seltzer recording engineer

offer up your goop, the beast demands goop

right, but in my experience classical recordings avoid close micing because it alters the sound (more low end for example), but perhaps classical recording has changed since i was last familiar

fun fact: when hendrix developed the fuzz pedal, wah pedal, and flanger as we know them today, his explicit goal was to have the level of timbre control over a guitar that a bowed instrument provides natively

the technical term is “tone color” or “timbre” (rhymes with amber in english). bowed instruments and reeds give the most control over timbre, which is why they sound the worst when played by beginners.

or it was treated as a question of capturing exactly what the conductor or lead violin hears, the conceit being that if there were any imperfection in the sound, they would have addressed it already, and all that was left was to capture their work

re: “classical micing techniques”, things may have changed in the last couple of decades, but when i was acquainted with classical composers and performers, “micing technique” was either done in an extreme way as a one shot experiment,

now that i actually listen, it’s less the vibrato or recording technique, and more the insistent precision (of the intonation, the rhythm). it’s like the way a posh british accent draws attention to every syllabic nuance, while a country drawl is exaggeratedly slurred and mumbled

also, classical recordings don’t use close micing unless it’s intended as an experimental effect, and the lower frequencies don’t carry as far from the violin as the high ones

the tuning is identical, but the instrument setup (bridge, strings in particular) are going to emphasize highs more for classical

what i don’t like about this framing is that our healthcare system is more expensive than universal healthcare would be

blind guess before listening: vibrato

… … - — - … …

the problem is that nobody has headphone jacks any more

if the game is noise war, i’m going with merzbow

now *this* is an idea a 12 year old would come up with

not the onion

i’ve owned a samsung with dex. dex works like a chromebook. for real general purpose usage i would want linux, but the linux-on-dex project is discontinued

no real file system, incompatible with a standard dev environment for programming

so is a digital watch. but nobody puts a ui on either that makes them useful for general purpose computing.

from what I remember of being a child, my behavior would have been much less "child like" if I wasn't so afraid of how adults responded when I didn't play the games they expected from me

or as a last resort say "this is no fun and I am no longer playing with you, goodbye" (a statement fully compatible with being a child, which offers escape from being a child if that's what I desire)

I prefer this description to the "I still have a child within me" description, because it offers more choices while still accurately describing the situation where I find myself thinking like a child. I can switch to orienting ("hey look at that dog") or pivot to another game if I find an opening

when a man talks forcefully and makes commands at me, he is introducing a game. I do not become a child, but I am left with the same set of choices (and guided by the same set of intuitions) as I had when I was a child. in fact this game is how we train children a particular way of being a child

interlocking is playing a game. much like chess, many of the games involve smaller and smaller sets of choices the longer the game goes. I think often when we feel like we have two selves, what we really have is two games we repeatedly play in predictable ways.

I have studied systems extensively but am not sure what people mean when they describe the self as a system. is it a group people sharing one body?

IMHO we can engage another human in two ways, to interlock or orient. orienting is saying "look at that" and you look at a thing together

also, another angle, speaking of not being human: hope does a weird little mushroom guy deal with pain? does he release spores, sink rhizomes into soil, fuck with the brain and/or liver of a would be predator?

he's a cop, vrunt

stories from others feeling the same pain can help, especially if shared in person. and remember that without that pain, at least in passing, you wouldn’t be human

thank you.

re: communication, that is a collective activity, and if it cannot be mustered, you are back to solo activities like manipulation or self sufficiency, or simply feeling pain until it goes away

the best alternative to manipulation is communication. communication about an emotion is not manipulative, even if raw expression of the emotion would be.

it can make me feel like a baby (needy, helpless) when i don’t receive the empathy or attention i need. babies are extremely manipulative, it’s their only survival skill (be cute, scream and be annoying).

the automobile problem: we could improve everyone’s quality of life and prevent millions of early deaths, but it would be a mild inconvenience