Well I put the Xmas decorations up yesterday. Don’t worry, I’m not one of those chav households that has an illuminated inflatable Homer Simpson dressed as Santa in his front garden. At Chez Lock, we tend have a more humble approach to Xmas decorations, pitching our tent in the “Hey, look it’s the 1970s again” style of festive attire. We have an old synthetic tree from Woolworths which must be about nine years old now, some tinsel and some fairy lights around the front window that just screams 70s chic.
You can tell it’s Xmas because business start to close and people are laid off. Reading that job cuts are being made by Wicked Witch Sly Bailey at the Daily MIrror, it reminds me that I’ve still never forgiven her for indirectly making me redundant at Xmas 2001 from IPC. The ITV news channel is closing down and newly redundant are coming to a job centre near you. Why do they always choose Xmas, I do not know. Something to do with the financial year coming to an end, I heard, but there’s nothing more miserable than waking up on Xmas Day redundant. I spent January and February 2002 very sick with worry and it got to a point that I didn’t sleep for a week, such was the level of my insomnia through sheer panic. It’s something I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from. You put your faith into a company and you trust them and then one day everything changes without warning, especially when the head of the department says to you directly: “There will be no redundancies in this department”. Oh well, that’s life for you, ain’t it? Life’s shit and then you die. Any joy you find should be treasured because its worth more than a diamond encrusted platinum brick.
Well I read yesterday that one publisher I work for has ceased trading shares and has a debt of £25 million and is worth just £2 million. I submitted an invoice to them for five months work a while back and their system means that I don’t get paid for three months – such is the life of a freelancer. Anyway, I am sitting here biting my fingers raw worrying that they are going to announce liquidation before Xmas and I’m going to be up the creek with out the paddly thing. There’s no recourse for freelancers when companies go bust – you just have to write off the debt.
Fingers crossed, eh?
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Been noodling around with the guitar the last couple of evenings. Not really found much of interest. There’s a loud idea and a quiet idea: basically the same thing but played in two different styles, but I’m not in love with it at the moment. I recorded this little bit of filler for the new piece to act as a bridge between two bits of music, but even though I spen the time editing all together, I wasn’t that impressed. So have Slow Dive:
https://www.darrenlock.com/media/slow_dive.mp3
In the post: an Xbox 360 core system – man, I feel really, really, really guilty. Good job I’m sending that MultiMix16 back for a refund otherwise the MIssus will string me up with my own knackers.
When it comes to making music, I’m always on the lookout for new gear that will make my life easier. When I saw the Alesis MultiMix16 I thought I’d found something special. It’s a 16 input mixer, with an inbuilt FX processor and the ability to connect to your PC via Firewire and act as a 16-input audio card. Looking at the spec, I thought I would be able to replace four pieces of equipment (my current mixer/external effects/compressor/sound interface) with one.
However, my experience of the Alesis equipment left a lot to be desired. Opening the box, I was very impressed with the general construction of the mixer. It has a metal chassis and good solid knobs, though the channel sliders were a bit plasticky. Operation seemed simple, install the drivers, connect the mixer and then connect your music equipment to the mixer. Unfortunately, my PC didn’t want to recognise the equipment on the first pass. So I visited the Alesis website and downloaded/installed the latest drivers, as you do.
On the second attempt, with the new drivers, my PC recognised the mixer and I thought I was in business. Unforunately, I had major issues when getting it to work with recording software SONAR with a number of the inputs failing to be recognised in the standard ASIO mode. Switching to WDM mode rendered the interface useless with it juddering and stuttering and crapping out at every opportunity.
But this time I was getting a little frustrated and this frustration was compounded by the fact that the signal output from the PC was significantly louder than the input from my equipment. Even though I tried to get a clean, loud signal, my eardrums were nearly burst by the output from the PC. No matter what I did, I could not get a decent balance between the input and output signals.
I tried using the mixer with the supplied Cubase software, but I am not a big fan of that application for audio recording. Anyway, the mixer worked better with Cubase and to me it seemed as if the mixer had been designed with this audio software in mind and that there was no way I was going to get any satisifaction with SONAR, my software of choice.
This was not good. It suddenly got a lot worse when I selected a stereo pan delay on my FX processor. This makes the guitar signal bounce from ear to ear, but in this case I noticed that the signal seemed really flat. At first I thought that my ears were blocked and then it dawned on me that the output from the headphone socket was coming back in mono, yet it was a stereo signal when played back a recording from the PC. What this means is that you could play a lovely stereo piano sample and live it would sound mono, yet when you played back the recording it would be stereo as intended. It was at that moment that I realised I needed to get a refund immediately.
I double-checked with The Missus that my ears weren’t on the blink and she agreed that there was something fundamentally flawed with this mixer. We immediately packaged the item up and got it ready for return. On paper, this seems like an ideal solution for anyone with a small studio in need of major space saving, but it has to be the singularly worst piece of audio equipment I’ve ever used and it’s a crying shame because if the MultiMix16 had worked as intended it would be a first-class piece of kit. My recommendation to anyone thinking of buying this item is not to until Alesis fix all the problems.
RRP: £385
Website: www.alesis.com
Seeing as pantomime season is well and truly upon us, let’s get into the spirit of things:
Taken from: http://www.richardpryor.com/
All together now:
“Oh yes you are!”
My life is pretty mundane. However, this week the saga of the envelopes has been thoroughly gripping. After mistakenly receiving an office whiteboard, my envelopes duly arrived yesterday. It was a box of H5 sized envelopes. Great, I think. I open the box, take out a new envelope and try it for size. Yes, yes, yes. The folders fit nicely inside the envelope. Well done, Darren, for making another excellent choice.
At about 18.30 (or half past six) I got a phonecall. It went something like this:
John the Delivery Man: Hello. It’s John the delivery man.
Me: Hello
JTDM: I made a mistake with your order.
Me: I know. I received a whiteboard.
JTDM: Did you?
Me: Yes. The other day. You delivered a whiteboard instead of some envelopes. But the people at the office depot said I could keep the whiteboard for my troubles.
JTDM: Oh. Anyway, those envelopes for you. They are the wrong ones. Could you check the label. They are addressed for Something Something Lane.
Me: OK. I’ll check
I run off downstairs to the cupboard where I keep my stationary in the vast Complex Lock HQ and check the address. Indeed it is address to Something Something Lane rather than Darren Lock Mega Industries Incorporated.
Me: Yes. The address is wrong. I opened the box but didn’t use any envelopes. I’ll seal it up again.
JTDM: OK. I’ll be over tomorrow to collect them and swap them with your box.
So I am a little put out, but it’s not the end of the world. So today, after coming back from lunchtime walk with Alex the Wonderdog and the Missus, I see a familiar white van zooming off into the distance. Bugger, I think. I’ve missed the delivery driver, but when I get to the doorstep I see a box of envelopes.
Further investigation reveals that these are my envelopes. Same size, same quantity, the only difference is that the wrong envelopes are white and the right envelopes are buff. (Are you following this?) So anyway, now I have 100 fricking H5 sized envelopes when I only wanted a dozen or so in the first place and a whiteboard that I didn’t need at all. Just think, at the beginning of the week I had a deficit of H5 envelopes and whiteboards and now I have a surplus.
Last night: The Missus went out for some Xmas boozefest. Despite my warnings, she fell asleep on the train and woke up at Epping, leaving myself and Alex the Wonderdog shivering outside Debden station for half an hour. Brrr…
Walked the old lush home and put her to bed, then the evening was topped off by me emptying the sick bucket. Oh well, she’s been there for me during my glory years.
So I order some envelopes from my usual office supply vendor. Imagine my surprise when a box of padded envelopes do not arrive, but a whiteboard for office presentations turns up instead. So I duly inform them of the error and they tell me I can keep the whiteboard (whoo-hooo!) and a new box of envelopes will be dispatched. Now I have no need for a whiteboard, I scribble all my insane plans for world domination on a standard post-it note usually, so I am wondering what I can do with this large item. Anyone want a free whiteboard? I’m hoping that my faithful office supply company messes up and mistakenly delivers an Xbox 360 instead…but somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?
Then I decide that I need to restock on some guitar supplies. I’ve just received my $45 from CDBABY for all the songs I’ve sold electronically and I’m feeling kinda flush. So I order some bass strings, some guitar strings, some polish for my new guitar, boring guitar stuff. I hit the payment button and the website bums out. I try two more times and nothing – no payment processing. Then I receive an email today telling me that it was my fault and that my credit card details were wrong – no, no, no…the error message said something about “failure to connect to the database” not “Darren bleeped up”. I replied I told them about their glitch. Then this afternoon I had some sales spod from that shop trying to contact me on the phone. The hard sell, eh?
Internet shopping isn’t supposed to be like this, is it?
In the post: Christmas cards. Not really for me, but I married the popular one, so I get to share the cards. Whoopsie-fricking-doodle.
Worked on “No Concessions” (working title) last night and used a load of EQ on the drum pattern to turn it into a bass drum only track in order to let the psuedo-acoustic guitars breathe. It’ll do. Textures II is now in the region of 17 minutes long with a further possible seven minutes committed to disk in various formats. Not really sure if this is working out too well. Hmmmm…I think that I am thinking to much and not doing nearly enough. C’mon where’s that gut instinct you bleat on about, you imbecile.
Today, had an unpleasant accident. Not revealing further details because:
1) It was unpleasant
2) It was an accident
Just making a note of it here for future reference, so I can say: “It was on 7 December 2005 that I had that unpleasant accident”.
Stupid boy! I forgot to include the demo I had recorded last night.
This marks the introduciton of the Godin XTSA guitar into my permanent setup. It is my first “solo” recorded with that guitar. Well I like it and I don’t care if no-one else does. 🙂