Pedalphilia

Have to be careful calling myself a pedalphile, easily misconstrued, that one. I can’t say that I’ve developed a full-blown case of effects pedal obsession, but repeat viewings of “That Pedal Show” and other analog gear demos have me more and more interested in setting up an analog pedalboard. I’ve dipped my toes back into the analog world a bit since I switched to fee basis three years ago (actually as of yesterday, I think). I got the Hughes & Kettner Grandmeister 40 and a 65 Amps 1x12 cab a while back and later added the Strymon Blue Sky Reverb pedal. I finally got to the top of the Analog Man Tone King waiting list a few weeks ago, and so I’ve added that pedal as well.

I’m taking a serious look at getting a regular pedalboard and using the G2 switching system. I’ll likely add a few more pedals to the arsenal - distortion, compressor, tuner, modulation and maybe some wild cards. I’ve also given serious thought into getting a few more amp heads, likely in the low wattage range. There are great examples of these from most amp manufacturers. I’ve had my eyes on ones from Mesa, Friedman, and a few others. Of course, all this falls squarely into the “don’t need, just want” category, which describes most of my music gear. I’m not going to pull the trigger on this stuff too soon, but it’s fun to strategize and daydream.

I’ve been okay this week on DTD, although my only writing work has been this journal, which, although it might benefit me on a general level, isn’t furthering the craft by much. I need to get back into my lessons. It’s been a few days since my last drink, after skipping Sunday due to the Saturday hangover, I had the last two beers on Monday. Ironically, I had one of those early wakeups on Wednesday morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I knocked out my Korean study and drawing practice and completed the rest of the disciplines after work, except for bass. My elbows were aching a bit, and Aeyong had wanted to fry up some shrimp, so the cumulative standing including work had my back tired and I decided to chill afterward. All that to say I’ve been noticing the gradual improvement in health and well being. I ran for the first time in a few weeks yesterday, which always gives a greater boost to the mood and energy. We did some extra dry goods stocking up at Sam’s yesterday, just in case there is some kind of run on groceries with the Coronavirus panic.

I’ve neglected the Victorian house reading for several days, but I’ve been enjoying Dracula. The language is a novelty and it’s interesting just how much conversation patterns and language can change over the course of a hundred years. This is assuming that people actually talked like they do in this book, which does display a mixture of dialects and patterns, especially between the more educated main characters and the working-class side characters. The language of the cultural elite can be so flowery and expositional, as though the act of speaking was an art unto itself. This is a huge contrast to the Korean language I’ve been studying. It’s very direct and economical.

For example, in Bram Stoker’s England, a character might take an entire paragraph to greet a friend or colleague and invite them to lunch or for a drink. “My esteemed colleague, a many of many letters and degrees, who so loved the learned halls of Cambridge, and yay, in those days did draft many a treatise and manifesto for the impressionable young minds of London, gathering the wisdom of the ages and the world and imparting his considerable and acute thoughts in service of the betterment of the commonwealth, it was to he that I beseeched for the honor of an evening repast and a leisurely commiseration of days gone by over brandy and cigars…blah blah blah….”. In Korean, this would go - 안녕하세요, 브랜디 마시고싶어요? Which is translated as “Hello, do you want to drink some brandy?” Actually, it literally means “Hello, brandy drink want?” Romanized it sounds like - “Annyonghaseyo, mashigo ship oh yo? The tense is off there, but the gist is the same.

This is a bit of an extreme example since almost no modern speakers add all the filler material to a conversation, and in English, we will often ask “Hey, do you want to get a beer?” In Korean, this would be more like “Beer, drink?” or Maekju mashilay? All the pronouns, direct objects, conjunctions, prepositions, etc. are typically implied and only the most critical words are included. Still, it’s an interesting experience to study Korean and then read Dracula and other period fiction. Such a difference in culture and frames of reference.

So, Yesterday was a bit of a wash...

Yesterday was my second of two workdays in a row (how can I bear the grind?) and due to overindulging on Tuesday night (three beers within 1-2 hours of bedtime counts for me), I didn’t exercise before work, so I needed to take care of that after getting home. Yesterday was fairly productive work-wise, two cases for a total of 22 DBQs and $1980 dollarinos. The second case was a BVA Remand so that took considerable time what with record review and assorted tasks. Still, a long day as a fee basis examiner tends to result in a larger paycheck for the effort, so it’s generally not a negative thing even if you’re more tired.

All that aside, I wasn’t quite ready to swear off beer for one of my programmed breaks just yet, deciding to make March the next beer free month. This is a habit I’ve adopted in recent years, and it honestly should apply to anything I start to find as negative habit forming. My biggest problem with beer isn’t full blown alcohol abuse or worse, it just becomes habitual every evening after I’ve finished all my productive tasks for the day, and when I start looking forward to it, it’s time to take a mandatory break. I’ve never felt dependent on alcohol or anything else, but it can become a habit if you let it.

All that to say, yesterday I was getting some beer delivered and there were problems with the order that resulted in a trip back for the delivery driver and further delay in getting on with my day, so by the time all was said and done it was nearly 5:30pm and I wasn’t feeling the energy to practice or study. Tuesday was also a less than fully productive day in that although I practiced drums, vocals, and guitar, I didn’t study further afterwards. On Tuesday I finally received my King of Tone pedal from AnalogMan after being on the waiting list for nearly three years. This resulted in extended noodleage that sucked up my remaining motivation for further study.

I’ve got to sort out my analog signal chain and setup, as modest as it still is at present. Right now I’ve just got the H&K Grandmeister, King of Tone, and a Strymon Big Sky Reverb pedal. The H&K has some decent built in effects (Reverb, Delay, Modulation) but they don’t trump the AxeFx or the aforementioned pedals. I typically have been using the AxeFx and will continue to do so, but I want to setup the H&K and pedals in such a way that I can quickly fire them up and make tweaks in real time. I’ve ordered a riser for my NYC pedalboard, and I’m thinking there’s not a good way to use the FC-12 controller for the AxeFx with this setup because it hogs up too much space. I may make the NYC pedalboard purely for my analog signal chain, I’ll have to see what seems feasible after I get the riser.

In the past I would get frustrated when I wasn’t able to finish my daily practice/study goals, and if that became a habit I would still get angsty, but I’ve learned to accept that some days for various reasons you shouldn’t reasonably expect to tick every box. Somedays you’re too tired, lacking in motivation, whatevs. As long as I don’t let several days in a row pass, I’m usually okay with it, especially if there pressing matters elsewhere.

Dateline, 17 February 2020

I’m probably not going to continue with that title, but maybe just this once. Yesterday was a decent day. I exercised, walked the dogs, did some laundry, made burritos for lunch, practiced drums, vocals, and guitar. I also studied some Korean (TTMIK lesson 7) and spent some time drawing a lesson from a Udemy course I’ve been slowly working through. What’s missing is any substantial writing study or practice. I tried to resume the James Hynes course but was getting distracted with other thoughts (nothing important, probably my plan to move my RAID drive a bit lower to reduce the noise) so I abandoned that plan and went ahead and exercised.

In the afternoon after I had finished everything, I sat down to read, resuming “Inside the Victorian Home”, by Judith Flanders. This was one of my books purchased in service of research for “Luma” (working title), my planned epic fantasy trilogy. To paraphrase Professor Tolkien, “the research grew in the reading”, and I’ve given myself months if not years of future study. Not a bad problem to have, since I love the subjects and the learning, regardless if I plan to put them to good use in the future. Anywho, I didn’t get very far before I started drowsing off, so I abandoned that plan and resumed watching “The Expanse”, a great Science Fiction series based on James S. A. Corey’s novels. This had started on the SyFy channel but was picked up by Amazon after three seasons when SyFy canceled it. It worked out well in the end because the video quality is better and there are no commercials.

All that to say I’ve been setting myself up for failure slightly by waiting to read until late afternoon. I either need to change my time to maybe late morning (pre-lunch) or at least have myself a cup of coffee before setting down to read. I want to devote some time every day for “productive” reading (research, etc.) as well as my more light reading. I’ve got a huge TBR (to be read) collection of books and I’m not making much progress at this rate.

Overall, yesterday was a successful day. I’m gradually making progress at my musical disciplines. The passing of Neil Peart got me reoriented into studying his style and I’ve decided to try and approach it from the beginning of his Rush discography (Fly By Night), assuming the difficulty level will be marginally lower than the later albums. Yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time futzing with the drum pedals, I still haven’t quite got the configuration the way I want. I’ve been starting to learn the heel-toe technique in service of faster bass drum playing (more for metal than Neil) and while I think the right foot is coming along okay, I’ve been having more difficulty with the left foot. This may be largely due to the left foot being mostly neglected in comparison to the right since I started playing about five years ago. I think part of it is due to the particular pedal setup I’m currently using. I bought this DW combo double bass drum and hi-hat pedal setup that’s all connected and I think for most applications it works well, but not heel-toe. I’m looking at eventually buying these pedals by a company called “Trick Drums”, as they have a very clever design that’s much easier to adjust and they look rock-solid in construction.

On guitar, I spent most of my practice time continuing to work on getting that intro riff to “The Spirit of Radio” correct after many years of playing it wrong. This is in service of gradually learning the song on drums and bass as well for the full song cover as discussed in the regular blog. I should be devoting more practice time to the other components of musicianship (ear training, theory, technique, etc.) and I need to start setting aside that time during each practice session. One of the great challenges of managing so many disciplines is not lapsing into auto-pilot when the overall weight of time required each day can start to overwhelm your more organized/planning mind.