Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Making Coherence in the Rockhouse While the Kit Self-Destructs

Without the Galaxy Synth in the mix, there's still the possibility of the Galaxy Guitar, the Nameless Bass, and the microphone for input sources and all of which can be fed into the Boss RC-50 looper but only via devious means if I do not use the Yamaha intermediate mixer.

However, that may be cool since I have R/L 1/4" inputs for the primary and an XLR input for the mike.  This is cheese but I only run a mono signal from the guitar & bass effects units so those can go into the Right and Left sides of the primary via standard jacks.

The microphone can go that way as well and XLR is standard for mikes so that works fine.

There's also an Aux input and that's a miniplug for a damn iPad.  I have used it but the nuisance was more than it was worth and that didn't last long.  The iPad now languishes in limbo but I can't let that one go since it was so loyal on the road and it was a long road.

There's no particular reason to use the Aux input since the way described above could handle the remaining kit while permitting elimination of the intermediate mixer, additional cabling kibble, etc.


While the delivery is dispassionate, the situation is depressing as fuck.  My sweetheart Galaxy Synth is croaked so what other reaction should there be than sodding depression in the moors in the deep mist and cold as I wait for the wraiths to come without even a bloody joint or a decent cup of coffee while I wait in this godforsaken hellhole.


The first keyboard I got was a relatively-inexpensive Yamaha with not a whole lot of capability but it could sound like a piano and a few other fairly choice voices.  I didn't have much idea how to play it but giving it a go seemed like a suitably Dagwood idea and I got one.

I was living with the 'rents at the time so who knows what year but mid-70s sometime.  My stuff was in the basement which was such a marvelously dank place of wet corruption but that's where I played and quite a bit of nefarious activity happened down there during that decade.

The keyboard got plugged for some jams and I started plunking a bit as I knew 1-3-5 so I could find some triads and how does this sound with that one and then that one.  Both hands were in it since the left wasn't allowed to beg off this game.

That gave me a bit of bottom and plunk, plunk, plunk which still didn't mean I could play anything but it sounded kind of cool.

And that's when my ol' Dad who never came down there swung around the corner with an incredulous look on his face because he knew I had never done it before and he said, "You're a natural."

I really didn't know what to say and neither did he but I'm quite sure I'm not a natural; I just like to do it.  I'm not being falsely humble since I don't believe it's more than that.  Some people just want to do it a whole lot and you could pull out a platoon of Freuds but they won't likely have a good answer for why.

That was one of Those Moments and it's impossible to describe so I won't even try although it did mean a whole lot more to me than many other things he said.


Ed:  so you're not slashing your wrists over this?

You're reading me five by five.

Ed:  what does 'five by five' mean?

No idea but it sounded cool when the helicopter pilot said it just before the alien whacked her in "Aliens."

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