level of harmonic delay to the proceedings.
Harmonic delay is something that has interested me for a while. The concept is that you strike a note and the equipment is programmed to play the harmonic variations of that note. So you can instantly create a backing track for a song with just a handful of notes. This is what attracted me to the SL-20 and then the Digitech Timebender which was advertised earlier in the year at the 2009 Winter NAMM.
I’ve been waiting a couple of months for the units to hit the UK and was lucky to spot them arrived at Absolute Music Solutions last weekend, so I put my order in. Absolute Music Solutions are a preferred music sales team of mine, so I wholeheartedly recommend them. When they have the gear in stock, they have it in stock (unlike many other musical instrument webstores) and their delivery is lightning fast. Prices are good too!
Anyway, the Timebender is a standard twin pedal configuration that has been championed by Boss et al. The delay side of the pedal is impecable and if you are looking for the ultimate delay pedal, it certainly gives the Boss DD-20 a run for its money. Something I noticed about the DD-20 is that it does “colour” your sound and you seem to lose some dynamic range. You don’t have this with the Timebender and everything sounds sparky and clean.
There are ten delay varieties and a 20 second looper. The range of delays are great, but to my cloth-ears, I can’t always hear a difference, but you get 5 seconds max of stereo delay. The interesting part of the pedal is how you present the delay in the mix. You can have it bouncing all over the shop with a panner effect, or you can select one of the 9 auto-rhythms.
Where the pedal comes into its own is with the “Strum” function. This allows you to hold down the right pedal and pick a dampened note in the rhythm you want your delay to repeat. It is frightningly accurate and you can create some great varieties of delay repeat. In fact, if you think about it, I guess it is only limited by your imagination.
This Strum feature can be combined with the harmonic delay feature, which gives you 100 intelligent harmony settings to pay with. Using the MusIQ technology, you press down the right pedal again and play the fundamental note (or chord) to figure out what key you are playing in and the harmonics are generated from that. It is a great feature, but it is a bit picky. During my tests, it would throw out many wobbly notes and I am thinking that it isn’t particularly fond of the output from the Roland VG-99. Funnily enough, the Timebender harmonic function tracked more accurately with my bass and VB-99 setup. I have a feeling that the pedal likes really clean, direct output from the guitar for it to operate with optimum accuracy. I will try this later and report back here.
If you don’t have a “do-it-all” delay pedal and are looking to buy into that market, then the Timebender is a must-have. However, it is limited by its five second delay and the mono 20 second looper. The Boss DD-20 has a 20-second max delay and stereo looper and its really still king of the castle when it comes to delay. But if you are intrigued by the idea of harmonic delay and can find a use for it in your recording setup, then gives this pedal a spin.
The following two tracks are recorded with just a guitar and bass and the Timebender harmonic delay function.
No One Knows – Stereo Mix
The next track is called “March of the Numpties” and ended up sounding like something off Robert Fripp’s “League of Crafty Guitarists” albums. It is a single nylon guitar with the harmonic delay panned left and right. I quite like it because it sounds ridiculous!
March of the Numpties – Stereo Mix
A new toy is always a cause for inspiration. When I heard that Digitech were launching a delay pedal that featured the concept of harmonic delay, my attention was caught. The Timebender pedal is a great digital delay pedal. Not quite as good as the Boss DD-20 in terms of delay length, but it does have this harmonic delay feature, which creates harmonic variations of the notes you play. It can create a shimmering harmonic fountation of sound, though I have been using it as bedding for a track.
For example, the following song has me putting my six-string bass through the Timebender and panning the harmonic delay left and right so that it has a more guitar-like accompaniament. My energy levels are a little low at the moment and so recording completely drains me now. This saddens me greatly as I do feel the creative urge biting and not being able to express it.
But yes, the bass/Timebender provides the harmonic backing of this track and we have some nylon six-string guitar doing the melody. This is a minor piece in-so-much as I spent about 90 minutes recording and producing it. The electric guitar solo in the middle and end of the track is another of my attempts to produce a “non-solo” in so much as it is more a wash of sound embodying “feel” rather than providing any melodic narrative.
To put it frankly, I recorded it to cheer me up. That’s why it is called “Sunny Jim”.
Sunny Jim – Stereo Mix
Direct download: CLICK HERE
Sunny Jim – Surround Sound Mix
Direct download: CLICK HERE
There are numerous jokes and sayings to illustrate the general dopiness of an individual. There’s “if he’s got a brain cell it would die of lonliness” or “if brains were dynamite he wouldn’t have enough to blow his hat off”, etc. Well while our journey is coming to a slow and juddering end with regards to the repair work on the shop, you never know from which crease or crevice the next fly in the ointment is going to appear. Today, the process was derailed by a level of dopiness that bordered on spectacular.
Yesterday, the builders warned that there would be a lot of work with regards to their next bit of work. OK – but they have taken down the partition wall that shielded our shop from the building work. You shrug and assume that they know what they are doing.
This morning we were greeted with a thick layer of grimy dust that impermeated every nook and cranny of the shop. We were back to square one and it was if the car had smashed into the shop all over again, but instead of red brick dust, this was a creamy limey kind of persistant crap, the likes of which I had never seen before.
The dust got into your lungs and rattled in your throat and we quickly opened the doors to alleviate the condition. Lugging bundles of newspapers about was a welcome distraction from the overall feeling of murderous rage I felt towards the builders. No effort had been made to contain the dust and everything was ruined…again. So for the second time, we would have to clean up.
So we made up the newspaper rounds, met the boys at the door and headed off home. An email was sent off to the project co-ordinator and he paid a visit to see the extent of the damage. Cleaners would be dispatched. Life would go on again.
It still doesn’t make me feel any better or get rid of the taste in my mouth and the grumbling ache in my lungs.
You’ve probably wondered what your childhood peers have been upto after school? Have they won on the lottery, developed a cure for cancer, or been up to more salubrious shenanigans? Well I know that one peer is the musical director of the Holyland Experience in the good ol’ USA, which came as a surprise as I didn’t realise that he was particularly inclined to all that religious mumbo-jumbo. But whatever gets you through the night, etc…
Well today I had another update from my past thanks to the reams of newsprint dedicated to a fraud trial going on in that there London today. I knew both of the lads involved from school, though I knew one better than the other, and if someone had said to me at sixteen, “You know so-and-so and whathisface…? They are going to be involved in a £3 million fraud trial by the time they are 38…”, I would have guffawed like a drooling idiot.
Anyway, here are the links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5171213/Buckingham-Palace-policeman-threatened-to-kill-best-friend-over-3m-scam.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2380620.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/17/buckingham-palace-fraud
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/royalwatch/news/article_1471383.php/Royal_protection_officer_ran_con
The best line I’ve drawn from these reports is that the fraudster used the excuse that “a spider in his eye had caused an infection” to stall non-payment of debt. I must remember to use that the next time my creditors are after me. (That last line was a cynical attempt at humour – I pay all my debts on time, I might add!)
This story certainly beats that glorious Olympic morning when this guy got his chance at winning gold plucked from his hands after testing positive for drugs. We didn’t get on too well at school, so it really did seem as if god pays debts without money afterall…
Ain’t life strange and wonderful at the same time?
EDIT:
Now the fraud has gone up to £3m…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/5172567/Royal-protection-officer-threatened-to-kill-best-friend-for-exposing-3m-scam.html
It seems that a subsidiary role of a shopkeeper is to be ripped off by his staff and/or customers (tick as applicable). Sometimes I feel that they think that we are either too stupid or busy not to realise that they are ripping us off. One does soon realise that this type of crime is more about the power to decieve than to make money, and that the money is a secondary outcome, the con is king. Take for example one Sunday news delivery boy who thought it would be a great wheeze to claim his pay from my wife and then wait until my mother took over the till and then claim his pay AGAIN. Of course, no-one knew this was happening for a while until I sat down and did the accounts and looked at the receipts. Then I noticed there were two lots of payout receipts for the same boy. Did he not realise he was going to get caught? Did he think that we didn’t make records of our payouts? Did he think we were that naive and daft? Obviously so…
So I waited until one Sunday and he duly came in and claimed his pay from my wife. Then I jumped on the till and lo-and-behold he returned again for another payout. I duly pulled him up when I showed him the previous payout receipt and I watched in joy when he ran with speed from the shop. He was so fast I didn’t even have time to fire him.
Anyway, this kid comes back about an hour later and I tell him not to come back into the shop until he’s paid me the money he owes me for the weeks he has claimed two lots of pay. The kid protests: “How can I do that? You’ve fired me! I’ve got no money now.” Great logic, kiddo, you should have thought of that before you decided to steal wholesale from me.
That happened at the beginning of our term at the shop when everyone thought we were too green and believed we could be exploited at every angle. During our first week of trading we had at least four customer claim that they’d “paid with a twenty”. The old routine to claim extra change. Of course, we took their numbers and checked the till at the end of the day and we were never in receipt of their extra change. So fuck off, con man.
Today saw the culmination of a peculiar series of deceptions. One mother of a Sunday deliverer kept claiming that they were missing a particular paper from their round. Of course, you give them the benefit of the doubt the first couple of times and then the routine because that, a routine. So we began double-checking the round in question and today the routine reared its head and my mother said; “No, you can’t have an extra paper because I double-checked the round myself.” So I make up the rounds and my mother and wife have been double-checking. It is a system that works and I have an accuracy rate of 99.9%!
Anyway, this woman takes the round out to their waiting car every week and that’s where the newspaper mysteriously disappears. My mother calls me at home to tell me that this woman is cutting up rough and that she wants to talk to me. Here’s a warning, folks. Never demand to talk to me because I am the line in the sand. Don’t think you can appeal to my better nature because I haven’t got one. This is business and I am a reasonable man, but when I know someone is screwing me for whatever reason my patience becomes wafer thin.
We have a short conversation in which the woman can’t understand why the paper is missing and the inference is that I’ve made a mistake. I point it out that she is inferring that I am lying and I am not pleased. I tell her that the paper was there. Again, she protests her innocence and I really don’t like her brusque, ignorant Norfolk tones. They grate against my sensibilities. The conversation ends thus:
“All I know is that you are losing me money, so I guess we’ll have to call it quits.”
And with that our working relationship is over. I think Donald Trump and Alan Sugar would be proud of me.
![lenny-bennett-983432651[1].jpg](http://www.darrenlock.com/mt/archives/2009/04/10/lenny-bennett-983432651%5B1%5D.jpg)
Another staple of late 70s/early 80s weekend television has bought the farm. Sadly, Lennie Bennett has gone to the great quiz show in the sky. A part of me would like to think that he’s playing an eternal round of golf with Tarby and Brucie…wait a minute, those guys are still alive!