jeff shuck

Matthew showing his fearlessness this morning on the monkey bars…

…I bought a new drysuit yesterday. Bring on the wind.

It’s the first day of the year that I’ve gotten some windsurfing lust. Finally, the weather is getting nicer. It’s going to be about 70 degrees today. The water is pure blue and it is blowing pretty good outisde — the Michigan City lighthouse (about two miles away) is showing winds steady at 25 knots with gusts to 33. Plus, it is out of the south, which means the water is relatively smooth. Just looking at the lake makes me want to blow everything off and hit it for my first session of the season. Unfortunately, since the water temperature is still 38 degrees and my dry suit ripped last year, I’m out of luck. Forced discipline!

I’d better order a new suit so I can be more irresponsible next time…

Though I haven’t pursued music professionally for almost ten years, it continues to be a huge interest of mine. I try to compose and play as much as time allows. Plus, I’m a bit of a gear freak (okay, an enormous gear freak), and so I’ve kept abreast of the incredible evolution in equipment and done a fairly good job of keeping my gear up-to-date. I say “job” as if this is a chore, but in reality if you are a gear freak, it is a bit of an obsession, really. From scanning new music magazines over and over to lurking on forums to dumpster-diving on eBay, the search for gear can be quite consuming.

I should note right here and now that upgrading gear is really more of an interest/obsession than a need. There is no reason that great music cannot still be recorded on four-track tape, and to make it personal, there’s no reason I couldn’t make great music on the Roland sequencer and hard disk recorder I had ten years ago. Yes, sooner or later it would wear out, but the point I’m trying to make is that upgrading gear is much more about the need to tinker with new, shiny things than it is about the quest for better music. People still write and perform beautiful music on the piano, which debuted in basic form around 1700.

The change in music technology over the last twenty years is well documented, so I won’t really go into it other than to make the very trite comment that things have changed quite a bit since I got my first keyboard (a Roland Alpha Juno-1) in high school. I got involved at a great time — MIDI had already been established and was being put into everything, and although tape was still the way to record, the revolution of digital tape recorders such as the Alesis ADAT and Tascam DA-88 soon gave way to actual hard disk recording. Once hard disk recording was commercialized, it was only a matter of short time until most of the studio moved “in the box,” that is, into the computer itself. Nowadays, almost all recording is done directly into the computer, as is editing, mixing, and master. This is equivalent to the change in writing with a typewriter to writing with Microsoft Word — the two are so different as to be almost incomparable. What this means is that now, instead of collecting racks of MIDI gear with cables running all over the place, most of us collect dozens of plug-ins and software instruments, with literally hundreds of gigabytes of samples and sounds. Here is the type of trite comment I was hoping to avoid, but: It is truly amazing the power than one can get from an entry-level MacBook, with stock plug-ins and a free copy of GarageBand. When you look at the power of a top-of-the-line Mac Pro, with 16 GB of RAM and terrabytes of storage, running a top-tier digital audio recording, the power is mind-blowing.

I’m working on a gear page where I list out all the stuff I use and have collected, and in compiling the list the change was shocking to me. Where I used to own several keyboards and a number of physical modules, I now have very few pieces of hardware but an overabundance of software instruments, some of which I know very well but others of which I’ve barely touched. And this is where the quest for gear can really backfire. In the olden days, a good MIDI module might cost you $1,500 or $2,000, and so you had to work and save to afford it. When you got it, you really used every inch of it, and learned it head to foot. Now, an incredible software instrument like Native Instruments’ Massive retails for $230, and for about twice that you can get a package with four software instruments, all of which are at least as good and in most cases much, much better, deeper, and more complex than any hardware module. What happens is that gear obsession takes over, you find yourself getting “just one more” instrument or plug-in, and all of a sudden your hard drive is crammed and you realize you don’t know your equipment nearly as well as you used to. It can be a bit overwhelming, actually – and though you realize what is going on, you still find yourself reaching for the PayPal account when that next awesome synth debuts. And at the same time, I get the new gear but find myself reaching back to what I know; one of my favorite plug-ins is Korg’s Wavestation plug-in, not because it is intuitive (it isn’t) or superb-sounding (it is), but precisely because I owned a Wavestation EX keyboard for ten years and I know it backwards and forwards.

I’m old enough to know that I probably won’t tame the gear lust completely (although I did just successfully reject my inner calling for a new computer), so I’ve tried to redirect it to investing in upgrades of the “supporting” equipment that ushers sound in and out of the system — that is, interfaces and monitors. While some people really drool for such bits of kit, most people I know see these components as less compelling. Monitors don’t get the heart racing like a new soft sampler! But that is silly, really, since your interface and monitors control everything you actually hear.

A couple of years ago I got a Mackie 400F firewire interface — it had received great reviews, I’d always had great luck with Mackie gear, and I was looking for a firewire interface with multiple inputs so I could record a few pieces of gear at once. But once I got it, a couple of things happened: One, I found that I was having a lot of problems with the firewire driver that I could never figure out. It was glitchy and noisy and the latency was pretty bad. Two, all of that outboard gear I wanted to record started disappearing as I moved into the box.

So I recently went on a purge and sold the 400F as well as another couple of pieces of kit. In its place, I bought the small, elegant, and wonderful-sounding Apogee Duet (pictured above). The sound quality is amazing — I was blown away when I heard it compared to the 400F. The latency is great, and the integration with Logic Pro (my musical home) is literally seamless. The firewire problems I had with the 400F aren’t present at all. Plus, it takes up about 10% of the space of the outboard stuff I got rid of, and looks rather nice sitting on my desk. Yes, it only has one set of inputs and two preamps, but do I really need more than that? I feel good because I got something great that is exactly what I need. I’ll be able to learn it, use it, and know it from every direction.

My next step is to get better monitors. I’ve been using Audix 1A’s since 1996. I’m not sure how I got them — some fast-talking from a Guitar Center employee, I think. They have always been good but not great. The biggest issue is the lack of reliable low end. My mixes end up bass-heavy because the monitors aren’t representing enough low end, so I end up over-compensating in the mix. You can get around that by consciously lowering the bass level during mix, but it doesn’t really make up for not hearing what is going on. The 1As are also passive (they require an amp), whereas most monitors now are active, meaning they have amps inside. I’ve ordered a pair of Mackie 624Mk2’s, which will allow me to get rid of the 1As and the power amp, and thus another set of cables running behind the desk. I’m a bit worried because I haven’t listened to the 624s, which is a huge no-no when buying monitors, but where I live it isn’t an easy option to audition them. They have been very favorably reviewed, so … I’ll let you know how it works out.

So I guess that was a lot of rambling, but that’s what I’m thinking about right now. I hope to have the music gear page up in a couple of weeks.

Of course, the point of all the gear is to make music, and considering I have five times as much great gear as I did ten years ago but one-tenth of the free time, that might take a while. I have started writing and playing a lot since February — my health problems made me realize how much I want and need music in my life. I’m hoping to drop my need to get things perfect and have some songs out this summer. We’ll see. I’m optimistic.

After a couple run-ins with my doctor in early February, I got myself re-dedicated to my own health: I gave up coffee, cut back on soda, cut out junk food, started tracking my calories, and most of all, started working out regularly again. I’ve been pretty active physically since I started college, but over the last couple of years with having kids and work, I’ve slowly gotten a bit less regimented about things. In the summer I try to windsurf a lot, but the other nine months of the year … well, you get the picture.

Anyway, I changed that all a couple of months ago after it was clear that I could be as healthy and fit as I choose to be. To break from my old weights and cardio routine I started P90X, which is famous (or infamous) for its late-night infomercials urging you to “Bring it!” But honestly, though it can be a bit cheesy, I love the program. It has a lot of variety, it works you hard, and six weeks into it I’ve seen great results in how I look and feel. It includes weights, cardio, yoga, and lots and lots and lots of push-ups and pull-ups. It’s great! It also comes with a full set of diet programs. I have been less regimented on that piece, although I have started tracking my eating and weight every day (it makes a difference).

The problem is time. The P90X program is six days a week with one day off a week. The workouts are about 75 to 90 minutes long, depending on the day — add in changing clothes, getting ready, showering afterwords, and random shuffling and you can be talking about two hours a day. And, the workouts are intense. It is not a beginner’s program — it is very intense. At the end, you are really exhausted.

With my work and school schedule, I’ve been averaging five days a week rather than six, so it took me about six weeks to complete the first five weeks of the program. That includes lugging everything with my on frequent trips. The hotel room workout leaves a lot to be desired! But I’m trying to stick to it.

Anyway, I have P90X guilt right now because I’ve been sick and haven’t worked out since last Thursday. I’ve actually been sick for about three weeks — I’ve been trying to pull a bit of “mind over matter,” thinking I can will myself to good health, but that hasn’t really worked. Last week culiminated nine workouts in ten days and I think the last one did me in. I’ve been down for the count ever since.

I know what I need is to slow down, sleep, and get better, but still it is hard not to feel guilty. The DVDs are just sitting there, waiting for me to Bring It…

Jeanie put me to work today. For about five hours we pulled everything out of the garage, threw a ton of things away, put a ton more in a pile for Goodwill, and generally cleaned and rearranged. Coupled with the incredible 65-degree day we’re having, it makes me feel like summer is almost here…

Well, I had two exams yesterday, which is a tad absurd given that exams are usually associated with people half my age. When I was an undergraduate I was a very meticulous (perhaps even overly fastidious?) student. My entire life was perfectly formatted, neat and clean. While I’m probably still too particular for my own good, sixteen years of experience in the working world has taught me (somewhat against my will, I should say) to speed up, make quick decisions, and lower my quality expectations a bit. I mean, my own notes don’t need to be recopied for neatness, right? Right?

Probably a good thing for overall quality of life (don’t dwell on the small stuff and all of that), but definitely not a good thing for graduate school. I made a couple of dumb mistakes on both tests. Argh.

How do I know? Well, thanks to the wonders of modern instruction, the answers to the first exam were posted right outside the door to the room — presto, immediate self-flogging upon conclusion of the test. As to the other, well, you can’t get a bunch of graduate students together without the conversation turning to school in about four seconds. As soon as the second exam was done, small groups of students huddled together trying to buttress their confidence. Within a couple of minutes I realized I tackled one of the problems incorrectly.

The frustrating thing is that I understand the course material of both subjects conceptually, but I made either stupid math errors or jumped too far forward in making conclusions without thinking through the questions at hand. Argh. Annoying.

Oh well. It’s on to two more classes, and thanks to the pace of the program, I’ll get another shot at exams in six weeks.

Here’s a mad ramble: I’m sitting at the San Diego airport after a three-day business trip. I’m trying to make calls on my phone and the coverage is abysmal. It goes in and out, in and out. What is the deal? This happens every time I come here, no matter what carrier I have. One of my friends has told me that it is because of all of the military installations here. Whatever the cause, it is annoying.

Wish I had more for you, but that’s all I got right now.

I think I’ve talked myself off the computer upgrade ledge — at least for this year. Details to come.

I’ve spent the last few weeks agonizing over whether to get a new desktop to compliment my laptop. Like many folks I use two computers — the laptop for work, school, and traveling, and the desktop for home use, primarily for personal finances and music. The former is basic but the music work is pretty processor intensive. I’ve been a Mac guy forever, although in the last two years I’ve needed to get a Windows laptop to function in the world. Ironically, as soon as I made this plunge, the Intel-based Macs came out, which run Windows!

In any case, I really probably do not need a new desktop yet, but with the release of Leopard my current Mac (a Dual G5 2.5 MHz — not a slouch computer) has begun to felt sluggish. It is feeling slow with both the new version of Logic Pro (v8) and Adobe CS3. So I’ve begun to look.

The new Mac Pro is incredible, amazing, and enough to make me break out into cold sweats. Eight cores. Holy moley. It is expensive, but it is incredible. I’ve been pretty close to pulling the trigger about ten different times. But there’s the cost — and the set-up time to reinstall everything, which would not be trivial. Do I have time between work, family, and school for that hassle? On the other hand, I could run Windows on it. But I already have the laptop, so why do that? But it probably runs applications about five to six times faster than either my laptop or my G5. What to do?

This past weekend I finally decided “once and for all” to delay the purchase until the late fall, presumably when the next Mac Pro comes out. But then I’ve spent the two subsequent evenings trouble-shooting disk problems, finally resorting to the use of the Terminal last night. Fsck did the trick but it makes me wonder…

The new Mac Pro is sure purty. Shiny shiny. Hmmmmm.