eliya

[eliya]

Going to buy notebooks! brb!

[eliya]

First Year of School Starts Wednesday

I have mixed feelings of excitement and anxiousness.

I'm starting school on Wednesday, and I don't know what to expect. I'm willing to work hard, as hard as I can. I'm willing to put so much effort into it, but I feel that there are a few things that can stop me.

This university isn't really the best university out there. It has some good colleges, but I'm not sure if their school of Physics is that good. I'm afraid that things won't be explained to me well, and that I won't be able to understand them on my own. I'm afraid that I'll get an F on my papers for not being able to cite well and do research well. I didn't take English 102 yet, and I'm afraid it'll hurt me. I don't know who to ask about it really and I'm kind of worried. I don't want to get an F because I accidentally plagiarized.

[eliya]

Good day! High fives all around!

[eliya]

This might be obvious, but I don't think so. Everyone I know has trouble with the first pancake in the batch. It's always too oily, too soft, and its shape is not a perfect circle. Here's the solution to that: 1. Pour half of a small spoon of olive oil to the pan. 2. Start heating the oil (set the knob to the same level you'd use for when you pour the batter in). 3. Start making the batter. This is where it's at. Start making the batter after you start heating the oil. 4. Once the batter is ready, pour the oil to the sink. 5. Pour batter to the pan.

It works every time for me.

[eliya]

I always had this in the back of my head. It's interesting.

[eliya]

With Pictures!

I miss recording. I miss having a drumset at home. I also miss having a huge bass rig that can rattle the whole house. I miss all these things. It's been 4 months now since I played drums or bass through a real bass amp. I miss being able to play bass, guitar, or drums when I have the itch for it. To be honest, I wasn't even playing every day before I moved, and when I did play it was sometimes less than 20 minutes. I actually barely even wrote any "songs", and I didn't even record that much, but I miss playing music or at least tinkering with it. Being able to just sit behind the drums and play them as hard as I can and listen to how I tuned them so well so they don't sound like shit. Damn, I miss that. I miss going through million ways of tuning my snare until it sounded good. I miss changing heads and trying new heads until I can make that snare sound good. I even miss changing the snares and that was the worst thing ever. It's a hell to tighten them and get them centered so the don't buzz, and then finding the sweet spot where the snare doesn't choke but also isn't too loss.

I miss having a 90 Watts Traynor YBA-1A turned up to four-five (just so it's loud and dirty enough) and hitting the E string on my bass. That open, low E would rattle the place and the floor above the basement. It sounded so good. The amp was overdriven just the right amount, and it sounded perfect. The tension of the strings on my bass, and the action of them from the finger board was just right too. Hitting the low E string would create a small vortex of sound that blew my mind every time. I think that this is my favorite note. I always hated it when engineers are being asked what's their favorite note or frequency, and I'd never answer this question if I were being asked it, but that low E is doing it for me.

I miss recording just for the sake of recording, just to see how the drums sound when they're recorded and how they mash up with the bass. I also miss taking notes on how everything is mic-ed and trying to make it all sound good in that concrete basement that had minimal acoustic treatment. I even miss my abstinence from using the EQ on my console. Even though its preamps kind of sucked, its EQ could actually improve the way things sounded. Every time the snare was too thin, I'd just push some mid lows with the EQ and it sounded perfect, but I never did that. I always aspired to get that whoomf (or woof, or is it a twack? no, twack is for thin snare sounds, right?) out of the snare naturally. Of course, I also miss recording bass, and I actually got pretty good at that. Well, it's not that hard to record bass, but I was so proud that it sounded just the way I wanted to. I miss trying to record guitars. I sucked at recording guitars, and I've never gotten to make them sound good on a recording. I wish I could still practice on that. However, I did make a pretty good acoustic guitar recording just before I left. I even have pictures of it.

I also miss my microphones collection. I have a pretty sweet mic collection: 2 x Coles 4038, 2 x Beyer m380, 2 x Altec 670B, Sennheiser MD441, RFT DM622, Beyer M201, Audio Technica 4033, 2 x Shure KSM 137, Sony C48, Lomo 19a33 (that's not really a Lomo actually), AKG D112, Sennheiser MD409, and Shure SM7B. I'm pretty proud of that collection, and even though I've never even got to use all these mics in one session, I miss having them at my disposal.

I even miss my recording console, even though it's not worth much and it wasn't even a good one.

I know I sound like a very materialistic person, but I miss what I could do with these things. I miss having the option to go downstairs and play and record. I know that I can make a record with one mic or even just with my laptop, but having all these mics and a room to record helped me practice becoming a professional sound engineer (which I'm not). This gear helped me get my recordings to sound like the records I listen to, and for instance, I couldn't, get my bass to sound this way if I had just put my laptop in front of the bass cabinet. Not to mention that the laptop's microphone would have probably overloaded anyway. I could have achieved all of this with less microphones and less expensive microphones, but I admit it, I've over indulged and I do like collecting microphones. To my defense I will that these microphones certainly hold their value, and I can sell almost all of them for more than they cost me.

I now see a Ludwig drumkit from 68 for $650. I've never in my life had the opportunity to buy such a great sounding kit for so cheap. A kit like that would have cost me around $2000 in Israel. It's so difficult to pass on that kit, but I have nowhere to play it at the moment, I'm not playing in any band, and I'm not even sure when is the next time I'll be able to play drums. Other than that, I'm not working (because I can't, I'd work in anything if I could) and don't think it's a good idea to blow all of my savings. I could probably afford it if I sold some of the gear I left in Israel, and trust me, I tried, but no one bought. I will try again.

I feel safe writing all this stuff here, because I know that no one will read it, and if anyone would actually read it, they'd never get to the end. This post is way past that point of interest for anyone. I think every reader will lose interest after the second paragraph, but that's good. I like the idea of all of this being public, because it's on the internet, but it's also very private because no one reads it. I also like writing all of this for documentation purposes. I mean, I wanted to have these thoughts documented, and I also wanted my last recording session at home to be documented (see pictures below!)

I've actually kind of came to terms with not playing as much as I used to. I'm very excited to go to school and study Physics, because the feeling I get out of studying Physics and Mathematics is similar to the feeling I get out of playing music. I even gave up on the idea of ever having a studio, whether it's a real professional studio, or just a studio in the basement of my house where I can record myself and friends. Well, I'm not sure if I actually gave up on it, but I stopped thinking about doing that. I used to think about it all the time every day, so not thinking about it makes me feel like I've lost interest. I don't even listen to music that much anymore, but that's because I don't have a good stereo and I'm tired of listening to music in headphones. Another reason is that most bands just don't do it for me. I don't know if it's because I've became nostalgic, and I only like the relatively obscure music I've discovered in my teens, or if it's because most bands don't do anything interesting. The thing is that I don't even like the bands that my friends who share the same taste in music as me like. I just feel like these bands don't do anything that haven't been done before, but I digress. I thought I have a new-old interest in life that could replace playing music, but I don't. This whole playing music thing, even though it's only for myself without anyone hearing, is part of me and probably part of my personality. I hate saying that because it makes me sound arty and creative, and I hate those people, but I guess it's part of what I like doing and who I am. I think that the longing and craving to playing music proved it once and for all. I'm going to do something so I can play again. I'll also post the gear I left in Israel for sale (except for my mics and amps, of course); maybe I'll be able to buy that 68' Ludwig Standards after all.

Recording acoustic guitar in my parents' living room a day or two before I left. A Coles 4038 and a Shure KSM 137 are close micing the guitar. Another Coles 4038 is a few feet away serving as a room mic. There's a Sony C48 at my head's height. Yeah, I tried singing, but gave up on the idea very quickly. Also, nice paintings mom!

Micing my bass setup. A Shure KSM 137 (silvery mic), which is a condenser mic, is pointing right at the speaker's cone. That mic aimed at the point where it can get all of the high end content of the music. A Beyer M380 TG (dynamic mic) is on the KSM's left. This mic is aiming at the side of the speaker so it'll capture the low end content of the music. Together they captured the whole spectrum of the bass, one mic supplied all the lows and the other gave the high frequencies that helped representing the true sound of that bass and amp. I could have recorded this with just either of these mics, but it wouldn't have sounded the same way it sounded to my ears. The bass cabinet is a homemade cab built after the EV TL606 design. The amp I used for this recording was a Gallien Krueger 400RB Mk III. I think that it wasn't on top of the cab anymore when I took this picture. Or maybe it was on the floor? Notice my bass on the left, leaning against the bass cab. Also notice my Super Fuzz right next to it (wasn't used in this recording, and no, I didn't pay for it what people pay for them nowadays).

My drum kit with minimal micing and also my really messy basement studio. You can't see the two Coles that I used as overheads, nor the Beyer M380 that was inside the kick drum, which is making you wonder why did I upload this picture and not some picture where you can see where they were placed. I do have pictures of that actually, but in this picture you can see how my drums are set up, and looking at it now, I have a new way for placing overheads on my kit - one mic behind the floor tom (close to where I was standing when I took the picture) and another behind the rack tom (furthest from where I was standing, in a straight line from the floor tom). See how the two toms create a nice straight line? The snare and kick will be right in the middle of the stereo image!

My guitars. From left to right: A Fender Telecaster of unknown year (the body might not be a fender), this guitar isn't mine; A Guild S300D 78'; Fender Precision Hot Rodded 99' (best bass ever! woo!); Fender Jazz Bass Special 88' Fretless (this isn't mine either, it's my brother's); and a Yamaha FG 411 Acoustic.

[eliya]

(via pet-ish)

[eliya]

I want to be a kitty when I grow up

[eliya]

The caption didn't really make me laugh. It actually took me a few times to look at this lolcat to realize that this kitty's paws are white, so he refers to them as mittens (btw, how come they didn't misspell mittens? come on now!). Just look at this kitten! He's so fuzzy and have the most adorable look on his face ever! I had to post it here.

I refer to the kitty as he, because i'm pretty sure it's a male.

[eliya]

This is even better than the previous one!

[eliya]

tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam ta tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam ta tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam ta tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam ta tam tam tam tam ta tam tam tam tam ta tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam tam ta tam

[eliya]

I can't get enough of this!!!

[eliya]

I like this new color better, and I also prefer the new name, even though it's not exactly what I want.

[eliya]

Have you seen her? Pretty Mary K

[eliya]

This interview is so sad and awesome, it's a shame Frank Zappa isn't still alive.

I'm going to listen to "We're Only in it for the Money" now.

[eliya]

PayPal Chocolate.

I don't know why but I think this is awesome. I guess it has to do with my eBay addiction.