Symphony in Blue (The City Skyline)

 Oh yes, a mock-Whistler title. Clearly a chap who has read some art history

Five Guys

 

It could be from Boston or some other older US town, but it's Garrick Street.

Kensington Garden Fountains

 

Yep, it's catch-up time again. I've been delving from one rabbit-hole to the next for a while, with results that will be described when they happen.

Candid Snaps

 

I love snaps like this: it's the range of things going on. The concentration of the delivery driver, the expression on the passenger's face, the foliage, the glimpse of sea front, and the White Cliffs in the distance. And that intrusive level crossing barrier.

"Experts" and "Authorities" - Not

One of the more darker corners of the culture that the Lockdowns shone an unintentional light on, was the idea that Government enquiries, official investigations, and explanations provided by high-ranking officials and academics with their hands on the money-tap, form a coherent officially truthful story of the major events in our society and economy. Disagreeing with the details of this story makes one a dissident whose speech should be restricted from general circulation, and offering competing stories makes one a 'conspiracy theorist' who should be denied access to the media in any form. These "authorities" include "the distributed network of knowledge claim gatherers and testers that includes engineers and politics professors, security experts and journalists" according to Professor Neil Levy, one of those philosophers who appears now and again to suck up to an indefensible orthodoxy.

"Politics professors, security experts and journalists" are not "experts" at anything, but some engineers might be.

If there were "experts" and "authorities", who might they be?

One group of people they could not be is Government, Civil Service and other institutions of the State. It's not a Government's job to tell the voters the truth. Never has been, never will be. One job of Government is to maintain civil peace and order, and all sorts of abuses get hushed up for that reason. Another job of Government is to relate things to "broader interests and issues", which also leads to all sorts of hush-and-lousy-compromise. Governments are rubbish at knowing which issues really need to be played down and which need to be made public, but it's still their job to try to get it right.

For this reason, anyone who holds a Government position, for example Chief Medical Officer, or who is in the pay of the Government, such as every academic in every university, agrees with Government propaganda policy, not because it might be right, but because it's part of their job description to do so. That disqualifies their opinion on any subject in which the Government has an interest.

One rule of thumb is that anyone who says they are an "expert" on something, isn't. Those who know, know how little they know and how ambiguous that little is: it takes real ignorance to be certain and authoritative about anything.

Another rule of thumb is that when a journalist cites an "expert" without also citing that "expert's" name, source of income, qualifications and relevant experience - as would be required in any court - the person they are quoting is a paid shill pushing a policy.

"Experts" must be un-connected with any commercial enterprise, political cause, social movement, religion or other such organisation that has an interest in the issue. Else their support of that institution's position will be considered to be bought-and-paid-for.

"Experts" must only give evidence about the matters-of-fact on which they are "experts", which is generally a fairly narrow range.

Outside that narrow range, "experts" are as ignorant as the person sitting next to you this morning on the bus / train / coach / traffic queue / Zoom screen.

Even within an "expert's" subject, just because someone knows a lot about the facts of an issue does not mean they will be any good at devising the relevant social or legal policy. The Lockdowns showed us that most "experts" are fanatical left-leaning socialists who think more Government-spending and monitoring is the answer to everything.

Did it always used to be like this?

Yes.

But the world wasn't as complicated, inter-connected, and highly populated. There weren't welfare states, and there wasn't as much money to be made by quite so many people. There was no pharmaceutical industry, and the media was way smaller than it is now. Fewer people depended on the Government for their salaries, so the influence of Government was not as all-enveloping as it is now. Your GP routinely made house calls.

Back in the Good Ol' Days<™> it didn't matter that the experts knew even less than they do now. Governments didn't do dumb things, unless it was to invade Russia or attempt to occupy Afghanistan.

Now it matters. And Governments do dumb things year after year after year.

Chasing The Tone

Everyone goes on and on about tone (1). It's in the fingers. It's in the wood, the pickups, the pots, the fretboard, and even the nut and tuning heads.(2) It's in the pedals and the settings. It's in the amp and the speakers.

John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter both played tenor sax. Tenor saxes are made to sound the same, because it's a band instrument. The player can make a slight difference with their choice of reeds, and their breath control. So you know how you know it's Wayne Shorter or John Coltrane playing?

They play different notes. They play different phrases. They structure phrases differently. They sound different not because one uses a Selmer and the other some other make: they sound different because they play different.

Tone is in the music.

Play My Favourite Things, with fuzz, blues drive, lots of reverb, chorus, slow drive, whatever... it's still My Favourite Things and it's still a showtune. At no point does it become a metal anthem. It has a mood all its own, and turns all the tone-gear into a sound effect.

There's a video of Jimi Hendrix playing an acoustic guitar. He sounds like himself, playing an acoustic. Because he's playing Hendrix phrases and chords.

Bad news for people chasing that SRV / Hendrix / Beano Album / Dave Gilmour / whoever tone: if they want to sound like Dave Gilmour, they will have to play like Dave Gilmour.

All those pedals and amps are sound effects. The sound effects are an extension of the electric guitar - and in John Martyn's Glistening Glynbourne, the acoustic guitar as well.

Ambient is all about the sound effects, not the tone. So are a lot of post-rock instrumentals. The guitarists in rock bands don't have a tone, they provide the sonic backdrop required for the song, which changes from song to song. They might have a personal style of soloing, or creating fills, or a distinctive rhythm attack, and that's how you know who it is. Not because they of the distortion setting on their RAT pedal.

Learning what sound effects are available is part of learning to play the electric guitar. Every guitarist should know how to get a Blues tone, a fat jazz tone, a biting bridge rock 'n roll tone, and so on. Even if they never use them. That's knowing your instrument. (The Katana is outstanding in making that possible at a stupid low cost compared to buying a valve amp, interface, mic, pedals, and supporting gear.)

The search for tone is partly learning your sound effects, but it's really the search for your voice.


(1) Defined as the distinctive sound of a given guitar or guitarist, that only vanishes after excessive amounts of metal distortion or ambient effects.

(2) According to John Lill, the sound of a guitar is in the scale length, the position of the pickup(s) from the bridge, the height of the pickups, the pickup wiring, and the settings on the tone and volume pots.

Turn Up The Subwoofer For Older Classical Recordings

So for some reason, I turned up the little Rel T-Zero while playing some Dvorak the other night. It's usually on 9:00 - 10:00 for jazz, dance, rock and pop. It could take 10:00. Since classical music doesn't have loud bass, I turned it up to 3:00. (Maximum is about 4:00.)

Everything became fuller, the sound-staging was clearer, and the damn violins stopped being so shrill.

The LS-50's start to fall off after 80Hz, being 6dB down at 47Hz. 3dB is neither here nor there, but 6dB is noticeable. I've set the crossover for the T-Zero at 120 Hz. If that sounds bad, it amounts to the range between the open sixth-string E of a guitar and the 5th string B-flat. Four notes in the key of F - and not the popular ones.

Most of the lower end of the big orchestral instruments get some help from the subwoofer (all the open strings of a double-bass are below 120Hz). As I found when experimenting with the EQ on the Katana, the sub-harmonics make a difference, so all the notes from A below middle-C down will get thickened out as well. Why the violins stop being so shrill, I'm not sure, but it happens.

Older recordings, especially analogue recordings that are subsequently digitised, respond to this well. Modern recordings have more bass in the original signal, so the subwoofer doesn't need to be as loud.

Well worth experimenting, should you have a subwoofer and older recordings of orchestral music.