I bought a new Sony.

They make great TV’s.

It’s gigantic and looks awesome.  My Angel of Mercy is maybe pining for the 75 inch.  My humility tells me it’s too much.  The Geek Squad guys say there’s no such thing as too big. We have two weeks to decide. The picture is stupid. It’s ridiculous.  It’s an exceptionally clean and clear window of prescription glass just behind the camera eye.

Sometimes, it’s almost too much.

Disconcerting.

Almost clinical.

I bought this Ferrari red turntable and it has me fired up. It needed a preamp, a high pass filter, and the coolest looking fire engine red with gold knobs tone control you’ve ever seen.

It came with a pretty good, blue Ortofon cartridge, that was a little dull and rumbled a lot. I fixed all that finally with the aforementioned gear and a really cool isolation platform made of thick plexiglass with shock absorber feet.

It’s not quite as good as my CD player in terms of slam and detail. I haven’t bought any of the records I made on vinyl, probably because it would depress me to learn how few are available.  But it’s friendly. So I’ve bought tons of other records. Good ones.  It sounds grandiose.  Quite lovely.  It’s goddamn romantic.

Fleetwood Mac And Led Zeppelin.

Flatt & Scruggs.

Sheezus.

Saturday Night Fever and Glen Campbell.

The art of sound is huge.

Critics and reviewers don’t seem to understand that audio engineers are fallible.  It’s rarely discussed in the geeky stereo magazines I launch a boot lace over.  I recorded and mixed and I was pretty fucking good but I was fallible. It’s actually weird that the engineer hardly ever gets taken to task in reviews of music or the equipment playing back the music the engineer made.

It’s weird that the engineer never gets busted.

I’ve got at least two records out there that I never want to be asked about.  The rest of them I fucking nailed.

To record well is to be a damn fine carpenter. To mix is to be Jesus and to be a mastering engineer is to assume the role of God. Or, to be fair, a warlock, then a demon and then Satan.

No engineer or producer ever made it to the the show by being faithful to any given instrument.  Every single one of us succeeded by exploiting and manipulating the sound of cool as we recognized it.  The best of us are goddamn geniuses.  There’s not an honest renderer among us. We deliberately distort them. All the instruments. We make them sound bigger or sinister or celestial.

We can’t help it.

We like the sound of cannons and missiles and jets and the rain right along with the anechoic of a windless snowfall and the cloying silence of heavy fog. Some of us don’t need to look up at fireworks because we’re there for the explosions.  The blue green sound of water and waves. The hot sound of summer asphalt and the ricochet and rumble of muscle car exhaust.  The greasy brown static electricity slosh of french fries and corn dogs in a deep fryer if you ever worked fast food.

The best of us spend our time making things smaller to fit the gigantic tracks we’ve constructed. We’d make it smell a certain way if we could.

I’m a twentieth century engineer in a twenty first century world.  I really like knobs, buttons and dials. Meters and faders and the smell of vacuum tubes.  I have a team of experts with me when I sit in front of a computer screen to do what I used to do behind a console all alone for hours.  I’ve always worked well with partners.

I do it on the side now.

I like it.

The most intrinsically rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I like it because I’ve never gotten worse at it.

Drinks for my friends.

 

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