Month Two Home

Immersed in pondering I I wonder where have I felt this sensation before? The trigger this time is surfing. Or more specifically, the territorial nature of surfers guarding their surf spot. I grew up in LA and for quite a few years lived very close to the beach. Yet at best I am crappy surfer that spends most of my time and all of my energy just paddling out past the waves and then chasing them back in after avoiding the ones that look like doom cometh. I am not one much for being chilly except in the Peppers sense and until the very recent now, I never made a true effort to truly grasp the whole pattern and strategy of timing, preparedness and mental state optimization necessary to improve my surfing skills and truly embrace the art. Though now it has clicked and getting up at 6:30 am to be wet by 7 in 55 degree water for two hours of alternating exertion and waiting has become something I look forward to. So back to my pondering, it dawns on me that the pattern of possessiveness of surf spots is reminiscent of trying to change lanes on the freeway while driving. The hot surf spot is the fast lane with cars cruising past and the beginner or alien surfer is a "lane changer" that is moving slow or stuck behind a truck or just wanting in to the fast moving herd. Guardedly, no car wants to open the space to let you in, as your mere presence slows the fast lane down and ruins the spot. Yet after you do manage to merge and if you do drive at a solid speed, it wont take long before all is forgotten and you become one of the locals not wanting to let those slow lane cars come clog the cruise. Why of course!, is that not that the way humans naturally act and respond when they have access to something that is both desirable and in limited supply. And my resentment fades as it all makes sense. Do my time, learn my skills, walk softly till welcomed and enjoy the process. Otherwise I would just be one of those idiots with road rage or surf rage as the case may be.

Anyway, currently I am immune, as I have hooked up with a group of long boarding old timers that have welcomed me in. They surf there every day, "C Street" they call it and they have their spot and their time and no one hassles me as I hang tight with a cool gang of locals.

Hey, check out Gene at http://surfstills.com/ in the middle picture, who introduced me to all.

Ok, audio nerdy tidbit of the day, Jon Rat sent me this web site which is full of cool calculators for all kinds of figuring.

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/Calculations03.htm

Oh and this one is cool to and came from Greg Cameron, my long time friend and former drummer os SWA and several other bands "back in the day"

http://users.swing.be/hdepra/home/P22/E-sounds.html

You can put these on your iPod or MP3 player and test it's frequncy response with Smaart or an RTA or whatever test software you audio humans use.

Speaking of pals, check out another good friend Derek Van Ord also known as DVO who an awesome monitor engineer and does Ben Harper and many other cool bands

He got roped into doing camera blocking for a french TV show on a Ben Harper gig, you can just feel how much joy he radiates in being on stage!

Finally for this segment, though they are long since burned their course, the California fires had their impact. I live a bit away from them but not far enough away to have an erie sky and thick smoke smell wrap itself around our lives.

while piles of ash find their way to settle everywhere

Next stop, Halloween, and until then, big eyes and smiles 'cause it is way more fun than complaining.

Dave Rat

PS, I am headed out to LDI to mix on for EAW for ET Live, if you are there, come say hello!

Well, how about an update on the way of world of being home. I went for a visit to say hello to the Foo Fighters and crew at their rehearsal prepping for the Europe tour. They are one of the greatest bands all the way around. They rock, they are all super cool people, they have fun and their music is awesome, all good.

They have a pretty cool tour setup planned out and if you have not seen Foo Fighters live, I highly recommend you do. Next stop for me is AFI. I am trying not to tour and steering clear of mixing shows as best I can to stay focused on other things but when the call comes in to cover a gig, and it is just three shows and not far away, well, I could not help but say yes. Rat has been supply sound gear to AFI for several years now and this was my first real chance to meet and get to know them a bit better and it was all good.

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Next stop in my travels is EAW for some more design work on the new MicroWedge.

Every single detail is addressed and I absolutely love it, it is a dream come true as I have always envisioned the way that the product should be and finally I am surrounded by an infrastructure that not only "gets it" but also has the capability of implementing it. The reflectivity and hardness and texture of the external coating, the exact round over radius of every edge, the shape, feel and depth of the handle. The center of gravity, grill material, mounting and coating. The switch placement, fly hardware, feet material, shape, logo design and dimensions. Oh, and the sound aspects are even more detailed. Tune, test, refine, repeat. Even after dialing in the optimum coax component frame, come and driver, it was time to address the speaker dome (dust cap), material and shape and cone coatings, glue thickness, the internal damping material type, thickness and mounting. Tune, test, refine, repeat. Exciting stuff and all the while I refer back to stable reference points so I do not get lost in the sonic direction headed. And I carry my notes and refer back to the overall concept of the Micro Series. Non-processor dependant designs that naturally sound good without electronic enhancement. Electronic processing then can be added to further optimize the designs. Though the Micro's do have passive crossovers in them, in both old and new Micro's, the biamp switch completely removes the passive crossover from the circuit and allows direct connection from the amp to the drivers.

Oh, and as I have been asked to many times here in bloggery world, I have been approached about maybe teaching a seminar on sound subjects. Actually I have been approached several times from various entities and when things settle down a bit more for me I plan on speaking at a few colleges that and sound schools, but most recently was one that is a bit more open format. So let me ask you all this, if I was to teach a sound seminar, is there anyone that would be interested in coming to a sound seminar and if so, what topics or concepts would you be interested in?

**** End Sound Nerd Speak ****

What else? Well, there was an article on sound humans blogging http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/prosound_200709/index.php?startpage=0

If you are a subscriber to PLSN or FOH Magazine you can now vote for the awards. http://www.parnelliawards.com/vote.php

Though the whole concept of awards shows does not sit too well with me. I always get this feeling that the same insiders just gather round to pat each other on the back once a year. Oh boy look! The same people won 10 years in a row again! Hurray! Yet I also know that when do actually vote, I often find that I am not that familiar with the various categories and contenders and there is a temptation to vote for the one I have heard of, hence and most likely the reason that the outcomes are typically less than exciting. All that said, I do like the exceptions to the rule and in a way, it makes it all the more enjoyable when an outsider to the "good ol' boys" takes the prize.

Anyway, I will be headed out to Florida for LDI. You know that saying, "what comes around, goes around?" Well, back 2005 I wrote an article for FOH Magazine http://www.daverat.com/ldi.htm and the trimmed version is up online at http://fohonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=443&Itemid=1. As the twists of the world would have it, EAW is going to be one of the stages at SoundHenge also know as ET Live. Oh jees. Not only did ET Live they quote my article to promote the event (yes, they did ask first) as fate would have it, guess who they asked to mix on their stage this year? Most importantly, check out my hair cut in the quote photo.

http://www.ldishow.com/LDI07/public/Content.aspx?ID=739

Clearly that of a seasoned professional businessman I am trying so hard to present.

So if any of y'all are there in Orlando, come say hello.

To leave you with a smile, here is a picture of my little Sammy holding her cat Holly wearing her Rat Sound pet shirt.

Rock on! and till next time in a week or so.

Dave Rat

Bloggery Update

I know it has been a while and as much as posting has been a goal on my mind, the sheer process of rebuilding my post-tour life has been fully encompassing. That is not to say that I do not get to venture out and going down south a few hours to say hello to Muse crew was super cool.

Hanging with MC, Muse sound engineer. He mixes a great sound and he is doing some cool stuff. He, like myself, had some issues with diving into digital boards and and after testing the best of the best, went back to analog. Unlike me, he has a much more complex show to mix so he set up a midi controller footswitch tied into the console with all the song names and scene changes on it and can step through settings, not unlike a digital board.

One of the scenes:

And of course some Rat swag for all. Paul, their production manager made the best choice right off the bat!

Oh, and Muse is great music, a great show and all good.

**** Other Stuff of interest ****

This is a 1976 picture of a 20,000 watt home stereo sent to me by Craig O. Oh my, hit the link if you want to read more:

http://www.scrounge.org/speak/burwen/index.html

And check out this Saturday Night Live clip

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/#mea=166786 from when Foo Fighters were on SNL. So honored and how cool is it that Dave Grohl rocks the Rat Sweatshirt, and the video clip is really funny.

The playing catch up with a smile,

Dave Rat

**** Dormant Roadie Babble ****

So sorting through some pics and since Leeds was the last show I was pretty pre occupied with wrapping up odds and ends so not a lot of photos. I did find these. The magnetic attraction fire does seem to go quite well with music. Add in some food and it somehow highlights the human-ness of it all.

Oh and found this from Glasgow I think. Wow, this is one heck of a facility! "Man and woman make baby in shower." And even the slippery floor warning, so be careful.

So I am hanging out and a critter cruises by in the night in the back yard. The combination of curiosity and hunter instinct sets in and so I decide to trap whatever it is and wake up to find this little guy.

Cute little baby possum and very stinky as well. Well, I don't mind 'em running around so I did what any considerate person would do, I let him go in my neighbors yard.

Been getting a bunch o requests to take a look round the home I occupy so here are a few. I while back I bought some old recording studio sound baffles and combined them with some excess shirts from past tours and gigs I have done. This would be in the dining room. That purple shirt with the satan on it says Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Pearl Jam." Imagine if that tour happened now how big it would be!!

My home office.

And as we head to the Rat Shop I find Ben de-prepping the Peppers FOH console as it re enters the rental inventory. All those wires were in the back of my board, yikes!

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Dynamic vs. Compressed.

So a while back I was pondering mixing live shows, as I strangely so often do, and I started analyze the varying aspects of dynamics in live reverberant fields. Is there something more legitimate than personal preference that would add credibility to using compression? The studio humans and mastering labs use a tom of it, but comparatively us live engineers use fairly little. I know it works well to control the variations in the band's playing and helps with smoothing the sound but there is yet another advantage of compression that is not so readily apparent.

On the surface it is quite obvious that compression can be used on bass to reduce the differential between the louder and softer notes resulting in a more consistent sound. Same with vocals and I put comps on guitars as well. I even take it further and run kick and snare into a subgroup that has a bit of compression on it to keep the two locked in a bit more volume-wise to each other.

So what got me started again on this train of thought was not long ago I was listening to a super punchy horn loaded rig. Boom, crack, boom, crack, as the drums jump out at me and they do sound cool. But I also know from experience that the reverb decay time from the loud 'on top' super punchy sounds blurs the intelligibility of everything else. If an uncompressed snare is 10 db 'on-top' of the mix, then the correspondingly loud roar of the room-reverb-decay-level from that snare would hurt overall intelligibility long after the original snare hit has been heard and ended. Conversely, that means that if the instruments are all compressed to a fairly narrow volume range, they then would stay at an even level consistently above the room reverberation rather than the loud sounds setting off room reverberations louder than the following softer sounds.

What I am getting at here is that controlling the differential between the loudest and softest sounds not only improves intelligibility by reducing volume inconsistencies, it is also helpful in dealing with reverberant room acoustics. The sacrifice? Well, you loose some of that slam- hit eye-blinking impact. But hey, the upside is your mix will sound a bit more like an album, the audience will be able to hear the various instruments and vocals better especially in reverberant rooms, and you will be able to get more overall volume from the PA with less clip lights flashing.

If you like the Sound Nerd Speak section, try this link to see them all!

http://www.ratsound.com/cblog/categories/1-Sound-Nerd-Speak

**** End Sound Nerd Speak ****

Dave Rat

Uh oh! No call sheet under my door! What time is lobby call? Oh, that's right, lobby call today - whenever, Ha ha! Reality shift as my life slips back to the other way. Way too much to do and every time I cross off something from my list, three more things jump on. Ahhh, but the timelessness is dreamy. Up at 7 am every morning and in bed by 9 pm or 3 am or up in the middle of the night all depending on what I am not sure.

The EAW adventure is moving along and if I can just remember to go to the grocery store I would not be hungry all the time. Oh well, eating is over rated any way. So stepping back to my notes and pics of the past.......

Day 457 - Aug 24 - Leeds Festival

Looks like Ozzy Osborne has a novel concept for solving the innate human nature to battle one another for no good reason. check out whateverittakes.org if you need one of these fashionable wristbands. Gotta love the Ozzy!

Ok, so here we are.

Leeds Festival is known for many things. One of which is being the sister festival to Reading, another is for having what is probably the worlds most notorious load in. I am standing at the truck dock. If you look closely you can see what resembles one of those contraptions you see at a museum that the ball rolls down in curious ways except here it is actually the ramp that you have to push every piece of gear up and down to perform the show. Though a mechanical masterpiece, it is also a roadie's nightmare.

The city of lights as roadie Lee grabs an overhead shot of mix position mid show. My home.

And with a flash of light the glamour erases and clear proof that lighting is inversely proportional to happiness.. ...

I wish I had more for ya but more is to come.

Oh, and all y'all that are working on roadiepedia, you rule! Some crazy funny stuff on there!

So sorry for being lax on responding to comments, my space posts and such, I just need to clear this bump of home acclimation and all will hopefully settle in. Also, I have all kinds of cool footage from Sonic Youth tour of the "Dirty" album that I will be posting soon on youtube.com, for all y'all that like that kind o stuff.

Dave Rat

For all y'all in the industry and even if you are not, who would like to nominate lighting, audio, trucking, staging, bussing and other entertainment entities for the annual Parnelli Awards, go to this link and rock out, vote for some, vote for all or none! http://www.parnelliawards.com/nominate.php

Day 456 - Aug 24 - Reading Festival

So as we approach the our last hurrah, Scott and I decide that we can not end without one last adventure into the roadie wilderness known as the crowd. Shhhh, as we lay low and creep off into uncharted lands the sensation of danger is imminent. Quickly we discover that to wander astray could have dire consequences. Hmmm, I wonder if this is the right way?

After a brief pow wow, Scott and I decide that we will heed the words of the yellow sign and follow a less ominous path. Stealthy we blend.

It appears that the natives posses a certain fondness for an effervescent yellowish liquid called beer. It also appears that warm beer is some sort of criminal act so they have placed an amnesty booth allowing the contraband to be traded for the more legal cold stuff. Notice the Function One PA off to the right. Hmmm, clearly a supporter of beer coldness perpetuation.

Wow, truly and advanced society! Here we find a reciprocal setup that pays cash for used beer cups. Very cool. My expectations are high that indigenous punters keep their cages quite clean.

It is not uncommon when out in the field observing nature that one will be so fortunate to observe the regional life forms involved in the mating ritual. With much care we creep up and grab a rare shot indeed.

Cleanliness is paramount in this tribe. Observe the female nonchalantly exiting the restroom as the hazmat team disinfects the area.

Approaching the outskirts, we stumble across the local watering hole. Both Scott and I dare not get to close as, like most creatures, punters do not like to be disturbed while quenching thirst.

I seem to have lost Scotty. where could he be? After much searching, I was quite surprised to find him dangerously close to the punter nesting grounds. "Hey Scott, what are you doing?"

Uh oh. As we all know, every silver lining has a cloud. what do we have here?

Ooooh, look! A swimming hole!! Perhaps this is where they bathe?

Feeling a bit home sick, Scott and I head back to the the roadie herd where we find safety and solace in our beloved front of house area.

The happiness of the rock show.

And, oh nooooo! Does that say 99.4 db in red? Is that what they consider too loud? How can that be? At least please give me 103. This is like driving on the freeway with a 40 mile an hour speed limit.Oh well, never forget it could always be worse.

One more show to go! See ya tomorrow.

Dave Rat

First of all **** Kudo's to all that have been rocking out on Roadiepedia! Awesome to see it growing and I check the recent changes every day and chip in when I can. I love the mix of serious, informative and sarcasm developing. All good!

**** Dormant Roadie Babble ****

Slowly the layers of tour habit peel a way as I re-acclimate, sometimes begrudgingly, to the world of home. I love my own bed but changing and washing sheets, well, not so much. My fridge 'food to consumption' ratio is way out of whack and I buy way too much of the wrong things and not enough of the right ones so I end up hungry as toss I out things gone rotten. I do a short run to the beach and back each morning which definitely makes my day better, I would love to get some serious exercise but instead I run around from project to project still feeling a sinking sensation that I think is for the most part illusionary as I know I am making headway, I just have so much catching up to do that the progress is not readily apparent. Have you ever tried walking to what appears to be a nearby mountain only to find it is like ten miles away?

If the darn house would be done, it would sure help. Then I could unpack from the garage, then I could have room to work on projects in the garage and I could find things without searching and un stacking tons of boxes. Almost ready to get the molding caulked and everything primered except the guy that did the molding messed up and mounted it all backwards around the doors and screwed up some other stuff too. The contractor is like "there is no way I can let this stay like this, it would kill my reputation." And I am like "oh, and also it looks really bad too!" So after that I get final inspection, then I have a few more projects that do not require a building permit but if I start them now, the inspector won't sign off on inspection till they are sealed up, aaargh. So all this work I could get out of the way needs to wait wait wait some more.

**** End Dormant Roadie Babble ****

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

On another note, I am really excited about progress with MicroWedge products.

I have been working on designs for a complete series of stage stage monitor products for some time now. Seven years ago I got a patent on the design and licensed it to Radian Audio to manufacture and distribute. While Radian did a pretty good job of getting a few of the products to market, without a dedicated engineering staff, it was really tough to get the rest of the complimentary designs done, processor settings refined and such. Anyway, I had been approached by several larger companies interested in the MicroWedge designs and when the contract with Radian ended in May, I was able to seriously follow up. Hence my adventure as a designer/consultant has begun with a company called EAW. I even got to hang out with Jeffrey Cox, the Prez who used to run L'Acoustics, all good!

http://www.eaw.com/frontrow/2007/09/post_21.html

Hurray! We get to build cool audio toys!! Not only that, I get to work with and hang out with all these incredibly brilliant audio engineering humans. Finally after all these years I feel like my dream of making all these cool designs I have been working on for so many years will become a reality. If I was a rock band, this would be the equivalent of me getting signed to a major label after putting out 3 albums on an independent. Except for the fact that most audio companies are not all creepy like record companies tend to be.

**** End Sound Nerd Speak ****

Next up is "Dave and Scott brave the wilderness known as the crowd." What will they find? Is it safe? Will they be eaten? The answer to those and many other questions, coming soon to a blog post near you.

Dave Rat

Though I vanish at times, I rarely disappear and if all runs smooth I hope to stick around in this bloggery world for a while. I woke up pondering and about how cooperative efforts of multitudes of humans with a common direction, makes me happy and I came up with a new interactive project that requires help from y'all, my bloggery friends. So after after thousands of hours of sharing my world and adventures and no advertisements, no strings attached and free for fun free, I have a favor or task or adventure to ask from all of you. Perhaps view it as the final exam, the beginning of something with no end or an interactive group public extension of the blog. Either way, if you go to http://www.ratsound.com/mwiki you can freely add edit and generally mess around with the evolving content of Roadiepedia. I would very much appreciate a bit of your time throwing some of your view, knowledge or personality into the mix and helping build what I hope to be something fun, funny and informative.

And with said said, lets more forward into the past.

Day 456 - Aug 24 - Reading

We have a day off in Reading which I am a bit sorry to say that Reading (pronounced redding) is not the epicenter of thrillsville and the big Festival here seems to be the life of the city. That said, it is cool here and a wonderful day for an excursion.

Now correct me if I am wrong but do the two police officers off to the right resemble Laurel and Hardy? And also notice that the skinny on has tons of pockets and obviously is carrying everything while the big guy has none. Oh, and hello coffee and Lee!

So off on a train ride head Lee and I

To go visit a legendary sound system builder designer named Tony Andrews. I had never met Tony before and on my mind is that just about everything he designs is almost the exact opposite of the methods I follow. He is all about horn loaded boxes and very anti line array. I avoid horns at all costs and love a well designed line array. Two completely opposing points of view yet we have chatted on the phone as someone I hold much respect for as the innovative system designer of the Turbosound Flashlight, Floodlight and many other forward thinking audio products. I am both honored and apprehensive.

The Funktion One shop is located behind their house in the countryside and it is an inventors dream. Everything needed to to design and build from the ground up. Audio stuff everywhere and a a virtual playground for sound nerd such as myself. Common ground. I could feel it was there though I could not put my finger on it till I was there. Aside from striving to design cool audio things I find our directions are not different, only the paths chosen to get there. Non-processor dependant designs that do not require hi tech electronics to make them listen-able, now that is something we agree on. The adventure cold not have been more fun and a wonderful dinner and brain challenging discussions and how cool is it that I get to hang out with famous audio humans!!

And speaking of audio innovations, how about those Greeks? This is a cool audio article on the ancient's sent to me by Lisa

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070404162237.htm

Till a different now which will be next,

Dave Rat