Congas, Kidney Stones
& DSP
man, what a strange few days.
on thursday night, dan, fiona and i went back into the studio for a little while to get some more tracking done. they did a bunch of acoustic guitar before i arrived, and fiona knocked out vocals on a couple tracks that she wasn’t able to get to last time. it was really interesting witnessing the way dan and fiona work together. it was honestly really admirable the way they were able to communicate their visions to one another and the way they were able to offer constructive criticism and genuine encouragement to each other. it was just really cool to witness and made me feel really grateful in that moment to have them as friends and bandmates.
after fiona finished up the few vocal tracks she had left, i stepped in to knock out some auxiliary percussion stuff that i wanted to include. i did tambourine for a bunch of songs (i am a huge stan for tambourine) and did a little bit of shaker. after that, we set up some congas that fiona brought to execute this nutty idea i had for part of “danny’s dream.”
there’s this little breakdown part in “danny’s dream” where i’m just playing kick and snare, and doing a lil shaker. listening to the super early rough mix of the song, i kept hearing congas in my head during that part. like the kind of congas that are in a bunch of madchester shit like the happy mondays and primal scream. matt and fiona were good sports about it and let me bring my weird vision to life.
beforehand i went outside to smoke a cig and listened to the rough mix of “danny’s dream” on my phone speaker. a rhythm came into my head and i just rolled with it. we tracked it and after fumbling through a few takes, i got a really tight one. matt played it back in the control room with just the congas, shaker and drum kit and fiona started laughing so hard she was in tears. i don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. hearing it back was kinda nuts because it sounded like exactly how it sounded in my head. i danced to it a little bit and was legitimately so stoked on how it sounded. it’s in the song for maybe ten seconds but it just adds this tiny little unexpected funk to the track that fits the vibe of that song really well imo. i’m hoping we can kinda squash the congas with some heavy compression and get them to sit kinda low in the mix. i seriously fucking love how they sound, it’s so sick.
we finished all of my percussion stuff in an hour and ended exactly at 8pm, which is how late we had booked til with matt. hell yeah.
flash forward to the next morning at 5am. i wake up like fifteen minutes before my alarm goes off to some pretty excruciating pain in my testicles. i had soreness there for a couple days prior but really thought nothing of it. if you’re a dude, you know that sometimes your shit just hurts and then it goes away. well, the pain i woke up to kept getting worse. and what a familiar pain it was: my first thought was “oh my god this better not be another kidney stone.” the whole ordeal i went through in 2017 was so brutal and unpleasant and just a huge mess and i just did not want to go through that again.
i go downstairs to use the bathroom and when i pee, my urine is like very dark red. i just go, “god dammit” in the most annoyed voice and contemplated what i needed to do. being the 31 year old man that i am, i called my mom to see what i should do cuz i was just like really frazzled and out of it. she said i should go to the same er i went to last time and get it sorted out. i sighed a bunch and thanked her and got off the phone. i called into work and just said “uh i’m not coming in today, i’m about to go to er for some extreme pain *nervous laughter* heh sorry so yeah” and then got in the shower. i was obviously in pretty intense discomfort and just felt so annoyed and burdened by the whole thing. i took my time getting ready and ordered a lyft. the woman that got me was really nutty and gregarious and frankly the most unhinged driver i’ve ever encountered. it was really surreal having this really loud, outgoing, kind of abrasive woman give me a ride to the emergency room at 6:30 in the morning.
she dropped me off and i went inside. i had been in this hospital before, but when i walked in, nothing looked familiar and i had to ask how to get to er. once there, the triage nurse that signed me in was right at the end of his night shift, like had literally 10 minutes to go until he was out. dude was loopy from a long, slow night and made really awkward small talk with me about tattoos after i told this dude i was having extreme pain in my nuts and was pissing blood. going from nutty lyft driver to kinda weird triage nurse was a hell of a one-two and made me legitimately concerned for how the rest of this hospital journey was going to go.
fortunately, the rest of the experience was quick, professional and helpful. the staff was great and the doctor came to see me literally moments after i had gotten to my room. he ordered a ct scan and a urine test. i gave them my very concerning colored whiz and went in and out of the huge donut shaped ct machine and was back in my room. they give me toradol and zofran in my iv. the toradol was a god send and brought my pain from an 8 to like a 3 or 4.
the doc looked over my tests and ct scan and told me i had two kidney stones, one on either side, both way up high, like just out of the kidney into the ureter. fortunately he said they were only about 3mm, which is half the size of the one i had in ’17, and that i should be able to pass them at home without going through the invasive (unsuccessful) surgery i went through last time. he prescribed me motrin 600, norco and flomax, and then sent me on my merry way. i walked home from blodgett cuz the weather was gorgeous and i was feeling so much relief after they got my pain under control.
since then, i’ve just been taking the meds as needed and drinking absurd amounts of apple cider vinegar and lemon juice mixed into water. the mixture is something i drank a ton of last time around and supposedly helps break down the stones in your ureter so they can pass easier. i have no idea if it actually did anything last time but it doesn’t hurt to do it again y’know. at this point, it’s literally just a waiting game until i pass these things. they want me to strain my pee every time i have to go and gave me like a comically small strainer to use, which sends my pee flying in every possible direction as soon as it passes through the dumb thing, which is obviously super sick and like a nice feature to have in a urine strainer.
in other news…
as i have been reading more and more about synthesizers and music gear, i’ve found myself going deeper and deeper down kind of a weird rabbit hole. i have gotten to a point now where i am very interested in diy electronic music instruments and computers.
i’ve become particularly interested in what’s known as dsp, or digital signal processing. in the context of music and audio, it’s pretty simple to think about: basically any digital effect is an example of dsp. there are different ways of going about doing it and there are lots of contemporary programming languages that deal with audio dsp directly. max/msp, supercollider, pure data, and sonic pi are a couple that come to mind.
i feel like an ultimate goal of mine is to have a designated sound computer that i could use basically as a sort of multi-fx box. i would be able to program my own effects and would use it as an fx send/return on my mixer.
in an effort to learn more, i checked out a few books from the library and realized i was diving in too deep, far too quickly.
as a kind of compromise/way to get my feet wet without drowning, i purchased an fv-1 development board from spin semiconductor. the spin fv-1 is a chip that’s designed to carry out dsp processes. it’s most notable use is as a reverb producer. it’s used in a countless number of guitar pedals, including my very favorite, the particle by red panda.
the really beautiful thing about the development board is that it’s basically a dedicated fv-1 fx processor right out of the box. a eeprom chip is included to store your algorithms, a usb jack is present to transfer your algorithms to the eeprom chip to be read by the fv-1 and can also be used to power the board, it has stereo rca in/out to easily interface with a variety of sound sources, and it has 3 potentiometers soldered on to control the effect parameters and a rotary knob to cycle through the 8 effect slots on the eeprom.
the other fantastic part about the board is that spin semiconductor, the company that made the chip and dev board, has created their own software programming environment to create your own effects, and it can flash the eeprom directly from the software in a matter of seconds. though to be honest with you, i have virtually no idea what i’m looking at whenever i look at a piece of complete fv-1 code.
fortunately, yet again, some gentleman who goes by digitallarry online created a javascript-based wrapper for the spin dev software which features a very easy to understand gui. it’s known as spincad designer and features a modular layout very similar to pure data and max.
i haven’t had a ton of time to fuck around with the board but what i have been able to accomplish with it so far has been really promising. my goal with this chip has been to create some glitch granular delay effects. it’s a sound that i have been really obsessed with lately and i think it’s very “in” right now. there’s a lot of folks online that have created their own algorithms for this thing and have shared them on various forums for anyone to use and develop further. i’ve dumped several onto the eeprom and played with them and they’re really sick and some are unwieldy as hell. occasionally the whole signal will become just a series of beeps, chirps and sustained tones generated by the fv-1. straight up sounds like the chip is about to burst into flames. a lot of the algorithms are glitchy and sound really really dope, though none of them that i have found have been exactly what i’m looking for. i need to sit down and actually develop something in spincad designer that will generate the type of sound i’m looking for.
given the fact that the dev board is tiny and literally just an exposed pcb, i want to create a clear acrylic enclosure for it so that i can safely take it to shows and practice. i’m looking forward to making that my next little crafting project. before that, it’s time to dig into developing some algorithms for this thing! and maybe i’ll pass these damn stones sometime soon.
