On the home theater tonight: “Lone Wolf and Cub: Babycart in Peril”
The original subtitle, which they changed at the last minute, was: Samurais, spraying blood, and titties.
2am Armchair Physics (applied to microphones and waves)
- Lucas Ventura:
- A microphone, for the sake of this conversation, is a wave measuring device.
- (duh)
- Now, you set up x number of mics in a room to capture sound.
- Naturally, we are experienced in dealing with phasing considerations, and avoid that.
- Tim Curtis:
- Naturally;-)
- As we proved with the 17 mic drum setup in MKE...
- Lucas:
- But, I have been wondering, if the relative number of microphones, thus measurements of waves, one takes must affect the waves themselves...
- So by taking observable measurements of the various wave frequencies, we actually affect the sound of an instrument by recording it with more or less mics.
- Not through the microphones themselves, but at the waveform.
- Tim:
- Precisely.
- Lets say that all microphones are ideally matched for the same of argument.
- Lets also assume that all microphones are ideally flat from DC to 20K.
- And lets ALSO assume that we're recording in an acoustically neutral environment.
- Now we're looking at the basic waveforms by themselves with those variables removed.
- At this point phase coherency will ALWAYS be an issue. It's unavoidable.
- Waveform addition is what we're dealing with. Think of it as SIN COSIN. Basic trig.
- Lucas:
- Right. In the same fashion as the ol' double-slit experiment.
- Tim:
- Those two microphones WILL have some phase cancellation.
- Lucas:
- The more outputs you have, the more phase cancellation and doubling you will get.
- Tim:
- Precisely.
- Which will be frequency dependent.
- Now, in reality, it may sound fucking awesome.
- Lucas:
- But, what we then have is an instrument with several microphones that have partially phased and "incomplete" representations of the various frequencies.
- Tim:
- Sure.
- But remember those three assumptions we had to make, none of which exist on the real world?
- That renders the whole thing moot.
- In other words, yes it's true, and no it doesn't matter.
- To a point.
- Lucas:
- But to what point?
- That is my curiosity.
- Tim:
- A single mic on a drum kit in a room will still experience phase cancellations.
- Are you looking for quantifiability?
- Lucas:
- Not to deceive myself, I am seeking some kind of quantum justification for minimalistic micing techniques...
- Tim:
- They sound better.
- Can I share a thought?
- Lucas:
- But of course.
- Tim:
- Don't overthink it.
- Phase cancellation exists in nature. The response curve of any microphone will vary from that of another one of the same model by a measurable amount. The response of your hearing differs from mine as does your left from your right.
- Cable capacitance and resistance both have a sonic effect. Preamps have variability depending on topology and tolerances.
- A mixing console imparts its own anomalies.
- Standard dynamics processing will totally mess with phase.
- And once it's in Pro Tools, phase is completely lost.
- Lucas:
- In other words, the number of variables is so staggering that it is fundamentally impossible to even compute the controls for what we're discussing.
- At least, on a practical level.
- Tim:
- In other words, play your fucking drums, make a glorious noise, and be awesome.
Anonymous asked: No questions, just compliments. This is very well written, both from the heart and with factual information. As a "date" rape victim, I appreciate the fact that you defended the victim and not the rapist. THANK YOU.
Cool, and you’re welcome. My mother has been very active in sharing her story and has also worked closely with her city’s police and nurses in better understanding how to handle someone who has been sexually assaulted. I think it’s important to talk about, and for us as a society to work towards understanding, preventing, and healing.
CNN Steubenville Rape Coverage
I just came back home last night. I’ve been running late nights, so admittedly, I woke up only a few hours ago. So, one of the things I woke up to was a change.org petition in my Inbox referencing a demand for an apology from CNN for their absurd coverage of the Steubenville rape trial, which sympathized with the rapists moreso than the girl they raped. There are some things that bother me deeply about all this, but first, a little background.
My mother was raped many years ago, I was a young adult at the time it happened. The kid that decided to sexually assault her was just about my age. In fact, if I remember, he was nineteen years old. With all exterior doors in the house locked, he broke into my mother’s house at about 4am in the morning through the garage, snuck into her bedroom while she was asleep, forced himself upon her completely against her will and sexually assaulted her. I remember, in the trial leading up to his conviction, how a priest and his family pleaded for him to be given mercy in sentencing. I understand a family’s inherent, perhaps even biological, precedent to defend their son, and that does not bother me terribly. But there are few wrongs in this world that are truly more heinous than raping a woman, and though I pity him, he does not deserve mercy.
If you have not been raped, or do not know someone close to you that has been raped, then you probably do not understand what the proceeding years of emotional pain and psychological trauma are like. You might not be able to imagine what it feels like to lose your sense of security in your own home, even your own bedroom, to such an extent that you had to sell your house and move elsewhere. Or what it is like to experience the humiliation of being a living crime scene when the police show up. I can’t even really empathize with these things. But I remember the many times I watched my mother cry. I remember how much grief I felt as she recounted the terror of her experience in the court room. I remember the times she jumped in a reaction of fear when I would come up to give her a hug or touch her in a way that was previously innocuous.
The sad thing is I know a LOT of women (and some men) that have been raped. Most of them have not had as much counseling as my mother. Many have never even dealt with it. Some even are treated in such a way that they are made to feel that there is no problem or that it is their fault!
My mother was looked at by her rapist’s family as if she were the person ruining his life. My mother, whose home was broken into, who was then raped by this kid… she was the one ruining his life, for proceeding to prosecute him according to the law and have him sent to jail. They failed to acknowledge to themselves that their son ruined not just my mother’s but his own life, by deciding to be a rapist.
And in a broader sense, our society is so terribly afflicted with this combination of misogyny and hero worship that nonsense like this CNN coverage is actually able to be broadcast and be accepted. CNN has decided that the sixteen and seventeen year old high school football stars’ lives have been ruined by a trial, rather than the fact that they decided to rape someone (which I believe is a continuation of the tribalistic nonsense within the community to protect the rapists from getting caught in the first place). No. I do not accept this. A person who had all the potential in the world and decided to use it to be a rapist and get sentenced to prison is not a victim. They are not suffering from some unjust system that excessively punishes inconsequential crimes. They are receiving a punishment for a crime that is truly irreparable.
Think about a woman in your life that you love with all of your heart. Would it change the nature of the situation if she were raped by a homeless bum or by an iconic sports hero or pop idol? No, it wouldn’t. Rape is rape. It is one of the greatest wrongs a person can commit and should be punished as such.
Today, I encourage you to consider what rape really means for the survivor. I also encourage you to learn the difference between the words “survivor” and “victim”, which seems to go unobserved by mainstream media. Parents, think about what you need to teach your daughters to protect themselves from situations that make them vulnerable to rapists, and what you need to instill in your sons to choose honor and respect for women above sexual gratification and the objectification and exploitation of them.
The fear of failure is most powerful to the one who has never considered its possibility before it struck their heart.
The Good and Bad in Sad
There will always be things in this world beyond my control. There are some times that I regret the outcomes of certain events that were out of my hands, and that goes particularly with childhood. But those feelings are short-lived and are replaced by a deep breath of acceptance. In the transition of those feelings still remains a lingering sadness, which I think is okay. I think that sadness used to be a sort of “bad” word in my personal etymology. But I don’t think of it that way.
There are severe and exacerbated forms of it, which I would like to differentiate at this moment. Misery, depression, and the more painful branches of which sadness may lead are different in this context.
Sadness, the way I mean it, is empathetic and is a good and perfectly healthy response to hurt that naturally happens in the world. Much in the same way that when you fall or cut yourself you feel pain, when we get emotionally banged up, it’s normal to feel sadness. We feel sadness for a loved one when they are going through painful times, and that is the easiest way to see it as empathy. But I perceive too that empathy within one’s self is natural.
Sometimes I look back at long lasting pains from my childhood and feel an empathetic sadness for my child self. That child no longer exists. He grew up a long time ago and became the man that is me. But I have an empathetic connection to him. He is my past, and I am his future self. Nothing that happened to him is happening to me now, but the intangible elements of memory and self bond us.
I have heard it said many times by others, and perhaps myself, “I wish I could go back in time and tell myself of this or that knowledge.” Because we can’t is why we are not our past selves. But yet, we feel that desire because of empathy for a self that is not our self.
Getting back to the notion of sadness though, there is a greater depth to understanding why sadness is healthy and good, and that is understanding how it ceases to be healthy and becomes bad. I think that, in my personal experience of the feeling, it has become toxic when I was unable to release it, and it stayed deep within me, unexpressed and unrelieved. Sorrow became depression. Anguish was the continuous toll of waking every day to an unrelenting pain in my heart that I knew not how to heal. It would be as if I had cut myself in a place that nobody had seen and not applied any treatment to it. It gradually became infected and worsened in time. Going with that analogy, perhaps the cut eventually became healed and covered up, but because it went untreated for so long, it left a painful scar, or some kind of debilitating injury that is now very difficult to heal. It is the long lasting effect of not treating our injuries, and I believe the heart works in the same way.
From the perspective of alcoholism and AA, the twelve-step program, as well as many other methods of spiritual/emotional healing are essentially that equivalent of a physical therapy center. We are a group of people who, by various means, received grievous wounds at an earlier time in life, and left them untreated to fester and worsen in time. It is only now that we have become so unable to cope with the pain of these injuries that we must now find a way to heal our self.
For some time after my sobriety I became scared of sadness, as if by feeling it I were standing on the precipice of the abyss; one slip and I would again fall into the darkness of my past miseries. But in time I have come to see that sadness is inevitable, and it’s okay that it happens. The wonderful thing about sadness is that it truly helps me to understand my needs in life, and is part of the process of defining my spiritual and emotional boundaries. I come to know myself in part through my sadness. Like the compass which always points north, I am able to orient myself in life through paying attention and respecting my own feelings in all the situations that arise in my day to day life. The path to happiness is made clearer by its counterpart. Similarly, I am able to understand the feelings of the people with whom I share my life.
We all have our methods for coping with sadness. It is important to recognize what works and what does not, however. As an alcoholic, it is simple for me to point out for myself and others, regularly drinking and drugging myself to numbness is an ineffective coping mechanism in the long-run. Some coping mechanisms that help me to allow my sadness to pass healthily and naturally include: Doing things that I love, such as music; making simple steps to improve my day to day existence, such as cleaning my house, exercising, or reading a great book; expressing my feelings, perhaps by blogging, writing a letter, or having a heart to heart conversation with a friend. Some things take a little more time and are a little more intensive. The twelve-step program itself is a good example of that. Essentially, taking day-by-day steps to changing behaviors that I have identified as being harmful to myself and others, and finding new pathways into acting in a way that I can allow myself to be at peace with who I am and how the world is.
Anyway, long story short, sadness isn’t such a bad thing as long as you don’t keep it inside you any longer than it needs to be there.
