Music projects

This past week I worked on a few music projects (instead of writing!).

I wrapped up a project in Ableton and sent it off to my brother and bandmate Eric for his thoughts and additions. I chopped up a Youtube sample of a former soldier speaking about his experiences during the Vietnam war and made trigger-able oneshot samples to 'play' over a jam we recorded recently. I will post the finished version at a later date.

Over the weekend, I performed a simple repair to an old Technics SL-BD22 turntable (see manual). The turntable played well but over time developed a speed issue. The turntable would speed up and slow down, making the pitch of the record sound warped (I should’ve recorded a sample of it!). From past experience and research, I've learned that sometimes this issue is caused by dirty controls and knobs.

With some help from Youtube, I took off the back plate of the player and located the speed control circuit board. I sprayed the controls and the switches with Deoxit. This seemed to do the trick - the turntable plays perfectly now. I ordered a new needle as well; I haven't changed it since I received the turntable and I noticed some high-end distortion.

 turntable backing plate removed

Speed control circuit board 

vr101 and vr102 - the speed controls; below is the

Pitch wheel

Update

After not posting for a week, I thought I should write about something, which is the purpose of this blog after all. I created the blog to practice researching, note-taking and writing. I hope it will act as a catalyst as well as an archive for projects. Through writing, I am able to understand my thoughts better as well as the topic I am studying. I look forward to sharing and thus 'letting go'.

Some topics I am interested in:

• Audio/music
• Current events
• History
• Nature/the environment/climate change
• Reading
• Photography and film

What I am currently working on:

• Writing
• A longer piece on the history of Fort Tilden (Queens, NY)
• Pieces on current social issues
• Writing samples for jobs
• Book notes of recent books I've read Audio
• Compiling field recordings from this past year
• Creating and writing my own music and sound experiments
• Working on music with my band

A little about me:

Currently 31 years old, living in Brooklyn, NY with my partner and our pet rabbit. I was born and raised in Queens, NY. I am a paralegal and digital court reporter. I play percussion as well as write, record and produce for my band. I enjoy walking, hiking, running and cycling.

Election Day

Today is Election Day here in the U.S. Early voting has been open and many votes have also been cast by absentee ballot. We are in the middle of a pandemic. There is social unrest and economic hardship. No doubt this is a historic year.

Over the past four years, my connection to news, social media and politics has waxed and waned. Sometimes I was deeply involved, while other times I stopped following the news at all and learned what was going on only from those around me. (As an experiment, I also traded my smartphone for an old flip phone).

Always trying to find the hidden meaning, I began to look for the conspiracy behind each event. I learned though, that conspiracies are a self-fulling prophecy - everything becomes a conspiracy. This is a very negative outlook that I adopted; it doesn’t allow for hope.

When the protests began following the death of George Floyd, my whole perspective shifted. I saw injustice everywhere I looked. I couldn’t look away anymore. By attending community solidarity meet-ups, I learned how to help fix the problems. First, I listened to my neighbors experiences. Then, I educated myself on social issues to environmental. I learned about my local and state governments. I listened to podcasts and watched documentaries. I became involved.

I am inspired by the strength of the community in this neighborhood and this city. What began with protests against police brutality has become much more. People want change in all areas. Recently I learned that protestors chained themselves to a fracked gas pipeline which is currently being built in our neighborhood. People are still involved and still fighting. The actions of normal people who try to make our country (and our world) a better place gives me hope.

This year has been tumultuous. I've learned a great deal since lockdown began in March. I am not apathetic as I once was. I am involved and I will continue to learn. We are all responsible. I want to do my part. After this election is over, the fight for better will continue.

-KW

Edgar Allan Poe in New York City

Around Halloween each year, I'm reminded of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. In high school English class, we were given the assignment of writing a college-style term paper. As part of the assignment, we were expected to visit the library of a local university to learn how to locate books, gather notes, and create an outline for the paper due later in the semester. I distinctly remember sitting at a desk among the library's bookshelves and reading Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. I researched Poe's use of imagery and symbolism throughout his popular works. His macabre texts still pull me into his dark and mysterious world. Recently, I listened to a podcast on Poe's life within New York City by historical duo The Bowery Boys (named after a 19th century New York gang). Here's a few facts I learned from listening and some further research on his life.

Born in Boston in 1809, Poe was raised in Richmond, V.A., and later moved to New York to find work. Though he spent portions of his life in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Richmond, Poe kept returning to New York. The Poe family lived in several neighborhoods including Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, and in lower Manhattan near the present-day Financial District. In 1844 the family moved to the Brennan farmhouse in today's Upper West Side. Here, Poe worked on his poem The Raven, published in January of 1845. He frequently visited a nearby rocky area he named 'Mount Tom' which can still be seen in present-day Riverside Park. In May of 1846, Poe moved his family to Fordham village (located in the Bronx today) to find seclusion and cheap rent. He befriended the local Jesuit monks at St. John's College (now Fordham University, my alma mater). Poe's wife, Virginia Clemm, died here in 1847 from consumption, or tuberculosis. The Poe cottage survived and is now a museum located in Poe Park. 

Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. The facts surrounding his death are mysterious and the exact cause of death is still unknown. He left Richmond on September 27 on his way to Philadelphia for work, but never made it there. On October 3, Baltimore Sun compositor Joseph W. Walker discovered Poe lying in the gutter outside Gunnar's Hall, a public house which was being used as a polling place for an election. Poe was semi-conscious and wearing dirty second-hand clothes. The night before he died, Poe's doctor said he kept repeating the name "Reynolds". The death certificate states the cause as swelling of the brain but no information has surfaced about how Poe ended up in the gutter outside the public house or where he'd been for the week before Walker found him.

Many theories exist, including that Poe may have drank himself to death. Another theory is that Poe was a victim of cooping, a method of voter fraud whereby gangs would beat and force people into voting for a candidate multiple times under different identities. This could explain why he was found wearing second-hand clothes outside the public house.

The Poe Museum in Richmond, V.A. explains Poe's legacy on American writing:

• one of the most influential writers of the 19th Century and the first to try to make a living solely as a writer.
• transformed the horror genre and was also an early pioneer of science fiction.
• credited with inventing the modern detective story with Murders in the Rue Morgue and the concept of deductive reasoning, thus influencing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

Sources:
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2017/10/edgar-allan-poe-new-york-places-master-gloom-horror-made-mark.html
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2020/01/raven-edgar-allan-poe-published-170-years-ago-today-2.html
http://bronxhistoricalsociety.org/poe-cottage/history-of-the-cottage/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/still-mysterious-death-edgar-allan-poe-180952936/
https://www.eapoe.org/index.htm
https://www.poemuseum.org/poes-biography

Upgrading my Macbook

I’ve had my 13” aluminum Macbook 5.1 since my second year of college, back in 2008. Over the years, I made several modifications to increase its functionality while running music recording software.

Several years ago, I increased the RAM to the maximum 8GB, replaced the original hard drive with a 120GB SSD and installed a 500GB HDD in the CD bay. The SSD functions as the startup drive where I run all of my applications, while the HDD is storage for various projects.

After I updated to Mavericks, I never again updated the OS. Why? I had obtained (via torrents) perfect working versions of Ableton Live 9 and Pro Tools HD and I didn’t want to risk losing their functionality with an update. I taught myself how to create and record music with these programs. I used Ableton to record my band's first album. Years later, when we recorded in a friend’s state-of-the-art studio, I was able to edit the recordings using my Pro Tools copy.

Now, due to security concerns about my old drive, I picked up another SSD to install El Capitan, the most recent OS compatible with this Macbook.

I also purchased (finally) Ableton Live 10. Live’s license allows the user to download to two authorized computers. I plan to install a copy on my brother's computer as well. Per the license, both copies may not be able to run at the same time, but they will both be fully functional. This will allow us to work on projects together and send each other project folders.

Below are the steps I took to install the new SSD with El Capitan:

• I purchased a SATA 120GB SSD and a USB enclosure from OWC. [Note: I believe OWC states that the enclosure is recommended for HDDs only, but it seems to work fine with the SSD installed. I wanted to setup the drive externally first.]
• From the App store, I downloaded El Capitan to my current startup drive.
• Next, I Installed El Capitan on the new SSD. The installation would not complete due to the ‘no package was eligible’ error. Apparently, changing the date in Terminal fixes this issue. Open Terminal, type: date 101615072016. This completed my installation. 

I now have a (mostly) updated OS installed on a new SSD. In the future, I may swap it out with one of the current internal drives. The new drive will run Ableton and other apps, with files being saved elsewhere. Here’s to the joys of new gear, legal software and most important of all - a blank slate.