Made a new video with Source Audio.  Ickle-Picklestein got herself a little cameo in this one too.  Hope you enjoy!

This one is an all-bass Multitrack Videosong (a la Mystery Guitar Man or Pompaloose) that we filmed in my old apartment in Brighton.  There’s a decent chance of this music becoming a more developed song with vocals later on, but we’ll see about that…

Pete Smith is a stand-up guy with a big heart who really cares and looks out for his people.  Recently, he’s hit a pretty big bump in the road that’s going to take a lot of energy to get past and he could use some help so he can start living the life he deserves.  I’ll let him speak for himself on this one.  His story:

In December 2007, I graduated cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in Psychology. After completing my last semester in a study abroad program in Fiji, I spent the next few months traveling through New Zealand, Africa, Thailand and Hong Kong. I then returned to Boston, MA to begin working as an Associate Consultant at Axia, a business management consulting firm. I lived a fast-paced life of work, play and travel, and I loved every minute of it. Then, all of a sudden, it came to a screeching halt.

In January 2009, I began feeling fatigue and aches that seemed to be beyond the common flu. A few months later, I blacked out at work and was in so much pain I could barely get out of bed. For the next nine months, I saw over 10 specialists in Boston, including the hospital’s top doctors. After 90 pages of blood tests, CT scans, endoscopies, colonoscopies, biopsies, MRIs and any other test you can think of, the doctors remained clueless. The symptoms continued to progress and I started noticing new ones, including cognitive difficulties (trouble reading and remembering, losing short-term memory, mixing up phone numbers and addresses, and a few times forgetting which apartment I lived in); crippling bone, muscle and joint pain; constant headaches, including migraines; weight loss of 25 pounds; extreme fatigue; insomnia; hallucinations; and many others. There were days when I was not sure that I would survive through the night.

Initially thinking of Celiac disease, with the increased symptoms I began to suspect Lyme (which I had when I was six years old living on Long Island). At this time I did not know the political chaos surrounding this disease. When I mentioned Lyme to a doctor, it looked as if I had suggesting drinking Satan’s potion to cure myself. Doctors would stammer, “It’s definitely not Lyme, trust me,” and “Maybe it’s HIV. Let’s check again [for the fourth time].” My primary care told me that it was all in my head; that I should get more sleep and “stop complaining about the pain.” He said I would never find a cure to an imaginary illness so I should learn to deal with it and stop making it worse than it already was. I left each doctor’s office in tears of frustration, pain and anger. How could it be that these world-class doctors would refuse to even test for, or even consider, Lyme disease? Then I learned the true politics of Lyme disease.

In 2006, the Infectious Disease Society of America (“IDSA”), an independent medical association, released the Lyme disease guidelines. Patients with chronic Lyme disease were shocked to see this group of doctors completely denying that Chronic Lyme disease even exists. The panel found that in no circumstances should patients be treated with more than 30 days of antibiotics, and oftentimes less is sufficient. It did not acknowledge that Lyme disease can exist beyond the initial infection, and insisted on a positive Lyme test to show that a patient had been infected at all. This test has been found to be over 50% inaccurate. It turns out that nine out of the 13 board members have direct conflicts of interest, including being on the payrolls of pharmaceutical companies, holding patents to Lyme vaccines and diagnostic tests, and in some cases, even receiving money directly from insurance companies who do not want to pay for long-term antibiotics (oral and intravenous), one of the few, albeit risky, paths to a cure for many Chronic Lyme disease patients such as myself. Despite the Attorney General of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal’s antitrust suit of the IDSA, the guidelines have persisted. Just recently it was reported that the guidelines were reviewed by an “independent body,” and that not a single change needed to be made. This independent body was of course found to have direct ties to the IDSA. In the true peak of irony, the head of the new independent review committee was in fact the previous head of the IDSA itself.

Lyme disease is an epidemic in this country, surpassing HIV to become the number two infectious disease our country currently faces. This is not limited to the northeast as cases have sprung up all over the east and west coasts. Yet, due to these corrupt IDSA guidelines, doctors are too scared to diagnose Lyme disease and insurance companies are all too quick to deny any payments related to this “nonexistent” illness. Lyme patients have bankrupted themselves while becoming increasingly sick, -oftentimes ending in death. Meanwhile, Lyme-literate physicians such as Dr. Joseph Jemsek, previously of North Carolina, struggle to treat patients. Dr. Jemsek was sued by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina for $100 million since he refused to follow the IDSA guidelines. He lost the case and his license to practice medicine in North Carolina was suspended for one year, forcing him to relocate to South Carolina and currently, Washington, DC.

This is an unfortunate story of corruption, deceit and death. This is a story which needs to be exposed and I need your help in doing so. I have lost nearly everything to this disease: my apartment, my job, my friends, my money and my independence. But it’s time for the suffering of Lyme patients around the United States to end.

Please contact me if you would be willing to work to expose this corruption. I would be happy to speak with you and answer any questions you may have about this disease and the experience that I am going through.

Thank you so much for your consideration.
Peter Smith

pssmith2@gmail.com

This Monday, June 7th, Pete will have an IV put in for approximately the next six months. The medication Peter will be receiving through the IV will cause him to feel extremely sick (even worse than now), and he will most likely be unable to get out of bed on a regular basis. The upcoming six months will be filled with pain and fear. Peter needs your support.

This IV will cost $1800 per WEEK. Peter is expecting to have the IV for up to 6 months = over $40, 000. Any donations for Peter would be greatly appreciated by all of his friends, family, and of course Peter. Anything you can spare, even just a few bucks could help!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO PETE VIA PAYPAL (send to pssmith2@gmail.com)

Visit the Facebook Group and share your thoughts!

Regardless of how you feel on this issue, Pete and his family need money to afford this aggressive treatment.  As a peer of Pete, I am deeply discouraged to think of him forced to spend these years of his life constricted to his bed, robbed of the opportunities I enjoy every day to be out in the world laying the foundation for my future.  If you can’t afford to donate, you can help by spreading the word.  This is the internet after all.

Greetings from Liberia!  I arrived safely in Liberia Wednesday night after over a full day of exhausting travel. After less than a week, I have found myself falling in love with this beautiful culture and its people. My DEN-L coworkers have been extremely welcoming and eager to make me as comfortable and at-home as possible. I am quickly becoming accustomed to the hot and muggy climate, the few hours of the day when electricity is available (my f … Read More

via AU Interns

Referred to as the “best distortion box ever” by both vintage tone champion Adrian Belew of King Crimson and neo-shredder Herman Li of DragonForce, the newly released Soundblox Classic Distortion by Source Audio is showing that analog soul can be captured on a digital chip.

A veritable Ghost Trap a la Ghostbusters, the Soundblox Classic Distortion houses eleven recaptured spirits of prevalent distortion sounds resulting from a five-year listening study of stomp boxes and tube amps.  Sounds from the Big Muff Pi, Fulltone Distortion Pro, Tone Bender, Fuzz Face, ProCo Rat and Octavia can all be selected at the turn of a knob on the Soundblox Classic and then further tweaked by a graphic equalizer, two drive knobs, midrange knob and an output knob.

In addition, Source Audio has provided the option of tweaking the old sounds even further via an expression pedal morphing function, MIDI input connection and a jack for the Hot Hand motion-sensing controller.

Source Audio, now in it’s fifth year as a company, is a true nod to the marriage of music and technology.   Having formed as a spin-off from the well-known semi-conductor company Analog Devices, they were able to request a customized state-of-the-art Digital Signal Processor, the SA601 chip, to pursue their music-centric interests.  The two sets of ears in the listening study, VP of Engineering Jesse Remignanti (former audio systems and software engineer at Analog Devices) and Chief Scientist Bob Chidlaw (former senior engineer at Kurzweil Music) sat down to discuss the listening study, the process of creating the Soundblox Classic Distortion and a few other topics for the audiophile at home.

The need for a pedal that housed multiple quality distortion tones was clear to Jesse Remignanti, a veteran guitarist of the New England music scene.  One of his challenges for the creation of the Soundblox Classic Distortion was to design an interface that could work seamlessly on-stage.  He muses, “I’ve seen some guys who have anywhere from six to ten pedals on their board which are just distortion…jumping from one pedal to the other and doing a toe-tapping dance to get one sound to another sound.”  He continues, “It’s easier to just have it called up on a preset or use the expression pedal.  It’s useful for anyone from the pro musician to the guy who’s doing cover tunes and needs a different sound because they’re doing Metallica and then The Cars.”

For Chidlaw, a collector of tube amps, the challenge was to create digital sounds from scratch that matched his standards for analog sounds, which were quite high at the beginning of the project. “When I started at Source Audio, I was a real tube amp snob” states Chidlaw matter-of-factly.  “The only distortion I would use was real distortion from a tube amp.  I would sometimes modify amps to get more gain.  Turning up the gain on a Marshall JCM-800 was one of my little moves.”

To truly capture some of the most notable distortion sounds in the fuzz pantheon, Bob and Jesse would have to explore the world of stomp boxes and as they dug deeper, Chidlaw’s tastes began to open up.  “I had built solid-state distortion devices before.  I really had just rejected them all by this point 5 years ago.” He reflects,  “But then we bought a distortion pedal, the Fulltone Distortion Pro and I thought, ‘wow, this actually does sound quite nice.’ Then when we really started getting into the Classic Distortion we started acquiring a lot more pedals.  I personally bought far too many for my growing collection.  I really came to see the charm in solid-state distortions.  It really gives you something that a vaccum tube can’t.  You can’t get that sound from a vacuum tube amplifier.  It can’t be done.”

In mapping the digital sounds to be placed in the Soundblox Classic Distortion,  Chidlaw had to create each algorithm from the ground up, attempting to capture the essence of each distortion tone.  “An algorithm is a recipe of how the sound is processed…There’s a lot of trial and error; a lot of tweaking… I just have to use my ears to try to compare what the digital system is doing with what the real analog pedal is doing.”

He continues, “You can’t really point to a sound as it goes by. Try to hear just what it is that makes a particular fuzz have it’s own sound.  What is in the sound? All you can say is ‘doesn’t that sound kind of harsh in the high end?’ and maybe it does or maybe it doesn’t strike you that way… If you’re making something analog, you can say ‘I’ll use some of these transistors that were very cheap back in the day when this thing was built’ but what is the digital signal processing equivalent of a cheap transistor?  Not at all obvious…”

Classic Distortions waiting for shipment

The timing of the release for the Soundblox Classic Distortion is fairly fortuitous, coming at a time of heightened expectations for musicians.  As modern music fans gain more access to more music across a longer timeline, they seem to gravitate toward either the eccentric or the tried and true.  A look at the Billboard Top Ten shows a reissue of Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones alongside the likes of Lady Gaga and LCD Soundsystem.

The aim of the Soundblox Classic Distortion is a near precise match for the needs of the modern performer in that it can call up the guitar tone from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ in one moment and then in the next, it can create a never-before-heard sound.

“It gives you some really interesting effects” explains Remignanti, “because you could get an in-between sound from two completely different pedals.  You could switch from the Rat Tone to the Tube Drive or something just by rocking the expression pedal.”

Chidlaw adds, “You can get some more bizarre things happening in the middle of those morphs.  You could say there is only twelve selector positions on the Classic Distortion, but if you use the morph control, you’ve really got hundreds of more possible selector positions by just, sort of, freezing the morph. Sixty percent of the way between this and this and you’ve got this new sound that’s in there.”

The versatility of the Classic Distortion can be traced back to that signature chip, the SA601 Digital Signal Processor.  The power of the chip allowed the Source Audio engineers to push the pedal into new territories for a distortion stompbox.  When asked about the graphic equalizer, another of the pedals unique features, Remignanti says simply “We had enough room in the processing and in the interface to add a seven-band EQ and it’s programmable for each preset.  You could have the same distortion effect with three different EQ settings and get totally different sounds out of it.  So, it’s a very nice, flexible feature…[It’s] not something commonly seen on distortion pedals.”

A collection of circuit boards used for Source Audio pedals

Matching the considerable uniqueness of the sounds, the aesthetic and layout of the Soundblox Classic Distortion have a simple and modern feel.  Remignanti explains, “Our goal with the overall design was to make them simple in terms of the interface and the overall appearance but also modern looking.  We tried not buy into the whole retro thing in our main design philosophy for the housings and the look of the pedals.  [As for] the interface, we tried to keep it to as low a number of knobs and controls as possible, but still allow the user to get a lot of features and a lot of different sounds.”

For more information on the Soundblox Classic Distortion, please visit: http://www.sourceaudio.net

‘Portrait of Tracy’ is a song that I learned back in high school during my independent studies.  I was very lucky to have a teacher who was willing to just shut me in a room and let me practice for half of the afternoon every day.

As for the song itself, those high ringing notes, the harmonics, are really what make it speak to me.  They truly expand the sonic scope of the bass to create this wide sound that is almost mystical in how soothing it can be.  If any bass players out there are interested in learning how to play harmonics on the bass, this is certainly the song to turn to.

I’m just getting started in this life of music so I am not so sure that I can offer any groundbreaking words of wisdom here.  However, I do know that there are a lot of us out there trying to figure out what to do with ourselves and it always helps to talk about it.  If you want to send me an email like Mike did, my address is:  willcady@gmail.com

It would be great to hear from you.

Mike wrote:

Hey Will,

I’ve been really thinking about majoring in music lately, but I wanted to get an “inside perspective” of things and I wanted to get that perspective from as many people as I can.  I’ve asked my best friend who is currently a freshman at William Patterson University in New Jersey as a Music major, as well as my guitar teacher, so I thought I’d also ask you.  I’ve just wondered what it takes to be successful as a musician.  I don’t mean like going to Hollywood and getting Rock Star status or anything, but just how life is like as a musician and stuff.  I’ve been really thinking of being a music teacher or a tutor while being part of a band on the side or something, much like my choir teacher from high school or my guitar teacher who tutored me.

Basically I guess I’ll just list the few questions:

1. How stressful can it get being a musician?  Is the payoff/good feeling from being a musician worth the stress?

2. What is the likelihood of making a modest living off of being a musician?

3. What are the things that producers really look for in an artist/band?

I love music and really want to do it, but I want to know what I’m getting myself into before I do.  I know I’m not the greatest musician or singer, and I also know that I’m not the worst, but I’m worried that if in the future I start a family I wouldn’t be able to support them with a career in music.  Thank you for your time

Sincerely,
Mike

So, to answer Mikes questions:

1.   I have found that being a musician means that I am solely responsible for the outcome of my career.  That’s either deeply terrifying or truly liberating, depending on which way the wind is blowing.  I have imagined myself as a songwriter, session player, music critic, stage performer and a few other things at different points in my life.  Regardless of the identity I want to call my own, making sure that I am good at what I do has always been on me and me alone.

The best way that I have learned to deal with the stress of it is to just create.  I can’t prove to anyone that I’m a songwriter if I can’t show them any songs.  I can’t call myself a session player if I haven’t made music with anyone else.  When the creating just isn’t happening, then it’s time to practice because it means I’m not good enough to pull off what I’m trying to do.  So is the payoff worth the stress?  Yes, because the stress comes from wanting the payoff.

2.  To make a living off being a musician, you’ve got to have your hands in a lot of different things.  Right now, I’ve got most of my eggs in one basket at Source Audio, but they are asking me to wear a lot of different hats.  Each responsibility I take on has everything to do with the fact that I am a musician.  Marketing and sales are skills I’ve developed marketing myself and The Help.  Writing and performing bass lines has been the core of my musicianship for years.  Sound engineering is something I’ve learned from recording myself and being in professional studios.  The concept of “artist relations” to me, is just making friends with people like me.  Explaining the details of the pedals feels no different from giving a private lesson, really.  All of these things are pretty unique skills, that I didn’t realize were valuable until someone started paying me for them.  As for the rest of my life, I can it all and apply it anywhere.

There are many ways to to make money from these skills being a musician gives you.  You can offer them to one or to many people who will pay you, depending on what opportunities are available to you but it’s going to be work and you have to be sure you want that.

Check out this article about The Black Eyed Peas

This is not a case of earning a modest living, but it’s worth thinking about.  They are making big money from the skills they accrued by being musicians on the world stage and there could be a trade off.  They are doing it in a way that, in certain respects, damages their ability to let their artistic message be heard.  “Hold on everyone, Will.i.am has something to say!  Oh no wait, he just wants me to buy a Coke”.  Maybe you don’t listen to him next time…or maybe if he never shilled for Coke, you’d have no idea who he was.

It’s a thin, thin line to walk making money as an artist so you must be very conscious of every step you take.  The important thing is to think about and act on what you want for your life and for your music and to also understand that they may be separate things.

3.  This is a question that I am not the best authority for.  I’m not there yet.  I can say this though:  People stop and listen to a unique voice so try to make sure there is a human in the music.

And make sure you have a great drummer.

The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot.

This guy is really doing something amazing and he’s not even trying.  In fact, that’s precisely what makes this video/occurrence what it is.  There are breakdowns of this video on the web talking about how important that “first follower is” how the mob grows exponentially until it reaches a tipping point and becomes a “safe” activity for those who wish to stay with the crowd.

What resonates with me, however, is the very first element…that this guy wasn’t making an effort to do anything besides be free and enjoy the feeling of dancing shirtless in the sunlight at a concert.  He never seemed concerned with what was going on around him when he was alone and it’s possible that he could care less about it when he had a writhing crowd around him.  Who knows!  Maybe he was pissed that he couldn’t hear the music anymore!

I admire this so much as a musician and artist.  He is free.  His ego is entirely absent from this.  Yet he pulls something off that would satisfy any ego.  “Look what I started”.  The dude just wants to dance…and as you can see, people will sprint to get closer to that release.

I was parked in the Warwick booth and hitting the stage with Reeves Gabrels, an extremely proficient guitar player to say the least.  He’s had quite a strong career thus far and it was an honor to be sharing the stage (little as it may have been) with someone as accomplished as he.  He is best known as David Bowie’s guitar player of choice throughout the 90′s.  Here is a quick video of him and I doing our thing for Source Audio:

There are a few more videos of our jams and a whole lot more to check out at the Source Audio Blog.  Have a look!

So…Frankfurt was awesome.  The city itself presented a stunning portrayal of old and modern side by side.  I had the best beer of my life in the bar district of Sachsenhausen, a place you simply need to go when you visit (no matter how touristy it supposedly is).  The beer in question, by the way, was a Franciscana…brewed by monks for an extra holy buzz.

The work side of the trip was spectacularly fun.  Since we were performing as a part of the Warwick booth, I had four days to really hang out with some top-notch musicians.  I had especially great hangs with Jean-Paul Bourrelly, Divinity Roxx of Beyonce’s band Suga Mama, DeWayne ‘Blackbyrd’ McKnight of P-Funk and Ryan Martinie of Mudvayne.  Each and every one of them showed themselves to be kind, eloquent people with a sincere interest in thought provoking conversation.

On top of that was the always enjoyable sight of Bootsy Collins strutting his bad self back and forth and the moment when TM Stevens came strutting up to our stage to give me a glass full of Jager, insisting that lay down a tasty bass line for him.  Amazing!  I was more than happy to oblige.

The highlight of the week had to be jumping on-stage at the Warwick after party and shaking my tiny American ass in front of everyone for whom I was supposed to be on my BEST behavior (distributors, magazine editors, artists, etc).  You can catch quick very glimpses of my shameless white guy moves in the mainpage video on Warwick’s website (bonus points for good footage of Frankfurt).

Fantastic music, terribly unhealthy food and unforgettable experiences.  Great trip.  The only thing missing was my lovely assistant to be there dancing to my music

Big thanks goes out to Brett Gildersleeve for being a top-notch travel companion who actually managed to get me out to a Euro-club…and I liked it.