Saturday, June 30, 2007: Barbeque
This afternoon Sandy and I went over to her Sister Dang’s for the evening. Dang, Vet and Pet had a coco-walk style barbeque set up in the garden and were cooking when we got there. This involved a round metal grill that resembles a car hubcap set on top of charcoal filled container of that is like a metal bucket with a clay pot lining.
The Barbeque
The meat of choice is piled onto the central hub of the grill and vegetables and broth are cooked in the little moat that surrounds it. The meat of choice for the Thais is pork liver however with the exception haggis I am no fan of liver in any form so there was plenty of back bacon like pork for me.
The T Shirt Sandy bought for Pet
Sandy and Pet made a trip over to the restaurant beside the Khlong and got some shrimp and we spent the early evening sitting around eating and talking. Then without much warning we were hit with a torrential downpour. They sensed it coming first, suddenly everyone was scrambling to get everything under cover while I sat wondering why the panic. Pluk found it all quite amusing.
Vet scrambling to bring stuff in
Sandy and I stayed until the rain died down at 9:30 pm or so then we took a taxi back to the S O L.
Thursday, June 28, 2007: Wave Processor
I spent a few hours tonight messing with recording the Wave Processor. I don’t know if what I did will ever amount to more that some noise but I have to say that it made me wish I’d bought this thing a long time ago.
First of all I don’t believe Roland/Boss makes this box anymore. This is really a shame as it sounds amazing. In fact it sounds EXACTLY like the old Blue Box GR300 analog guitar synth. Not only does it sound like the GR300 it tracks like it. This means when I play a note, I hear the note with almost zero delay, something the GR30 is not exactly capable of.
So for tracking and sound they got this right. Where I think they failed though is with regards to what it could have been. It could have been the GR300 mini or some such thing. All it would need is a plug in for an expression pedal and the capability to have a tuned harmony. Then it would be perfect because the truth of the matter is my main sounds on the GR30 are approximations of GR300 sounds and some Mellotron sounds. If there were a way to tweak the cut off frequency and resonance of the Wave Processor by means of expression pedals, well I’d be perched in guitar synth heaven at the feet of the Holy Guitar Synthesizer Trinity of Fripp, Belew and Summers.
But there isn’t any harmonizer function and their isn’t any expression pedal plug in and as a wise man once said, one has to be happy to be happy with what one has to be happy with.
And I am very very happy with the WP-20G Wave Processor.
The Saw Lead and Square are both very GR300 sounding. If there were only a way to adjust the attack as well as the resonance and cut off frequency well…
The Ring Modulator isn’t as twisted as the home made “Murder Box” but I found if I ran it through distortion I was able to create some truly sick sounds. This makes me think that the Sherman Filter Bank would be a good place to deposit my next attempt at Ring Modulation with this.
Slow Gear is a slow attack function that automatically fades in the sound in the “Belew’s pinky on the volume knob” style. Useful as I can’t do this with the Traveler but it would be more useful if you could hitch it to the synth sounds..
The Sitar sound does not sound anything like a sitar. But if pull the “color” knob back to about 12 o’clock and throw in some echo you get the Cocteau Twins sound.
There’s also an Acoustic sound which I didn’t really mess with much since the Traveler is acoustic in sound on its own.
The built in effects are chorus by it self and delay by itself or a combination of the two. I really wish they’d skipped the delay and chorus and put in a harmonizer.
Have I mentioned that?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007: Black Swan
I went to The Black Swan next to Asok BTS Station this morning for breakfast. As much as I like the Dubliner’s food quite often the staff is less than accommodating even though I’ve been going there since 2001. They wound me up on Monday by not letting me sit up on the second floor even though the first was full and was full of smokers. They were willing to let everyone smoke, which is illegal in restaurants here, but they were unwilling to let me sit in a section I’ve sat in a thousand times at that time of the morning. So I ended up leaving .
Anyways I’ve never had any inclination to go into the Black Swan as from the outside it looks like a hole. Mikey always goes on about the place though so I though I’d give it a shot. I was surprised at how nice it was inside and the food was quite good. It was pricier than the Dubliner but it’s far more conveniently located in relations to Curahee. I have to make a big detour to get from there to the Dubliner and back again.
A view of the main floor and the staircase to the second floor
A view of the bar
Common Tones is preparing for “Phase II” which will be in July. It will not require a track a day thankfully. Details will be available when they are available.
Monday, June 25, 2007: Sven the Bottom Feeder
The sickness is officially over. I marked this wonderful development by getting up at 6:00 am today for a tea, some email checking and some “Eyes Wide Open” viewing before going to Currahee for the 5 km run. I had actually dreaded the run as I expected it to be more difficult after not running for several weeks. It was actually a good run though.
Afterwards I made an attempt at breakfast at the Dubliner but there was a multitude of smoking limeys in the place and since the staff didn’t seem interested in letting me sit on the second floor I gave up and went on my way.
Sandy went to the Weekend Market yesterday and came back with some new plants for the fish tank as well as a bottom feeder fish to hover up the fish poo. I’m not sure if Mr. Crab will like this much. He was spotted briefly after Sandy had rearranged the tank, taking a menacing pose with his crabby snapper claws at the ready as some of the fish passed over him.
The new bottom feeder fish, who I have named Sven, due to his Sven-like appearance, seems very happy in his new home. Only time will tell if he and Mr. Crab will come to blows over who owns the fish poo at the bottom of the tank.
Saturday, June 23, 2007: WP-20G
It was lovely out all morning then this afternoon the big rain came... Which I got caught in.
I stopped by the Music Solution this afternoon (during the rain) and bought the GK controlled Boss WP-20G Wave Processor. I've been looking at this thing for a couple of years but have resisted buying it until now. I had also been looking at an old Roland TR-707 drum machine at the used shop in Pantip but after an unsatisfactory examination of that I decided the Wave Processor would be a better buy. They no longer make this model and this one has sat in the shop for at least two years. So now it's mine. What can it do that the GR-30 can’t? Well it tracks better for one thing. It’s a little more GR-300ish in the nature of its sound although it doesn't do stacked harmonies like the 300.
This evening Sandy called me and asked me to meet up with her and her friend Anna over at the Siam Paragon. I got there and waited for them at Starbucks for quite some time. They got stuck in traffic. Once they finally arrived the three of us went over to the "Trendi" MK opposite the Paragon and had dinner. It was a much needed big feed. Sandy was in need of a new wallet so we went back to the Paragon afterwards and she and Anna went to go look at wallets while I went to the CD shop on the 4th floor. Sandy and I headed back to the SOL at around 9:30 pm.
Friday, June 22, 2007: Over?
I keep thinking I"m better then I am knocked down by the bug again. Today is the first time in two weeks that I have felt this normal. I am tempted to rush out into the sunlight and embrace the waking world again however I think I'll wait until tomorrow just to be sure I'm okay.
Sandy is better and has been for about a week. I really need to get out into the world though. I am getting cabin fever.
7:55 pm...
Sandy and I went to MBK for MK and to buy groceries. She went shoe shopping after.
I bought a Flanger. I couldn't help it. It was orange. It was also only 1100 Baht.
i swam for the first time in two weeks tonight. It was wonderful.
Saturday, June 16, 2007: Sickness and Blight
The sickness continues. I sleep a lot in this state. What else is there when your head feels like its full of that lava lamp goo? Sandy is a bit better though although not enough to venture out today.
Our fish seem to be suffering from some sort of fish blight that eats away at their tail fins. At first we thought that Mr. Crab was going on some sort of American Psycho killing spree with his little crabby claws. But it is some sort of fungus or something that rots their little tails off, We added various potions to try and counter this but we're not sure if they will survive or not.
Friday, June 15, 2007: Sick Again
Sandy and I have both had a sickness relapse and are once again under the weather. Now its back to more pills and soup. And DVDs.
We have watched several very good movies though. "Stranger Than Fiction" with Will Ferrell is brilliant. Not really a comedy, almost a tragity but in the end a great movie. We also watched "Click" which was very funny and enjoyable.
Tonight we watched Todd Phillips newest effort (he made "Road Trip", and "Old School" both of which I love) "School For Scoundrals" with that "Napoleon Dynamite" guy Joe Heder and Billy Bob Thorton. It is good to laugh.
Thursday, June 14, 2007: Camera Fixed
My camera died a while ago and it took a bit to find the time to take it in to the place in MBK where I got it in 2004 to have it fixed. I had looked at replacing it with a newer camera but the newer models seem to be increasingly bulky as they try and cram more functions in to them. I liked my little camera because it was small and thin enough to go into a pocket without much fuss. Then it begain to freak out and every photo seemed to be shot in Hendrix-Vision with strange lines and weird purplish colors.
Phnom Penh as seen by the failing camera
Anyways when I took it in the fellow recognized the problem as that model was prone to it. He informed me that it would take one to three weeks to fix and would cost between one to three thousand baht. The 'chip' would be replaced and there would be no service change. I now have it back and it works fine. The charge was only 100 baht. Much cheaper than having to replace it. Hopefully I can begin posting photos again here.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007: Sickly and Movies
Some sort of flu/cold business seems to have swept the Satellite of Love and both Sandy and I have been stricken down with it. There can be nothing more frustrating than being cooped up for days on end both pilled up and feeling like crap. Usually if one of us is out of sorts the other can be Nurse Stimpy. Not this time.
Being sick at home has provided ample time to watch various movies, some of which really sucked. The worst one we watched together was called "Quicksand" and was a late 90s drama set on what was supposed to be a Marine base in Arizona or some such place. Except the props all looked like they were borrowed from M.A.S.H with the "Marines" using gear and driving jeeps that were thirty years out of date. No one had a proper Marineish hair cut, the chief MP was about 70 pounds overweight and the whole thing was so badly scripted you had to wonder what they were thinking. It was like they'd taken a script rejected by the Rockford Files and done it.
Sandy watched this one called "Black Snake Moan" which I didn't watch. When I asked her how it was she said "Shit". This is something I’ve never heard her call a movie before. She was upset that the DVD cover had some reviewer claiming it was a "very funny movie" and it apparently wasn't funny at all.
Speaking of bad movies I watched (without Sandy) "Caligula". Oh, man. This movie was bad on so many levels it’s almost unbelievable. I do remember the big stink it caused when it was released back in 1979. I also remember how Malcolm McDowell's career died for quite some time afterwards. I know why now. Above anything else I felt I was watching career suicide, especially when he started doing the Caligula "dance" which features a great deal of prancing with one arm extended, giving the big thumbs up.
The violence was standard stuff by today’s standards, lots of head chopping and so forth although there were two parts that I certainly could have lived without seeing. The sex bits seemed sort of contrived wedged in as an after thought and they had that 1970s strangeness to them. It really did stink though and I'd say it ranks in the top 5 worst movies I've ever sat through. It wasn't just the penthouse factor or the violence that made it bad either. It was simply a badly made movie with those elements that seems to have been marketed at the time as some sort of high art/political statement. It still wasn't as bad as "Water World" though. Or "Domino".
Wednesday, June 6, 2007: Common Tones Withdrawls
Suddenly, instead of having to panic because its 10:00 pm and the piece I'm working on for Common Tones SUCKS... It's 7:00 pm and I have this giant hole in my evening where the Common Tones commitment used to be.
Not to say that I'm ready to leap back into spending such large chucks of my time trying to record and mix. Towards the end, as far as ideas went, I felt like I was trying to squeeze a bottle of wine out of a single grape. I need to recharge the batteries.
Listening back on the full 31 tracks is odd as many of them I only listened to in their final version once and quickly forgot about them as I went on to the next thing.
In any event I suspect there will be future Common Tones projects and I look forward to that as the exercise was good and I'm quite pleased with some of the results.
