A few of my friends play in a recreational soccer league. They actually started the league, which is pretty impressive. They play their games about half mile from my apartment at McCarren Park, so I find myself watching them play pretty often. I enjoy watching their games almost as much as I do professional sports. I’m not kidding! I’ve watched games in pouring rain and in a crazy blizzard. I didn’t expect to have as much fun at their games as I do. Why is watching my friends play recreational soccer so enjoyable? I’m not totally sure. Maybe it’s because I completely relish having the chance to support and encourage my friends.

We as a culture have sacrificed a lot to the cult of celebrity worship and our obsession with professionalism. There was a time when the prettiest girl in your town was the prettiest girl in the world. Those days are long gone. Now, I’m not saying that we have to lock Rihanna in a dungeon and never speak her name, but a little bit more locally focused love would probably be good for our collective psyches.

I’d like more of the admiration and personal investment that I am able to offer to the world to be directed at the people who will offer those same things back to me and not just the .0000001% of the population that society deems worthy of our attention and affection. That was what the “Wall of Shame” was about.

It’s also pretty close to my house and the games are on Saturday during the day, so it’s not like I’m fording rivers, rappelling over cliffs, or turning down jam session invitations from Nile Rogers.

Their team is called Fooligans FC. Here’s a little tune I wrote as a tribute to them this week. Hope you enjoy it.

Here We Go Fooligans!

Started in two thousand and seven
when chris brown had a dream
Cam picked out a name for us
and soon we had a team

But things weren’t being run well
there was bullshit and intrigue
eventually Chris decided
to start up his own league

    Here we go Fooligans,
    here we go-o

    Ready to give our best
    through rain or snow

    Here we go Fooligans
    here we go-o

    Here we go Fooligans
    here we go!

Now every Saturday we show up
at McCarren Park again
with our minds focused on victory
we go to battle with our friends

        Even if you beat us on the pitch
        you won’t outdrink us at the bar
        we may never be famous
        but we’re all super stars

        No other team can beat us
        they can’t beat our unity
        because we’re not just a team
        we’re a family

    Chorus

[Download MP3]

2010 has been a pretty slow year for me in terms of writing songs. It seemed like I popped out a new one every two or three weeks last year. One of the big things is that I just haven’t been practicing guitar as often as I used to.

At one point, I decided to try writing on keyboard instead to give myself a different perspective. It hasn’t really worked, but I did write one tune on keys in August called “Don’t Grow Out Of It”. It’s got a little modulation in the bridge, which I thought was kind of cool.

Enjoy!

[Download MP3]

Sometime I post things here just so they are web search accessible. This is one of those times!

I’ve run into situations where the WAV files I export from Sonar have very low volume on several occasions. I’ve finished my new track, I’ve got everything EQed and compressed to just the right level and my track is peaking at exactly the volume I want. I’m excited to share the new song with the world (i.e. Sarah) and then the exported WAV file is as quiet as a field mouse.

Each time, I dutifully check my meters to confirm that the volume is peaking at a good level during playback of the song. Despite that, the exported wav files are much lower in volume than what I’m seeing on the master track’s meter during playback. I tear my hair out checking and double checking settings, adding and removing plugins, kvelling and kvetching.

Then I turn to the Cakewalk Forums looking for a solution. There are several threads there on the subject, but none of them offer anything that helps. People explain the basics of the metering system, the principals of compressing the master bus and other features of the DAW, but it’s always the things that I’m already doing correctly.

…and then I remember to check the Mains. Ugh! For some reason I don’t understand. the volume level of the main outputs is used to set the volume level for exports. It doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s how it works. Why would I want my exported file’s volume to be lower, just because I want to output sent to my soundcard to be lower? I’m also not really sure why the default level isn’t unity, but I’m sure there’s a good reason. Of course, the mains aren’t visible in the Console view by default, so it’s easy to overlook this when your exports are coming out with low volume.

Luckily, it’s a two second fix once you’re aware of the problem.

First, click the button to show the mains:

Then, make sure that the main output’s level is set to unity:

Voila! Normal export levels. Hopefully I can remember this next time and save my self some wasted troubleshooting time.

Hey, it’s the first Pickabar tune of 2010! I was starting to get a little nervous, because I usually have a new song in the oven every month. Four months without writing a single tune was a little bit nerve wracking. Every time I finish a song a part of me worries that it might not happen ever again. Thankfully, the voice was proven wrong, at least for one more tune.

When I look out at our culture, I see a pervasive mood of fear. These are tough economic times. Our industrial advances have started to impact the world around us. The populace seems politically polarized to an extent that I can’t remember experiencing in my earlier life. We have some real challenges ahead of us and it makes sense to take that seriously.

It’s natural that people get more fearful as they get older. How will the incredible influence of the baby boomers effect the future as they reach their golden years? Will their completely natural emotional changes distort the cultural environment?

At one point, the news was a public service provided by broadcasters who had no illusions about profitability. Corporate takeovers have replaced that sense of service with the single minded focus on profit and growth at all costs that has begun to completely dominate industry in our country. The news media is now a gaping maw that nourishes itself on our attention. In a world overflowing with information and access, they have no choice but to catch our eyes in whatever way they possibly can. Appealing to the primal part of our brains that is frightened by the thought of large predators is an effective technique for attracting the attention that they need, but at what cost?

Of course, the news media isn’t alone in their hunger for our attention. Advertising has been refined and massaged into a tool to create demand for products we often don’t need by convincing us that without them our lives will be hollow and meaningless. They bombard us with their ads, drilling them into our subconscious by repetition that makes it unnecessary for you to even like or necessarily pay attention for their mission to be accomplished.

If you don’t douse your child in anti-bacterial soap every five minutes they will die! Don’t drink from water fountains, buy our expensive bottled water! No one will ever love you if you don’t have the latest fashions and make-up!

Our schools have lost track of their true mission, to create citizens with the critical thinking skills necessary to be an effective citizen and a capable contributing member of society. Instead, we’ve reach a place where our schools are disproportionally focused on getting students to pass tests and to parrot back facts without any thoughts of  challenging what’s written down on the paper provided. We are raising generations of people who don’t really know how to think critically, but who are also provided with the tools to easily access information of all levels of validity. Our focus on making kids feel good about themselves has created people with low standards and simultaneously high opinions of themselves. Of course they are afraid if the box tells them to be!

Fear is a tool. We can use it as a stick to motivate us to do the tough work ahead of us or as an impediment for accomplishing anything. Like fire, fear can comfort and empower us or it can terrify and destroy us. I don’t have many answers to offer, but I will say that I choose not to be afraid.

…as much as I can.

The TV that you watch
is designed to make you dumb and scared,
fake stories for fake people
fake heads covered with fake hair

Big mouths talk
but there’s no truth in what they say
it’s about who yells the loudest
why let facts get in the way?

  why are we so afraid?
  it’s because they want us to be
  why are we so afraid?
  it’s because they want us to be
   

    I won’t play their game
    I’ll think with my own brain
    because I’m not afraid

The ads that we see
are designed to cause us misery
they fill our heads with fear
then tell us the answer is shopping sprees

We’re brain washed
we’re falling for their credit traps
we’re trading away our futures
for piles of cheap plastic crap

    Chorus

The schools we attend
leave students mentally unprepared
bombarded with information
real wisdom is never shared

Passing tests
is what it’s all become about
learning to think for yourself
that’s what seems to lose out

[Download MP3]

I know what you’re thinking, isn’t there already a Pickabar song about Conquering Fear? Why, yes there is entirely fictional pickabar reader. Consider this a companion piece.

…except maybe for playing music live in the outdoors on a sunny day.

I have a hard time with animate objects, so I shower my love on things that give me pleasure without asking for anything in return. Quite often those things have to do with producing or re-producing sound.

My grandmother Nancy always spoiled me, even when some of those expenditures weren’t the most financially prudent. I don’t remember when or where we bought these speakers, but I do know that from the day I got them they have been a pair of loyal friends.

Then in May I started to hear a buzzing sound from one of the speakers. At first the sound was slight and Sarah thought I was obsessing over nothing. Little by little the sound got worse. When I removed the screen from the speakers, several bits of orange foam dropped to the floor. After years of pumping out the low end, the foam around the speaker had finally given out. I jury rigged a temporary solution with tape and started looking on the internet for repair options. A couple of weeks later the foam around the woofer on the other speaker started to crack as well.

At that point I switched to using a pair of Onkyo speakers that I’ve had in a closet collecting dust. They were smaller, at least ten years younger and sadly they did not rock. There wasn’t a huge difference when watching movies or television, but the ripping sound of electric guitar + Marshall amp just wasn’t the same. My reggae 45s just didn’t have the same oomph to the stomach even when playing at the same levels. Maybe this is all in my head, I’ve never done any blind A/B testing to scientifically prove that there is any difference in the sound.

I spent a few hours surfing the web in consideration of a new speaker purchase. I even got excited about the thought of saving space with a new set of space age micro speakers built using the latest carbon fibers and psychoacoustical advances. Then I remembered my old friends. The thing is, like those old speakers, I am big in a small world, brown and old fashioned. I had to stick by the old timers.

I emailed the kind folks at Cerwin-Vega and received a prompt reply suggesting that I contact a company to have the speakers re-foamed. It took some digging, but I was eventually able to find a repair shop in Bensonhurst that would be able to perform the work. I hopped on the train and headed out to Heavy Electronics and Security. I took two magazines for the long ride.

The very friendly folks at Heavy made me feel a lot better about spending a lot of money to fix speakers that most people would have just replaced. The husband showed me the difference in construction between the speakers in my CVs and the speakers in even high end new models. The feeling of solid heft was missing from the newer speakers, which felt like they could be twisted by a man with strong enough hands. The older speakers were built like tanks. Then he showed me the molding on some new reasonably priced speakers. The casting was sloppy and asymmetrical and it was clear that the newer speakers were assembled by people for whom quality wasn’t a major focus. I’m not sure that the poor appearance makes any difference in sound, but it definitely tells you something about how the creators felt about the items they were creating. I wouldn’t be surprised if other shortcuts are being taken.

They also convinced me to go full bore and get the speakers completely reconed instead of just having new foam added to the old speakers. The people at the company seemed genuinely interested in what they do and sincerely motivated by the desire to get my babies back to their fighting shape, so I trusted them. I will admit gasping just a bit as the owner pulled out a razor blade and sliced off the old speaker cones.

  A few weeks later, I had two new woofers ready to woof. I took them home, cradling the bag with the two speakers on the train and eagerly awaiting the first tune back with my old buddies. I slipped the newly coned guys back into place and dropped the needle on Dice The Boss “Brixton Cat”. Then I danced around my living room in my stocking feet with an ear to ear grin on my face. Things were right in the world once again for the low cost of two hundred dollars.

We’re living in the disposable age. Things are sold cheaply because they are made cheaply and without any focus on long term quality. When things break we don’t fix them, we throw them into a magical box that transports them to the land of “someone else’s problem” and we whip out our credit cards to spend money on the newer version with ten new features we’ll never use.

Just try getting things repaired now-a-days! The repair shop seems to be going the way of the dodo. There was a time, though, when spending your hard earned money on something assured that you were going to receive an item that would stand the test of time. Even when things went wrong, a quick visit to a skilled repairman would get things right back on track.

Times change, I guess, but I don’t have to like it. For one day at least I feel like I pushed back against the tide.