Look out Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts.
Showing posts with label electronics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electronics. Show all posts
27 December 2011
An aside in the form of comic relief
Thanks to Christmas, I'm now the proud owner of one of these:
Look out Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts.
Look out Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts.
10 December 2011
There's not even a sliver of enlightenment to be had in this space tonight other than what exceedingly little it might be worth for you to know that I have a potentially much more enlightening piece to share which I cannot properly complete without ftp access to my personal website, which some combination of the technological variables at play here simply will not allow at the moment.
In response to my bewilderment at the irreverence for attacks and releases in much live electronic performance, a more well-informed student posited that this merely points to a difference in formality between this musical world and the predominantly acoustic one I'm more accustomed to. I'm skeptical, but not because I want to be: it certainly would be comforting to find technology more consistently functioning properly where the operators are skilled and conscientious artists rather than standard issue IT grunts, but I'm afraid the results are remarkably similar most of the time.
In response to my bewilderment at the irreverence for attacks and releases in much live electronic performance, a more well-informed student posited that this merely points to a difference in formality between this musical world and the predominantly acoustic one I'm more accustomed to. I'm skeptical, but not because I want to be: it certainly would be comforting to find technology more consistently functioning properly where the operators are skilled and conscientious artists rather than standard issue IT grunts, but I'm afraid the results are remarkably similar most of the time.
11 June 2011
T.K.O. in Gamers vs. Audiophiles
Yesterday, I discovered that the local Radio Shack (in the poor neighborhood) no longer stocks plain old headphones. Instead, they exclusively carry "headsets" with a single earpiece and a microphone for speaking. While the pictures on the packaging show smiling young women in phone banks, it can safely be inferred that the target market for these devices is, in fact, young male gamers, who apparently now outnumber headphone users to such an extent that the more specialized devices are no longer worth stocking.
A trip to a nearly equidistant Radio Shack (in the cake-eater neighborhood) was more successful as customers there have their choice of several sets of headphones ranging from $14.99 to $99.99 (as well as the same selection of headsets located in a completely different part of the store). Since I seem to destroy these things regardless of quality or price, I opted for the bottom-of-the-barrel set, which is something musicians aren't suppose to do (or at least not publicly admit to doing), but in my world, harmony and counterpoint are the cake, everything else is the icing, and Grainger and Ravel are booo-ring.
An aside: a techie acquaintance chides me for shopping at Radio Shack in the first place, a chain which he says "sold out" to lowest-common-denominator consumerism years ago (indeed, as I found, it's an ongoing process). I'm a musician, not an electrician; record stores, jazz clubs and bandmates are entities capable of selling out, but electronics stores are not. When I need a piece of gear, I need it fully assembled and functional, not in raw component form, and I'm pretty much at the mercy of other people/entities who can provide such services. For reasons I won't go into, I've boycotted Target and Best Buy for years, and I have to assume that Wal-Mart is a nonstarter for anyone reading this, as it is for me. Chances are better that I simply don't know about Radio Shack's dirty laundry than that they have none; anyone out there got the goods and want to force me to become a headphone-maker? (Yeah, I'm sure it's all slave labor anyway...any American-made headphones out there?)
A trip to a nearly equidistant Radio Shack (in the cake-eater neighborhood) was more successful as customers there have their choice of several sets of headphones ranging from $14.99 to $99.99 (as well as the same selection of headsets located in a completely different part of the store). Since I seem to destroy these things regardless of quality or price, I opted for the bottom-of-the-barrel set, which is something musicians aren't suppose to do (or at least not publicly admit to doing), but in my world, harmony and counterpoint are the cake, everything else is the icing, and Grainger and Ravel are booo-ring.
An aside: a techie acquaintance chides me for shopping at Radio Shack in the first place, a chain which he says "sold out" to lowest-common-denominator consumerism years ago (indeed, as I found, it's an ongoing process). I'm a musician, not an electrician; record stores, jazz clubs and bandmates are entities capable of selling out, but electronics stores are not. When I need a piece of gear, I need it fully assembled and functional, not in raw component form, and I'm pretty much at the mercy of other people/entities who can provide such services. For reasons I won't go into, I've boycotted Target and Best Buy for years, and I have to assume that Wal-Mart is a nonstarter for anyone reading this, as it is for me. Chances are better that I simply don't know about Radio Shack's dirty laundry than that they have none; anyone out there got the goods and want to force me to become a headphone-maker? (Yeah, I'm sure it's all slave labor anyway...any American-made headphones out there?)
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