Seth Pelton, Rest In Peace.

One of my friends and a great guitar teacher at the Monteverdi Music School in Montpelier passed away unexpectedly yesterday. He was a voice of calm and reason in the midst of every storm, a great listener, a fabulous teacher, a steady hand on the Board of Trustees, and first rate guitar player. He had a large soul. Seth Pelton, rest in peace. Update: A memorial service for Seth is scheduled for Saturday, June 2nd at 2:00 to be held at the Unitarian Church in Waterbury, Vermont.

More Studio Stuff

Here's the studio finally up and running, shoehorned into a room that is crying for paint. We'll see.

And over here we have the the "Analog Suite":

Studiostuff...

I just picked up some neat microphones from Naiant Studios - little suckers built into Neutrik XLR cable ends. The top one is a tube mic, believe it or not. The lower mics are two matched pairs; omni and cardioid. Here are some pics....

The pic above is from overhead showing the element in each mic. The other end clips to a standard XLR plug.!For those who are not familiar with the size of an XLR cable end, here's a frame of reference. I'm holding the largest of the mics. Pretty cool for live use, or when recording chamber music and so forth. Should be some fun!

Double Trouble

Here's a pic of a couple of friends... The acoustic is a 1994 Taylor 815C that I fitted with a b-band dual condenser pickup system; one membrane under the saddle and another mic on an internal gooseneck. Both signals feed an onboard preamp that is carried on a stereo cable to an outboard signal blender. It's a bit of a cannon; sitka spruce tip, ebony bridge and fretboard, Indian rosewood sides and back with a little red purfling around the edges. The sound is very well balanced without the low end thunk of a dreadnaught; it's more like a large grand piano as guitars go; there are layers of overtones in the bass. The same qualities that make it superb in an unamplified setting also make it pretty twichy on stage with a loud band; it does a better job as a solo stage instrument or in an acoustic instrument setting. The other guitar is an odd one; built by or for Cort sometime in around 2000, it's an ES 335 kncokoff that I picked up at the www.guitarsam.com street level store in Montpelier Vt., about an hour or two after the former owner had traded it in. Nice humble little sleeper axe; it has a through the body neck construction and someone added a set of EMG pickups. My favorite detail, though, is a volume knob that goes to "11". Background is a pic of my studio at the time.

Pics from Jamfest # 6

The annual Homerecording.com / Recordingproject.com jamfests have been held in Connecticut for the last few years - a beautiful site with open, generous hosts, good food, good music - all that stuff I was writing about a few months ago. It's a place where the power of music from the heart is so real you can touch it. I'll be uploading a few random pics in the next day or two...

A Little Rusty Romance

With all that is running through our heads today, maybe a little hope would be appropriate. We can find hope with our families and our good friends. These people are my good friends and at times they feel like family. Here are a few pics from a recent Rusty gig at the Northfield Vt. Labor day celebrations.. Good stuff..

Sleep Deprivation

... makes a person really tired. Fun fact to know. Carry on.

A Different Look at the Uke...

I found this remarkable video on Google after a friend at Homerecording.com posted a link to it. The video is credited to Jake Shimbabukoro and lets us glimpse a bit of mastery in action. Enjoy!

Time to Rev Up the Jamfest Media Machine

Every year a bunch of us from all over the world (well, at least further than Claremont New Hampshire) congregate at an "undisclosed location" for a long weekend of music, music gear, more music, food, more food, and more food, and all the good stuff that goes with it - especially building what have become over the years extremely close friendships. All from people stumbling on a recording website or two. (Hint: - try checking the links on the right of the screen...) And Trust me - we'll be disclosing the location, but ya gotta keep checking back, just like at an AM radio station. Anyone like barbecued ribs? Jumbalaya? Did I mention we set up a 24 track recording studio outside an historic Inn in Connecticut? With live webcast all over the world, picked up by our friends in the Netherlands, Great Britain and Australia? Guess I forgot to mention the Cessna, too. And Steve Gibbs's custom made tube amps (of which I have the first one ever sold... sweet new old stock military tubes from the 1960s...) are starting to populate the place, based on the old Fender Champs; the perfect recording amp.

A Little More Time

The History of Time is a very interesting book indeed. As I get further into it I am beginning to appreciate the task the author has undertaken - presenting a rational, short introduction to an extremely complex topic. It's a bit slow going as it is packed with cross cultural references that need a little thinking to get through. I hadn't appreciated the extent to which the idea of time (and particularly that of the calendar) could be so malleable given political and religious powers of the day. We think of time as established; we look at our watches and that's that. How about thinking of time as having a liquid character - fitting whatever vessel we are using at the moment. Cool!

Does Time even have a history?

So I was reading this little volume I found in the Harvard COOP whilst in Cambridge a few days ago - "The History of Time - A Very Short Introduction," by Leofranc Holford-Strevens. It was one of those checkout impulse marketing things for college students. A bit like one of the horoscope booklets nestled underneath the National Enquirer in the supermarket checkout line, only for the headachey thinker set. I figure the title earned a bit of a chuckle, but hey - what do I know. I can't even spell irony. It's a cool little volume though. I was a little disappointed right from the outset - by that I mean by the fourth paragraph of the preface, when the author disclaims any attempt to discuss the idea that linear time developed as part of the Judaeo-Christian heritage, other than to dismiss it: Nor shall I consider whether time proceeds in a straight line or in cycles. Although it is not true that linear time was a Judaeo-Christian speciality, set against cyclical time symbolized in late Graeco-Roman paganism as a serpent devouring its tail, some philosophers did speak of time in cyclical terms". Well, Hell. I bought the blinking book because I was interested in this question. And the worm orouborus isn't anything very radical although it sure is interesting to think of the beginning and the end as meaning the same thing. Oh well; this should be an interesting read. I'll probably disagree with the guy about most everything but that's half the fun. I'll keep you posted. Treeline

Welcome to the Monkey House.

We'll see where this leads. Perhaps it will be a place to talk about guitars, or the frustrations of being a wannabe builder, or maybe just how really good a clear October night feels. We'll explore wonders of the modern world such as our addiction to stress, the concept of time as master (well, is it necessary or not?), and how we seem to make our own realities, or at least the tiresome ones. Maybe we can catch memories of some of those moments in our lives when we know there is a reason we were put here. Or else maybe it's just about pizza. Welcome and watch out for the cat.