File under irony?
Out of focus, but a nice photo of Family
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
A deadly bomb implanted in a live elephant's skull and let loose on the streets of india. Elephant found drowning in an armored truck underneath br...
Life was perfect until I was 7. My dear friend conrad says the same thing. My favorite author Kurt Vonnegut does as well. Conrad claims that after 6 or 7 years the burden of time bears down on you. Vonnegut blames the great depression and the hardships involved there for his post-training-wheel slump. Life was perfect until the age of 7. My memories of that time are for me very blurred, so maybe I'm just turning them into nicer memories than they were, but mostly what I remember from that time is very good.
Climbing. I would climb all the time. I remember climbing to the top of my swing set and perching there. It must have been one of my favorite things to do because I did it all the time. I remember sword fighting and building things with my brother noah. What a good friend he is. I remember the toys I got for my 6th birthday. I remember how mom decorated the house for my 5th birthday.
I love birthdays. Not all of them have been great. I was grounded on my thirteenth birthday and had to wash dishes while my family ate my birthday meal. I'm all for discipline, but that was a bit cruel. I was actually grounded for a few years straight. My parents decided once a passed "spanking age" that making me wash everyone's dishes (family of 8) would be an effective form of discipline.
[Note in the previous paragraph where I stated that I was "all for discipline". That may or may not be the case. I simply said that to grant credence to the second half of the sentence, the true message I wanted to convey: "That was a bit cruel". You see, people don't listen to anything you say unless they feel like you are 1. A generally balanced person and 2. A person who shares some of the same ideas or beliefs as them. This is why the hippie dude with dread-locks will never win the attention of the politician he's protesting. Hippie-boy isn't exploiting the few common threads he shares with politician-man. Maybe he has none, I don't know. The point is, I just said, "I'm all for discipline" because most people are, and I knew that would grant my case favor with you, the reader.]
My crime, for the most part, was a bad attitude. That, and not doing my school. Somewhere around the age of 12 I had informed my mom I wasn't going to do school anymore. I felt that I'd leared what I needed to know and was an able person. As far as the dish situation goes, mostly I just wouldn't wash them. But then I wasn't allowed to eat or go to bed without the dishes done. I stayed up all night a lot of nights. I didn't eat a lot of days. Did it work? Did it make me a better person? I don't really know. I do know my parents gave up after a couple years and I was free to do as I pleased. Life was a lot better then. I never ended up getting into trouble. I'd just did what I wanted, when I wanted. I am a different breed than some.
Oh yeah, I love birthdays. I just had one. I'm 24 now. 24. The number as an age doesn't really mean a lot to me. It did until I was here, but I can't really relate my 24 to other people's 24 for some reason right now. For that matter, I have trouble drawing comparisons between my life and anyone else's at any age.
Having been homeschooled, I don't really have many common experiences with many people during the gradeschool years. I quit school when I was 12-ish and started working and teaching myself to play instruments while others were being mocked by the local jock. At the age when most people are in college, I was trying to get a band off the ground and working third shifts at a cafe. When most people get married I was in a mini-van somewhere on the other side of the country trying to sell my band's record so we could eat and buy enough gas to get to the next show. Just when people are settling into the habits they will hold onto for the next thirty years until they retire I was playing shows for 4000 people a night and getting indigestion in a 15-passenger van every day.
All in all, I feel like I've had the most incredible 24 years anyone could dream of. Life for me is generally whacky stuff and there's always some weird twist or turn. I feel like although my experiences have been varied, they are all the result of one thing that I do. I don't really know exactly what the thing is, but I kinda feel like I'm basically an updated version of the same thing I was when I was a child. I've just been doing this one thing my whole life. That one thing...I'll c all it Enoch-ing sure provides some crazy and interesting experiences.
I will say, sometimes I wish to be a more static and secure person who reads books about this guy named Enoch. I feel like it'd be even better reading than it is living. Maybe the author could better define what's going on with this character's life. Maybe he or she could sum it up in some kind of moral, or weave it together in some coincidental way that would just seem really nice and concise. ...but we all know shit's not like that.
-Enoch
P.S.
I'm currently have trouble posting pictures to my blog. I'm not sure what that's all about, but hopefully I'll have that taken care of very soon. Maybe Blogger is just temporarily messed up.
Climbing. I would climb all the time. I remember climbing to the top of my swing set and perching there. It must have been one of my favorite things to do because I did it all the time. I remember sword fighting and building things with my brother noah. What a good friend he is. I remember the toys I got for my 6th birthday. I remember how mom decorated the house for my 5th birthday.
I love birthdays. Not all of them have been great. I was grounded on my thirteenth birthday and had to wash dishes while my family ate my birthday meal. I'm all for discipline, but that was a bit cruel. I was actually grounded for a few years straight. My parents decided once a passed "spanking age" that making me wash everyone's dishes (family of 8) would be an effective form of discipline.
[Note in the previous paragraph where I stated that I was "all for discipline". That may or may not be the case. I simply said that to grant credence to the second half of the sentence, the true message I wanted to convey: "That was a bit cruel". You see, people don't listen to anything you say unless they feel like you are 1. A generally balanced person and 2. A person who shares some of the same ideas or beliefs as them. This is why the hippie dude with dread-locks will never win the attention of the politician he's protesting. Hippie-boy isn't exploiting the few common threads he shares with politician-man. Maybe he has none, I don't know. The point is, I just said, "I'm all for discipline" because most people are, and I knew that would grant my case favor with you, the reader.]
My crime, for the most part, was a bad attitude. That, and not doing my school. Somewhere around the age of 12 I had informed my mom I wasn't going to do school anymore. I felt that I'd leared what I needed to know and was an able person. As far as the dish situation goes, mostly I just wouldn't wash them. But then I wasn't allowed to eat or go to bed without the dishes done. I stayed up all night a lot of nights. I didn't eat a lot of days. Did it work? Did it make me a better person? I don't really know. I do know my parents gave up after a couple years and I was free to do as I pleased. Life was a lot better then. I never ended up getting into trouble. I'd just did what I wanted, when I wanted. I am a different breed than some.
Oh yeah, I love birthdays. I just had one. I'm 24 now. 24. The number as an age doesn't really mean a lot to me. It did until I was here, but I can't really relate my 24 to other people's 24 for some reason right now. For that matter, I have trouble drawing comparisons between my life and anyone else's at any age.
Having been homeschooled, I don't really have many common experiences with many people during the gradeschool years. I quit school when I was 12-ish and started working and teaching myself to play instruments while others were being mocked by the local jock. At the age when most people are in college, I was trying to get a band off the ground and working third shifts at a cafe. When most people get married I was in a mini-van somewhere on the other side of the country trying to sell my band's record so we could eat and buy enough gas to get to the next show. Just when people are settling into the habits they will hold onto for the next thirty years until they retire I was playing shows for 4000 people a night and getting indigestion in a 15-passenger van every day.
All in all, I feel like I've had the most incredible 24 years anyone could dream of. Life for me is generally whacky stuff and there's always some weird twist or turn. I feel like although my experiences have been varied, they are all the result of one thing that I do. I don't really know exactly what the thing is, but I kinda feel like I'm basically an updated version of the same thing I was when I was a child. I've just been doing this one thing my whole life. That one thing...I'll c all it Enoch-ing sure provides some crazy and interesting experiences.
I will say, sometimes I wish to be a more static and secure person who reads books about this guy named Enoch. I feel like it'd be even better reading than it is living. Maybe the author could better define what's going on with this character's life. Maybe he or she could sum it up in some kind of moral, or weave it together in some coincidental way that would just seem really nice and concise. ...but we all know shit's not like that.
-Enoch
P.S.
I'm currently have trouble posting pictures to my blog. I'm not sure what that's all about, but hopefully I'll have that taken care of very soon. Maybe Blogger is just temporarily messed up.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Maybe someone else will benefit from this one day.
Hey Mason,
First off, good for you. I'm glad you're putting forth the effort to make some stuff happen. Now, I don't claim to be the best at recording, or even great at it, but I have picked up some knowledge and experience here and there, so I'm glad to help with what I can.
This message is VERY long. I hope it doesn't lose you at any point. It might be kind of a pain to read, or maybe it will be a a joy. I don't know but in any case there are several years of learning and experimentation wrapped up here, so even if I'm not totally dead on about some things, if you absorb this information you'll at least be at a good starting point and you'll be able to dispell bad ideas people try to throw your way. There are a lot of them.
You asked about drums, so mostly that's what I'll tell you about, although there are some universal ideas that simply apply to everything you'll ever record. I think you'll be able to easily discern what concepts are applicable to a broad range of things.
First things first, make sure your kit sounds as good as it can. It's very common for folks to trick themselves into thinking (and saying) "We can fix that with some EQ, or effects or something." Mason, that is simply wrong. A turd will always sound like a turd and the more you mess with it, the more it will smear. Tune your drums as best you can. Make sure there aren't wierd overtones coming from your snare drum or toms. Make sure the snare isn't tuned to high. Although the "pop" is cool, it's really distracting on a recording. Make sure your toms sound like they're in the same drum kit. That may mean tuning them both a little lower, higher, closer together, further apart. Put a decent batter head on the kick drum if you can afford it. The aquarian super-kick II seems to record well for rocknroll. If the kick drum already sounds nice then stick with it. WD-40 the squeaky kick pedal or hi-hat.
I'm assuming, since you didn't mention any multi-input hardware, that the most your computer can record at one time 2 channels (stereo left and right) in which case you'll have to sum up your drums to a stereo pair in mixer world. This is actually a really good skill to have, and will teach you a lot about minimalism, and all the stuff you don't need (and shouldn't have) to make good records.
You can capture a drum kit decently with three mics, so if you're just making demos or something for your friends to hear on myspace, don't fret too much about buying more mics. If you have them, you can use them, but if you don't know what you're doing it can actually make things worse. Using a very few mics. Especially in a home recording scenario is usually better for a number of reasons. First and foremost because of Phase issues. You may already know all about this, so I'm sorry if I'm talking way below your level. When a sound leaves a source (a drum) and travels through air particles, it moves (as you know) in waves. For the purpose of illustration people draw these waves as actual squiggly lines moving out from a source. Imagine them more like layers. Check it out:
( ( ( (Drum) ) ) )
It's like those layers moving in all directions from the sound source.
Here's why I'm explaining this... If you have a bunch of different mics on your kit, those waves (or "layers") that are coming from the drum will hit the mics at different time's because they're different distances from the sound source. Like this:
) ) ) ) ) Mic1)
) ) ) ) ) M)ic2
Observe Mic2 capturing a wave while Mic1 is "between" waves. When you combine these two signals in a mix, they do not compliment each other. This condition is called Out of Phase. These mics are out of phase. These signals are Out Of Phase. At best, phase problems muddy up your mix and make it hard to actually hear what's going on. At worst, it sounds harsh, and unnatural to the human ear, and pretty much makes your stuff unlistenable. After a bit of practice, you can learn to identify this sound, at which point you can take some time to pinpoint the culprit mic and change it's position slightly to make it sound natural. Phase issues are far less likely to arise if you're only using three mics.
I don't have any audio examples to send you, but if you want to hear what I'm talking about, you can. There is a song that made it out into the mainstream music world with a glaring phase discrepancy. Listen closely to the snare drum on the Coldplay's "Yellow" and you will hear what I'm trying to describe. Also, phaser effect pedals for your guitar are a controlled and deliberate version of it, which can actually sound cool (at least to some people's ears) in your guitar setup, but you don't want to capture live audio that way. It just sounds gross.
Another reason for not using more than three mics is because the sound monitoring abilities you have at your disposal are relatively crude, making it harder to identify problems with this or that.
Keeping it simple will help you tremendously. Remember, you only have TWO ears, and those TWO sources pick up the best sounds you will ever hear.
Here's how I go about miking up a drum kit these days using three mics. Mic1 will be above the drummer. Not directly. Probably a bit further forward (over the drum kit), but on the same plane as the drummer (by that, I mean no further left or right.) pointing straight down towards the floor. Experiment at first simply with this mic's position. A lot of times if you put it near the altitude of your head while you're standing up, the drum kit will sound decent through that mic.
At this point, consider mic1 your primary microphone and try to capture the whole drum kit through it. I'm assuming you don't have a really isolated area to monitor the sounds, so you're gonna have to record some and then listen back to it. This is tricky because if you're not really careful, you can blow out your hearing while you're recording and then you can't listen critically for hours. Make sure you pop in earplugs or put on some isolation headphone thingies while the drums are being played, otherwise your ear won't be good for anything.
While you're doing all this you may be tempted to beef up a little something with your EQ nobs. More low end, more high end, less mids, more mids, whatever. This is a BAD idea. The are a number of reasons why, although if you have limited experience with mixing they may not seem concrete to an untrained ear. You have a decent mixer, I'm assuming you have some mics which in a very general way pic up sounds honestly.
Is the sound you're hearing a clear sound? Can you hear the tip of the drumstick clearly touching a cymbal? Is the snare drum coming through with clarity? Can you hear the attack of the batter hitting the kick drum head? Without touching any EQ's, listen. Really, really listen as hard as you can. Is the information you want in there? If not, MOVE THE MICROPHONE. There is a sweet spot where your mic will catch everything that's going on, just like your ear does. Good sound happens naturally in the universe. God made it that way. Decent equipment used properly will capture these great sounds, and you can't really do much to make them any better than your God did.
While listening back to this recording, you might think that it doesn't sound beefy enough, or heavy enough, or whatever the adjective is that you want to use to describe the gusto associated with rock bands. This might tempt you to want to boost the low end of this signal, which WILL SCREW YOU OVER. Simply don't do it. Artificially boosting the low end will make it IMPOSSIBLE to mix all your signals together in the end. Keep in mind, you're still going to be mixing in a kick mic. Low frequencies take a ridiculously large amount of "space" in a mix, and you'll run out of it quickly. When trying to put everything together you'll end up fighting one channel or instrument against another instead of putting them together like pieces of a puzzle. The really full beautiful sound of a rock band doesn't come from any one instrument, it comes from the combination of all the instruments working together, like an orchestra.
Adding high end or mid range to your signals has a similar but much more painful accumulative effect. If you do much of it at all, it will make listening back to a mix at any decent volume painful. It's easy to ignore for a while, when you're buzzing with the excitement about hearing your own songs back, but others will not be so pleased, and after a while you'll say, "this hurts my ears.".
So again on the topic of mic placement, to much snare? Not enough rack tom? Move the mic further forward (more over the rack tom, and less over the snare.) So on and so forth.
Once you've found the sweet spot for your primary mic, it's time to find the spot for Mic2. These will become your left and right overheads, so bear in mind that Mic2 is your right channel mic. Put mic2 just to the (drummers) right of mic1. Keep mic2 at the exact same altitude and angle as mic1. This is to avoid any phase problems that might come your way. You see, if your mics are the same distance away from the drum kit, the waves will be hitting both mics at roughly the same time, thus diminishing your chances of phase problems. Try starting out with mic2 around the area of the floor tom. (I'm speaking now of left-right/forward-backward axis, not altitude). It's now OK to go to your mixer and pan mic1 hard left and mic2 hard right. Now the sound you're listening back to will start to get interesting and fun to listen to because they're in stereo and sound real. After the initial rush of, "wow, that's neat" wears off, you can start listening critically. Is mic 2 picking up to much ride cymbal? Move it back away from the ride a little bit (speaking of frontward and backward, not altitude). It will be a little easier to find a decent spot for this mic. Try a few different places. Have your drummer stop playing. Listen back to your different takes and pick one that seems to best represent a natural sounding drum kit.
Once again, you don't want to do anything with the EQ and make it sound different than mic1 or people's brains will fart out when they're trying to listen to your recording. Generally, you don't want to simulate anything with a recording that wouldn't actually happen in real life because %100 of humans auditory interpretation mechanism is trained and shaped by the physics of the real world and sounds that happen in it.
Now, if you're using two different kinds of microphones for mic1 and mic2 (try your best not to do this) you might have to do some VERY SLIGHT EQ-ing to tailor to signal coming from mic2 to match mic1, but if this can be avoided through mic placement your final product will be better for it. Once you've gotten your stereo drum kit together, it's time to add your kick mic.
KICK MIKING PHILOSOPHY: It's tempting to put your kick mic inside the kick drum. A lot of people do it. There's something that seems very tidy and appealing about isolating a kick mic inside the drum. Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to capture the way a kick drum sounds from the inside. Now, if you were going to use 12 mics on your drums (a method that I, along with a lot of engineers, don't feel produces good results) you might be the type of person who would like to have the signal from inside a kick drum available to add into your mix for "attack". I won't dive into trying to tear that school of thought apart right now since it's not an issue at this point, due to the limitations of your gear collection. You're only using three mics and you want your drum kit to sound like a drum kit, not a couple genetically altered trash cans on cocaine. Think about this: Neither you or anyone listening to your recordings has ever had their head inside a kick drum during a performance. The things that go on inside a kick drum are it's own business and sound pretty much nothing like the final result of an entire kick drum. Air bouncing back and forth between the two heads of a wooden shell is not what we hear when we're standing in the room and hear a kick drum. That's not what we hear when we're playing a kick drum. Why would we want to record that sound?
Even though I keep using the term Kick Mic, try to think about it as a Front Of Kit Mic. By that I mean that you're primarily capturing the sounds coming off of the kick drum, but secondarily from the front of the drum kit as a whole. Place your kick drum mic somewhere in from of your kick drum. I can't tell you exactly where because it will change depending on whether or not there's a hole in the resonant head, how big the hole is, how big the kick is, what kind of resonant head is on the drum, the kind of mic you're using, how hard the drum kicks, so on and so forth. Mine always ends up between these two extremes: about 6 inches outside the hole in the resonant head, pointed directly towards where the batter hits the batter head, OR about a foot and a half away from the kick drum, about 6 inches off the floor.
If there is a hole in the resonant head, you might want to rotate the head so the hole is closer to the floor rather than closer to the top of the drum. There reason for this is so you can position the mic lower and hence, don't have excessive cymbal noise bleeding into the mic. You're wanting the capture percussion. You're going to have gobs of cymbal noise available, and you aren't going to need any more, believe me. I'll talk more about that in a second. If there isn't a hole in the resonant head, you might want to cut one, although if your drummer is happy with the sound of his kick drum, simply leave it alone, you can still record a good sound. If you do cut a hole, don't make the mistake of making it ANY bigger than 4" across. Somewhere between 3" and 4" is usually perfect. The reason a lot of people make the mistake of making the hole too big is because they don't really understand what it's for.
Here's the logic in a nutshell (or drumshell) as I understand it. Vintage drums were made for vintage music, the kick "breathed" more than modern drums, allowing air in and out more easily, and allowing a solid resonant head to be in place without "choking" the drum. As harder music came about, more guitar-driven, louder, and less jazzy, it was harder to hear the attack of the kick, so folks started making a small hole in the resonant head. This does a fabulous job at letting the sound of the batter hitting the batter head out of the drum and into the room. As drums companies continued changing their drums to match the music, they made them tighter and less ventilated, as to push more sound OUT of the drum and elsewhere. As this happened, the hole in the resonant head became pretty much a necessity since having a solid head on your drum and playing hard would simply "choke" the drum for lack of a place to put the air being forced out of it by the impact of the batter. Drummers (usually kids) who didn't know what they were doing would cut a hole in their resonant head because they saw others doing it, while not understanding the nature of airflow, sound, and drums in general. Not understanding the concept behind the hole and not taking to initiative to experiment, listen, and think about it, they started cutting them to big.
What's the problem with that? Well, a resonant head resonates (and makes the the kick drum go BOOM instead of THUD.) because there is air moving and bouncing around in the kick drum which takes some time to escape. A hole too big will let the air out of the drum to quickly and spoil the effect of a resonant head. No hole at all, mutes some of the attack of the batter (which you may or may not want, depending on the style of music.) and depending on the drum can choke the drum out of making a pleasant sound at all.
If you end up cutting a new hole in the kick drum head, don't try to do it with a blade. You'll end up messing up somehow. bring the kick drum to the kitchen. Put an open empty soup can on the stove and turn the burner on high. Heat the rim of the can up for a while and when it's really hot use the hot can to melt a hole in the resonant head.
Be super freakin' careful! It's crazy hot and you could really burn yourself. I always end up using one of those cooking mittens in conjuction with a couple layers of hot pad thingies. Now, if you wanna brand your hand Raders-of-the-Lost-Ark style, that's your business, but burns suck.
I typically take SLIGHTLY more liberty with EQ-ing this mic than the others. I Never boost anything, but I've been know to drop a tiny bit of mid range or high end or something every now and again. As I said before, EQ's are rarely any good for artificially boosting frequencies. They can however serve as a FILTER from time to time.
Don't try to sculpt your kick drum sound into something it's not. Let it be the big, full, lush sound that it is in real life, including the sounds of the shell which reside in the mid range and the sound of the attack of the batter which resides a little higher. Simply try and find that sweet spot I keep talking about. Have your drummer play the kick drum while you move your head around in front to the kick to find the best spot. This can and should be done wearing hearing protection of some sort. You'd be surprised how much your ear can re-tune itself to a protected scenario. Just give it some time.
After you have your sweet kick sound, you're going to want to balance all three mics so there's a full drum kit happening. Get the correct gain for mic1 so you're not clipping (peaking) the channel. If you're using the same model of mic for mic2 simply match the gain level on it's channel to the gain level of the mic1. when you move the faders on these two channels, you want to move them exactly the same, so your stereo field is not off balance. For instance if Mic1's fader is a 80 percent, Mic2's fader should be at 80 percent. Now add your kick mic to the mix. You may not be able to tell initially (especially since you're not monitoring live and will have to listen back to the recorded mix to critique it) how loud to have the kick drum in comparison to the overheads (mics 1&2). Maybe a good way to find a starting point is to watch the lights metering the output of the mixer. Just start out by matching the peak level of a loud snare hit, with the peak level of a loud kick. Now, bare in mind, this is only a starting point. Peak meters (which are what the lights on the output of the master fader on your mixer are) are not really effective in monitoring to perceived loudness of a sound. That's something I'd be happy to explain as well, but I don't feel like is worth the time of you reading right now.
As far as the mic goes, you're going to have to use your ear to balance those two elements. It's really not that hard. Remember your two overhead mics are married to each other, so all you have to do it find the sweet mix between the kick and overheads. Now, it's kinda hard to tell when you're not experienced if one or the other is too loud until you have all the other instruments there, but you might get lucky and nail it the first time. You will definitely lean wrong one way or another a few times near the beginning, but after you've made a mistake once or at most twice, you'll know how to avoid it. Just try and think, "what does a drum kit really sound like in real life?" and you'll come up with something way better than what most people have on their home demos.
Now, I don't know anything about your drummer, but he might play his high-hats and cymbals to loud for this miking method. It might take some practice on his end, but he's probably going to have to his his cymbals a lot more gently than he usually does for this to be a good recording. Please have him read this paragraph. If your cymbals are doing more than a nice full swooshing sound, even if it's a rocking loud drum part, the cymbal to drum ratio will probably be wrong on the recording. The way most rock drummers play is problematic and is what led to people having to use 17 mics on a drum kit instead of 3 or 5. Everything has to be close-miked so you can jack it up over the volume of the cymbals. If you don't think a drummer that doesn't hit the cymbals hard can really rock, listen to Led Zeppelin. None of John's drums were close-miked and which forced him to play with even dynamics. It will honestly make the whole kit sound bigger. It just takes a little re-training.
The concepts I discussed earlier about EQ-ing apply in computer land as well. Meaning that plugin EQ's within the program will cause the same problems as EQ's in the real world, only worse because it's within a completely digital and unnatural medium operating at a bitrate well below what it should to produce good sound. Basically by the time the wonderful sounds of music make their way into your computer at 44.1k, there's really not a lot there to work with, so the best thing you can do (in a general sense) is not screw with it to drastically. Whatever you decide to to with effects and such in your computer, do it with a huge portion of restraint and taste because you can send your audio down the drain fast in that environment.
That said, I've been know to use a limiter or compressor on drums before. I almost didn't even mention this because I use it so lightly and reluctantly. You might want to avoid using this, or at least until I can write you an essay on what exactly it does, how not to use it and why it's the single most detrimental thing used to ruin most recordings that ever happen in the home recording or "professional" recording world. It can be a VERY BAD THING. Now, that you've heard that, if you have some limiter plugin in your program go ahead a experiment with it, keeping in mind that however interesting you might think it sounds on your solo tracks, it's probably actually harming the overall product.
I'm going to try to e-mail you 2 mp3's of things I've recorded recently (sans vocals) in the tiny room next to my bedroom employing the recording techniques I described in this e-mail. They were recorded with three $90 mics through a $70 mixer into the mini-pin jack on my $500 laptop PC on a hacked copy of adobe audition. They're not the best sounding audio, but the point is, you can make good demos with nothing.
-Enoch Porch
http://enochporch.blogspot.com
First off, good for you. I'm glad you're putting forth the effort to make some stuff happen. Now, I don't claim to be the best at recording, or even great at it, but I have picked up some knowledge and experience here and there, so I'm glad to help with what I can.
This message is VERY long. I hope it doesn't lose you at any point. It might be kind of a pain to read, or maybe it will be a a joy. I don't know but in any case there are several years of learning and experimentation wrapped up here, so even if I'm not totally dead on about some things, if you absorb this information you'll at least be at a good starting point and you'll be able to dispell bad ideas people try to throw your way. There are a lot of them.
You asked about drums, so mostly that's what I'll tell you about, although there are some universal ideas that simply apply to everything you'll ever record. I think you'll be able to easily discern what concepts are applicable to a broad range of things.
First things first, make sure your kit sounds as good as it can. It's very common for folks to trick themselves into thinking (and saying) "We can fix that with some EQ, or effects or something." Mason, that is simply wrong. A turd will always sound like a turd and the more you mess with it, the more it will smear. Tune your drums as best you can. Make sure there aren't wierd overtones coming from your snare drum or toms. Make sure the snare isn't tuned to high. Although the "pop" is cool, it's really distracting on a recording. Make sure your toms sound like they're in the same drum kit. That may mean tuning them both a little lower, higher, closer together, further apart. Put a decent batter head on the kick drum if you can afford it. The aquarian super-kick II seems to record well for rocknroll. If the kick drum already sounds nice then stick with it. WD-40 the squeaky kick pedal or hi-hat.
I'm assuming, since you didn't mention any multi-input hardware, that the most your computer can record at one time 2 channels (stereo left and right) in which case you'll have to sum up your drums to a stereo pair in mixer world. This is actually a really good skill to have, and will teach you a lot about minimalism, and all the stuff you don't need (and shouldn't have) to make good records.
You can capture a drum kit decently with three mics, so if you're just making demos or something for your friends to hear on myspace, don't fret too much about buying more mics. If you have them, you can use them, but if you don't know what you're doing it can actually make things worse. Using a very few mics. Especially in a home recording scenario is usually better for a number of reasons. First and foremost because of Phase issues. You may already know all about this, so I'm sorry if I'm talking way below your level. When a sound leaves a source (a drum) and travels through air particles, it moves (as you know) in waves. For the purpose of illustration people draw these waves as actual squiggly lines moving out from a source. Imagine them more like layers. Check it out:
( ( ( (Drum) ) ) )
It's like those layers moving in all directions from the sound source.
Here's why I'm explaining this... If you have a bunch of different mics on your kit, those waves (or "layers") that are coming from the drum will hit the mics at different time's because they're different distances from the sound source. Like this:
) ) ) ) ) Mic1)
) ) ) ) ) M)ic2
Observe Mic2 capturing a wave while Mic1 is "between" waves. When you combine these two signals in a mix, they do not compliment each other. This condition is called Out of Phase. These mics are out of phase. These signals are Out Of Phase. At best, phase problems muddy up your mix and make it hard to actually hear what's going on. At worst, it sounds harsh, and unnatural to the human ear, and pretty much makes your stuff unlistenable. After a bit of practice, you can learn to identify this sound, at which point you can take some time to pinpoint the culprit mic and change it's position slightly to make it sound natural. Phase issues are far less likely to arise if you're only using three mics.
I don't have any audio examples to send you, but if you want to hear what I'm talking about, you can. There is a song that made it out into the mainstream music world with a glaring phase discrepancy. Listen closely to the snare drum on the Coldplay's "Yellow" and you will hear what I'm trying to describe. Also, phaser effect pedals for your guitar are a controlled and deliberate version of it, which can actually sound cool (at least to some people's ears) in your guitar setup, but you don't want to capture live audio that way. It just sounds gross.
Another reason for not using more than three mics is because the sound monitoring abilities you have at your disposal are relatively crude, making it harder to identify problems with this or that.
Keeping it simple will help you tremendously. Remember, you only have TWO ears, and those TWO sources pick up the best sounds you will ever hear.
Here's how I go about miking up a drum kit these days using three mics. Mic1 will be above the drummer. Not directly. Probably a bit further forward (over the drum kit), but on the same plane as the drummer (by that, I mean no further left or right.) pointing straight down towards the floor. Experiment at first simply with this mic's position. A lot of times if you put it near the altitude of your head while you're standing up, the drum kit will sound decent through that mic.
At this point, consider mic1 your primary microphone and try to capture the whole drum kit through it. I'm assuming you don't have a really isolated area to monitor the sounds, so you're gonna have to record some and then listen back to it. This is tricky because if you're not really careful, you can blow out your hearing while you're recording and then you can't listen critically for hours. Make sure you pop in earplugs or put on some isolation headphone thingies while the drums are being played, otherwise your ear won't be good for anything.
While you're doing all this you may be tempted to beef up a little something with your EQ nobs. More low end, more high end, less mids, more mids, whatever. This is a BAD idea. The are a number of reasons why, although if you have limited experience with mixing they may not seem concrete to an untrained ear. You have a decent mixer, I'm assuming you have some mics which in a very general way pic up sounds honestly.
Is the sound you're hearing a clear sound? Can you hear the tip of the drumstick clearly touching a cymbal? Is the snare drum coming through with clarity? Can you hear the attack of the batter hitting the kick drum head? Without touching any EQ's, listen. Really, really listen as hard as you can. Is the information you want in there? If not, MOVE THE MICROPHONE. There is a sweet spot where your mic will catch everything that's going on, just like your ear does. Good sound happens naturally in the universe. God made it that way. Decent equipment used properly will capture these great sounds, and you can't really do much to make them any better than your God did.
While listening back to this recording, you might think that it doesn't sound beefy enough, or heavy enough, or whatever the adjective is that you want to use to describe the gusto associated with rock bands. This might tempt you to want to boost the low end of this signal, which WILL SCREW YOU OVER. Simply don't do it. Artificially boosting the low end will make it IMPOSSIBLE to mix all your signals together in the end. Keep in mind, you're still going to be mixing in a kick mic. Low frequencies take a ridiculously large amount of "space" in a mix, and you'll run out of it quickly. When trying to put everything together you'll end up fighting one channel or instrument against another instead of putting them together like pieces of a puzzle. The really full beautiful sound of a rock band doesn't come from any one instrument, it comes from the combination of all the instruments working together, like an orchestra.
Adding high end or mid range to your signals has a similar but much more painful accumulative effect. If you do much of it at all, it will make listening back to a mix at any decent volume painful. It's easy to ignore for a while, when you're buzzing with the excitement about hearing your own songs back, but others will not be so pleased, and after a while you'll say, "this hurts my ears.".
So again on the topic of mic placement, to much snare? Not enough rack tom? Move the mic further forward (more over the rack tom, and less over the snare.) So on and so forth.
Once you've found the sweet spot for your primary mic, it's time to find the spot for Mic2. These will become your left and right overheads, so bear in mind that Mic2 is your right channel mic. Put mic2 just to the (drummers) right of mic1. Keep mic2 at the exact same altitude and angle as mic1. This is to avoid any phase problems that might come your way. You see, if your mics are the same distance away from the drum kit, the waves will be hitting both mics at roughly the same time, thus diminishing your chances of phase problems. Try starting out with mic2 around the area of the floor tom. (I'm speaking now of left-right/forward-backward axis, not altitude). It's now OK to go to your mixer and pan mic1 hard left and mic2 hard right. Now the sound you're listening back to will start to get interesting and fun to listen to because they're in stereo and sound real. After the initial rush of, "wow, that's neat" wears off, you can start listening critically. Is mic 2 picking up to much ride cymbal? Move it back away from the ride a little bit (speaking of frontward and backward, not altitude). It will be a little easier to find a decent spot for this mic. Try a few different places. Have your drummer stop playing. Listen back to your different takes and pick one that seems to best represent a natural sounding drum kit.
Once again, you don't want to do anything with the EQ and make it sound different than mic1 or people's brains will fart out when they're trying to listen to your recording. Generally, you don't want to simulate anything with a recording that wouldn't actually happen in real life because %100 of humans auditory interpretation mechanism is trained and shaped by the physics of the real world and sounds that happen in it.
Now, if you're using two different kinds of microphones for mic1 and mic2 (try your best not to do this) you might have to do some VERY SLIGHT EQ-ing to tailor to signal coming from mic2 to match mic1, but if this can be avoided through mic placement your final product will be better for it. Once you've gotten your stereo drum kit together, it's time to add your kick mic.
KICK MIKING PHILOSOPHY: It's tempting to put your kick mic inside the kick drum. A lot of people do it. There's something that seems very tidy and appealing about isolating a kick mic inside the drum. Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to capture the way a kick drum sounds from the inside. Now, if you were going to use 12 mics on your drums (a method that I, along with a lot of engineers, don't feel produces good results) you might be the type of person who would like to have the signal from inside a kick drum available to add into your mix for "attack". I won't dive into trying to tear that school of thought apart right now since it's not an issue at this point, due to the limitations of your gear collection. You're only using three mics and you want your drum kit to sound like a drum kit, not a couple genetically altered trash cans on cocaine. Think about this: Neither you or anyone listening to your recordings has ever had their head inside a kick drum during a performance. The things that go on inside a kick drum are it's own business and sound pretty much nothing like the final result of an entire kick drum. Air bouncing back and forth between the two heads of a wooden shell is not what we hear when we're standing in the room and hear a kick drum. That's not what we hear when we're playing a kick drum. Why would we want to record that sound?
Even though I keep using the term Kick Mic, try to think about it as a Front Of Kit Mic. By that I mean that you're primarily capturing the sounds coming off of the kick drum, but secondarily from the front of the drum kit as a whole. Place your kick drum mic somewhere in from of your kick drum. I can't tell you exactly where because it will change depending on whether or not there's a hole in the resonant head, how big the hole is, how big the kick is, what kind of resonant head is on the drum, the kind of mic you're using, how hard the drum kicks, so on and so forth. Mine always ends up between these two extremes: about 6 inches outside the hole in the resonant head, pointed directly towards where the batter hits the batter head, OR about a foot and a half away from the kick drum, about 6 inches off the floor.
If there is a hole in the resonant head, you might want to rotate the head so the hole is closer to the floor rather than closer to the top of the drum. There reason for this is so you can position the mic lower and hence, don't have excessive cymbal noise bleeding into the mic. You're wanting the capture percussion. You're going to have gobs of cymbal noise available, and you aren't going to need any more, believe me. I'll talk more about that in a second. If there isn't a hole in the resonant head, you might want to cut one, although if your drummer is happy with the sound of his kick drum, simply leave it alone, you can still record a good sound. If you do cut a hole, don't make the mistake of making it ANY bigger than 4" across. Somewhere between 3" and 4" is usually perfect. The reason a lot of people make the mistake of making the hole too big is because they don't really understand what it's for.
Here's the logic in a nutshell (or drumshell) as I understand it. Vintage drums were made for vintage music, the kick "breathed" more than modern drums, allowing air in and out more easily, and allowing a solid resonant head to be in place without "choking" the drum. As harder music came about, more guitar-driven, louder, and less jazzy, it was harder to hear the attack of the kick, so folks started making a small hole in the resonant head. This does a fabulous job at letting the sound of the batter hitting the batter head out of the drum and into the room. As drums companies continued changing their drums to match the music, they made them tighter and less ventilated, as to push more sound OUT of the drum and elsewhere. As this happened, the hole in the resonant head became pretty much a necessity since having a solid head on your drum and playing hard would simply "choke" the drum for lack of a place to put the air being forced out of it by the impact of the batter. Drummers (usually kids) who didn't know what they were doing would cut a hole in their resonant head because they saw others doing it, while not understanding the nature of airflow, sound, and drums in general. Not understanding the concept behind the hole and not taking to initiative to experiment, listen, and think about it, they started cutting them to big.
What's the problem with that? Well, a resonant head resonates (and makes the the kick drum go BOOM instead of THUD.) because there is air moving and bouncing around in the kick drum which takes some time to escape. A hole too big will let the air out of the drum to quickly and spoil the effect of a resonant head. No hole at all, mutes some of the attack of the batter (which you may or may not want, depending on the style of music.) and depending on the drum can choke the drum out of making a pleasant sound at all.
If you end up cutting a new hole in the kick drum head, don't try to do it with a blade. You'll end up messing up somehow. bring the kick drum to the kitchen. Put an open empty soup can on the stove and turn the burner on high. Heat the rim of the can up for a while and when it's really hot use the hot can to melt a hole in the resonant head.
Be super freakin' careful! It's crazy hot and you could really burn yourself. I always end up using one of those cooking mittens in conjuction with a couple layers of hot pad thingies. Now, if you wanna brand your hand Raders-of-the-Lost-Ark style, that's your business, but burns suck.
I typically take SLIGHTLY more liberty with EQ-ing this mic than the others. I Never boost anything, but I've been know to drop a tiny bit of mid range or high end or something every now and again. As I said before, EQ's are rarely any good for artificially boosting frequencies. They can however serve as a FILTER from time to time.
Don't try to sculpt your kick drum sound into something it's not. Let it be the big, full, lush sound that it is in real life, including the sounds of the shell which reside in the mid range and the sound of the attack of the batter which resides a little higher. Simply try and find that sweet spot I keep talking about. Have your drummer play the kick drum while you move your head around in front to the kick to find the best spot. This can and should be done wearing hearing protection of some sort. You'd be surprised how much your ear can re-tune itself to a protected scenario. Just give it some time.
After you have your sweet kick sound, you're going to want to balance all three mics so there's a full drum kit happening. Get the correct gain for mic1 so you're not clipping (peaking) the channel. If you're using the same model of mic for mic2 simply match the gain level on it's channel to the gain level of the mic1. when you move the faders on these two channels, you want to move them exactly the same, so your stereo field is not off balance. For instance if Mic1's fader is a 80 percent, Mic2's fader should be at 80 percent. Now add your kick mic to the mix. You may not be able to tell initially (especially since you're not monitoring live and will have to listen back to the recorded mix to critique it) how loud to have the kick drum in comparison to the overheads (mics 1&2). Maybe a good way to find a starting point is to watch the lights metering the output of the mixer. Just start out by matching the peak level of a loud snare hit, with the peak level of a loud kick. Now, bare in mind, this is only a starting point. Peak meters (which are what the lights on the output of the master fader on your mixer are) are not really effective in monitoring to perceived loudness of a sound. That's something I'd be happy to explain as well, but I don't feel like is worth the time of you reading right now.
As far as the mic goes, you're going to have to use your ear to balance those two elements. It's really not that hard. Remember your two overhead mics are married to each other, so all you have to do it find the sweet mix between the kick and overheads. Now, it's kinda hard to tell when you're not experienced if one or the other is too loud until you have all the other instruments there, but you might get lucky and nail it the first time. You will definitely lean wrong one way or another a few times near the beginning, but after you've made a mistake once or at most twice, you'll know how to avoid it. Just try and think, "what does a drum kit really sound like in real life?" and you'll come up with something way better than what most people have on their home demos.
Now, I don't know anything about your drummer, but he might play his high-hats and cymbals to loud for this miking method. It might take some practice on his end, but he's probably going to have to his his cymbals a lot more gently than he usually does for this to be a good recording. Please have him read this paragraph. If your cymbals are doing more than a nice full swooshing sound, even if it's a rocking loud drum part, the cymbal to drum ratio will probably be wrong on the recording. The way most rock drummers play is problematic and is what led to people having to use 17 mics on a drum kit instead of 3 or 5. Everything has to be close-miked so you can jack it up over the volume of the cymbals. If you don't think a drummer that doesn't hit the cymbals hard can really rock, listen to Led Zeppelin. None of John's drums were close-miked and which forced him to play with even dynamics. It will honestly make the whole kit sound bigger. It just takes a little re-training.
The concepts I discussed earlier about EQ-ing apply in computer land as well. Meaning that plugin EQ's within the program will cause the same problems as EQ's in the real world, only worse because it's within a completely digital and unnatural medium operating at a bitrate well below what it should to produce good sound. Basically by the time the wonderful sounds of music make their way into your computer at 44.1k, there's really not a lot there to work with, so the best thing you can do (in a general sense) is not screw with it to drastically. Whatever you decide to to with effects and such in your computer, do it with a huge portion of restraint and taste because you can send your audio down the drain fast in that environment.
That said, I've been know to use a limiter or compressor on drums before. I almost didn't even mention this because I use it so lightly and reluctantly. You might want to avoid using this, or at least until I can write you an essay on what exactly it does, how not to use it and why it's the single most detrimental thing used to ruin most recordings that ever happen in the home recording or "professional" recording world. It can be a VERY BAD THING. Now, that you've heard that, if you have some limiter plugin in your program go ahead a experiment with it, keeping in mind that however interesting you might think it sounds on your solo tracks, it's probably actually harming the overall product.
I'm going to try to e-mail you 2 mp3's of things I've recorded recently (sans vocals) in the tiny room next to my bedroom employing the recording techniques I described in this e-mail. They were recorded with three $90 mics through a $70 mixer into the mini-pin jack on my $500 laptop PC on a hacked copy of adobe audition. They're not the best sounding audio, but the point is, you can make good demos with nothing.
-Enoch Porch
http://enochporch.blogspot.com
Friday, August 11, 2006
I am every american.
That title is sarcastic. I don't know where the ideas that people have come from.
On the brighter side, here's a neat video.
On the brighter side, here's a neat video.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Sunday, August 06, 2006
A boy has got to work real hard...
I have been working as a cocktail waiter at a gay bar in Nashville for the last month. It's a simple job which does not require a lot of my time and which pays decently well. I turned in my two week notice there a week ago. My first and biggest problem with the job is that it is retardedly smoky in there. I started waking with a sore throat the mornings after my shift, and I simply can't do that. I always want to live healthfully.
There were some other more subtle things going on there that I didn't like. I am a communicator. I LOVE communicating. It seems like the older I get the more a like it. I like learning by listening to people and investing into people's lives through interaction. This is really quite easy and happens all the time in places that I hang out and at places like my old workplace. (cafe coco) That sort of thing can't happen in loud bar. First of all, people aren't in the right frame of mind to listen. Secondly, they aren't willing to talk about anything that really has any bearing on their life. Aside from small talk about being drunk or sex, there's really not a lot that goes there.
In addition to all this, I think it really bothered my dad that I was working in a bar, a gay bar, to boot. Although I don't hold his views on homosexuality, alcohol, sex in general, and places where those items are somewhat combined, I think it's much to trivial a job to "vex his spirit" over. It's hard to live up to my dad's standards, and mostly I don't try, but this is something I'm happy to add him into the equation of.
I will be working, at least for the time being, at Cafe Coco again. I had mixed feelings about it before. A lot of friends had said, "Enoch, I think you should move on to bigger and better things.". For the most part, I agreed with them. However, I did also realize that as far as working a regular job in time periods where I'm not touring or getting payed to be Enoch-ing, Cafe Coco is a thing that works well for me and is a fulfulling avenue for certain parts of my personality. I feel like I'm bettering the world when I'm there, and I feel like I'm being bettered.
There was a moment when I thought it would be a good idea to throw my "pre-2006" life away completely and start over new. Take at least a break from Thornton, move to a new house, quit my old job, quit my new band, quit most people, and start building from the ground up. I've learned that over time, no matter how much shit I pick up along the way, there are good things taking place in my life. The best mode of operation for me is to get rid of the bad stuff one by one and to invest in the good stuff. This is hard. This takes balance. This requires the self-control to not live in extremes. It's hard to deliberately cut out bad. It's like breaking an addiction I suppose. These things are like water and will slip through your fingers.
I guess I feel like I've acted a little rash about some elements of my life and would like to get it back in order. I feel good about it. Even though I've had my moments of "what the fuck?!" over the course of the last couple months, I feel like I've learned some good things that will stick with me forever. I hope.
In other news, some things have been working out really great. The moment I quit PLAY, the cafe had shifts galore available for me, which is awesome. I've started writing a movie script, (WTF, eh?) which I am excited about putting together.
One of the neatest things that has happened recently was when the lovely magical fairly lady Bekah from birmingham responded to one of my blog postings by sending me a new camera! My camera broke earlier this year and I hadn't gotten the opportunity (financially or logistically) to buy a new one and she simply sent me one in the mail! I've been shooting on it for a the last couple days and will be getting prints back soon. Look for pictures making there way into these postings in the near future...probably in the next couple of days.
Ben has been gracing our house with AMAZING Thai iced tea, which I am drinking now. My friends Luke, Shon, and Thurston have been a great source of encouragement for me over the last week. I got to see Conrad today (he lives in indiana now.). Life is good. Sometimes I forget. Thanks to those who remind me.
I just read through this post and found a lot of poorly constructed sentences. Hmm...Ain't it a shame?
-Enoch of the Earth people.
There were some other more subtle things going on there that I didn't like. I am a communicator. I LOVE communicating. It seems like the older I get the more a like it. I like learning by listening to people and investing into people's lives through interaction. This is really quite easy and happens all the time in places that I hang out and at places like my old workplace. (cafe coco) That sort of thing can't happen in loud bar. First of all, people aren't in the right frame of mind to listen. Secondly, they aren't willing to talk about anything that really has any bearing on their life. Aside from small talk about being drunk or sex, there's really not a lot that goes there.
In addition to all this, I think it really bothered my dad that I was working in a bar, a gay bar, to boot. Although I don't hold his views on homosexuality, alcohol, sex in general, and places where those items are somewhat combined, I think it's much to trivial a job to "vex his spirit" over. It's hard to live up to my dad's standards, and mostly I don't try, but this is something I'm happy to add him into the equation of.
I will be working, at least for the time being, at Cafe Coco again. I had mixed feelings about it before. A lot of friends had said, "Enoch, I think you should move on to bigger and better things.". For the most part, I agreed with them. However, I did also realize that as far as working a regular job in time periods where I'm not touring or getting payed to be Enoch-ing, Cafe Coco is a thing that works well for me and is a fulfulling avenue for certain parts of my personality. I feel like I'm bettering the world when I'm there, and I feel like I'm being bettered.
There was a moment when I thought it would be a good idea to throw my "pre-2006" life away completely and start over new. Take at least a break from Thornton, move to a new house, quit my old job, quit my new band, quit most people, and start building from the ground up. I've learned that over time, no matter how much shit I pick up along the way, there are good things taking place in my life. The best mode of operation for me is to get rid of the bad stuff one by one and to invest in the good stuff. This is hard. This takes balance. This requires the self-control to not live in extremes. It's hard to deliberately cut out bad. It's like breaking an addiction I suppose. These things are like water and will slip through your fingers.
I guess I feel like I've acted a little rash about some elements of my life and would like to get it back in order. I feel good about it. Even though I've had my moments of "what the fuck?!" over the course of the last couple months, I feel like I've learned some good things that will stick with me forever. I hope.
In other news, some things have been working out really great. The moment I quit PLAY, the cafe had shifts galore available for me, which is awesome. I've started writing a movie script, (WTF, eh?) which I am excited about putting together.
One of the neatest things that has happened recently was when the lovely magical fairly lady Bekah from birmingham responded to one of my blog postings by sending me a new camera! My camera broke earlier this year and I hadn't gotten the opportunity (financially or logistically) to buy a new one and she simply sent me one in the mail! I've been shooting on it for a the last couple days and will be getting prints back soon. Look for pictures making there way into these postings in the near future...probably in the next couple of days.
Ben has been gracing our house with AMAZING Thai iced tea, which I am drinking now. My friends Luke, Shon, and Thurston have been a great source of encouragement for me over the last week. I got to see Conrad today (he lives in indiana now.). Life is good. Sometimes I forget. Thanks to those who remind me.
I just read through this post and found a lot of poorly constructed sentences. Hmm...Ain't it a shame?
-Enoch of the Earth people.
Friday, August 04, 2006
I am...
I am what? I am a musician? I am a cocktail server? I am a photographer? I am a Barista?
I am the kind of person who likes funny movies?
I am the kind of person who does not like funny movies?
I am contradictory?
I am a person who likes natural things.
I am a man who prefers his guitar plugged into an amp.
I am having trouble defining myself.
I am in need of category.
I am a human. I am an American.
I am dreadfully afraid of the unknown?
I am looking for answers that worked for other people.
I am my own person.
I am having trouble being my own person.
I am a rebel.
I am a peacemaker.
I am in it for the long haul.
I am an idea!
I am less than an idea!
I am the space between lines!
I am not dead!
I am a living nothing!
I am the kind of person who likes funny movies?
I am the kind of person who does not like funny movies?
I am contradictory?
I am a person who likes natural things.
I am a man who prefers his guitar plugged into an amp.
I am having trouble defining myself.
I am in need of category.
I am a human. I am an American.
I am dreadfully afraid of the unknown?
I am looking for answers that worked for other people.
I am my own person.
I am having trouble being my own person.
I am a rebel.
I am a peacemaker.
I am in it for the long haul.
I am an idea!
I am less than an idea!
I am the space between lines!
I am not dead!
I am a living nothing!
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