pkennethk's forum posts 2051

OG boutique SoCal synth firm Studio Electronics updated their classic racked & hot-rodded Minimoog clone in 2020... just in time for the pandemic. I missed this entirely, even though I was at the 2020 NAMM show where they apparently rolled it out.

Anyway, thanks to one of @eyeseeofficial's countless Similar Items recommendations here on EB (thank you, king), I'm finally catching up with this military-grade weapon... and OH MY.

Look, none of us are gonna buy one -- but y'all should have a listen anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lGBdHLZNek

Oof, re-reading what I wrote yesterday... definitely a situation where taking the time to say something simply/succinctly might have been a good investment. I was really shooting from the hip under time pressure. If I were in your shoes, I'd file most of that feedback under "yeah whatever, buddy... let's see if anyone normal agrees". lol.

The stuff I mentioned weeks earlier about the search indexing/integration for albums and bands would definitely be higher on my list. I'm glad to hear that's gonna get some attention.

FYI: I did searches for "gear used on Syro" and "gear used on Nevermind" in DuckDuckGo this AM... the album pages are already hitting the first page of results. Hell yes!

OK, pages working great now (thank you!).

Initial Thoughts:

(these are just personal opinions, obviously. Take 'em with a grain of salt)

1. Overall, this aligns with my expectations and is an awesome v1. Album cover image, album info, Artists who worked on the album, then their combined gear -- check, check, check & check. Again, I am so stoked that these pages exist!

2. The Spotify player eats up valuable real estate. I appreciate that you need something colorful an engaging to pull people in, but on both desktop and mobile, I have to scroll down past the player to see anything unique that EB can bring to the table. If I came to any of these album pages as my first taste of EB, I wouldn't really understand why Google sent me here or why someone bothered to share a link until I had done some serious scrolling. I'm assuming that anyone who cares about what gear was used on an album is already pretty familiar with that album -- but this is just an assumption, I've got zero data to back that up.

3. Sorting the gear by artist and by category within each artist feels kind of arbitrary... maybe even tedious. Kurt's Stella acoustic and Aphex Twins' Reddi preamp ARE non-trivial gear from those albums, but neither item is something that you could call a defining piece of the album's overall sound -- they're not the most exciting/revealing pieces of the puzzle. It would be great if there was a way to have the items most associated with and/or most crucial to the album's sound, regardless of which artist they belong to, right at the top of the gear section, then move into whatever sorting schemes make sense for the more boring stuff few are likely to get to. With the current design, for example, I have to scroll through all the different strings and picks the lead guitarist used before I even get to anything related to the bassist, drummer, rhythm guitarist, engineer, producer, etc... there are no easy answers here, but a way to put the most important, most "oh wow", "ha! I knew it!" and "I must add to my wishlist!" stuff front and center would be awesome.

4. The top section with the album artwork needs.... more. Maybe a bigger album artwork image, maybe a dominant/average color background or accent like the Spotify player uses, maybe the Spotify player needs to be shrunken down and inserted into that top section the way the Apple Music player is for artist pages ?... IDK, just throwing out random top-of-mind thoughts, but it needs something to pull me in and make the page feel more album-flavored/album-branded. Edit: album artwork feels right-sized on my phone, actually (nice work!). So I suppose I'm only talking about the desktop-width impression here.

5. The Artists on [album name] section eats up a lot of space. Listing all the artists (and engineers, producers, session players, etc) in a prominent place is important, but something like the more compact components, the ones that can be put into a grid, that are used for artist gear submissions might be a better approach here. Especially once all the technical and session roles get added to album pages.:

https://imgur.com/a/EiXNs9b

I'm stoked to see this is moving forward :D.

I was able to load the Syro page for a hot minute, but right now, neither album page is loading for me.

You must be working on something. I'll check back later, but this is a nice way to start the day. Thanks!

Huh… so this new feature isn’t so useless, after all…

Ha! Same thought. I ignored it forever, then tried it today for the first time and was surprised it did something genuinely useful.

For those of us who haven't tried it yet, here's how to save a lot of time scrubbing through video interviews on YouTube:

1. Find a video interview on YouTube.

2. Click the "Ask" button just below the video frame, between "Share" and "Save".

3. Ask the chatbot "Is any gear mentioned in this interview?".

Example AskBot result for the video linked above:

In the video, Kirk Hammett mentions the following gear:

• Modded Marshalls (0:14) are discussed as the amps used for the first two Metallica albums, with James Hetfield's modded Marshall being stolen in 1984 (0:37).

• Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ (1:32) heads were introduced to them by Mesa/Boogie, which they found to be very responsive to active pickups (1:42). These amps have been used by the band since 1985 (2:38).

• EMG Pickups (1:47) were used in their guitars and paired with the Mesa/Boogie amps to create their signature sound (1:51).

• Wah pedal (2:48) is a constant in Kirk Hammett's rig, which he has used since he was 15 years old (2:52).

• Tube Screamer (2:50) is also a consistent part of his pedal rig, primarily used for lead guitar (4:06).

Reminder: you still need to click on the (min:sec) link for each answer and confirm that the artist really said that, and get any other details that you need to narrow down exactly which item. Especially if the artist mumbles or has an accent. These LLMs don't specialize in perfection.

Re: auto-tagging albums where we can: Well played! ::loud high five::

2 Questions:

1. Once albums have their own pages on EB, how will albums be integrated into on-platform search? Right now, for example, when I search for "Nevermind" none of the members of Nirvana (nor the Sex Pistols, for that matter) are surfaced.

2. When are band pages going to be worthy of search-indexing? Example: right now, if I search for "Queen", the first 16 artists returned are not members of Queen AND (more importantly) the Queen band page is not surfaced at all.

Moo-g like a cow or Moog that rhymes with Rogue?

Rhymes with rogue, but I've never known anyone to be d*ck about it if you botch it.

I've been with a non-musician writer/english scholar for a little while, nerdery goes both ways.

Same.

Who would expect to be more loved than a moog one or prophet ten? only a megalomaniac!

fair.

Image:

https://rvb-img.reverb.com/i/s--1fQtIGFh--/quality=medium-low,height=800,width=800,fit=contain/gdfkms8l8cdzffvybfm1.png

Worked for me, but I first downloaded and re-named the image, as it downloaded as "blahblahblah.png.jpeg" so maybe it was just the funky name that tripped things up in this case?

like sorry, but why can't I find me a woman like that?

Pick up some part time hours at a local synth speciality shop, or synth repair shop -- you'll meet all the Ciani-like people in Philly in a matter of weeks.

I met a number of rad synth-obsessed women when I worked in music tech decades ago. All of them are still rad... and also still single, to the best of my knowledge... Suzanne herself was only married once for a few years.

Some dudes love the idea of being with someone that's into all the same nerdy gear stuff they are, but once they realize the synths/gear/career-dreams come first, and they come second (if lucky)... they sometimes reconsider.

...you seem like a well-adjusted and evolved dude, Jim. I'm sure your ego could handle playing second-fiddle to a Moog One.

https://equipboard.com/items/bode-model-7702-vocoder

PRETTY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r28i-k3mL3o

SEXY

This has just started happening to me, but whenever I try to add an image from Reverb the page crashes.

happening over and over on a single item, or on every item entry you add or edit?

If it's just one item right now, throw up the link and the image, I'll give it a try.

I toggled back to my Aphex Twin Syro gear list tab just now, to indulge in one of my favorite "warm up" (procrastination) chores: tagging every piece of gear in that list with the correct album on EB. Always good for a 10 minute reset; turn off brain and click, click, click...

...but it seems @gchiaren has found a way to tag 'em all up behind the scenes? Everything on the list is now tagged, but the 200 or so items I hadn't gotten to yet don't have any recent updates in their edit history?

Very cool... any advice on what album-tagging task I should focus on next?

that'd be much appreciated re: email connection. thanks!

Thanks for askin' Giulio. re: producer/engineer: we currently have producer and Engineer as two separate roles when tagging artists, what's the advantage of combining the two roles in this context? Saving UI space?

(I think I'm gonna wake up to Jim's strong and hard-earned opinions on this particular question... I'll have some popcorn ready)

I guess we did blow up that Butch Vig submission, maybe the longest submission thread that wasn't an argument.

Jim taught me to embrace the fine art of blowing up submission threads on EB... I no longer feel any shame. I don't think it harms the SEO or the viewer experience... besides, advertisers love "strong engagement signals" like that... we're so engaged! So much intent! Any ad you show us will go straight to the deepest darkest regions of our subconscious. It's money in the bank...

Thanks for taking a look.

No matter what or how I try to upload an image to this item, the entry just shows up with a missing/broken image. I tried url, jpeg upload, nothing seems to stick.

https://equipboard.com/items/bode-model-7702-vocoder

a suitable product image:

https://imgur.com/a/GdloNF8

@Michael, what am I doing wrong?

I love everything I'm reading here and can't wait to check it out later today. I appreciate that you pre-empted the follow-on requests I had locked and loaded for singles/EPs and landing pages for albums. :D

Thank you!

Update: workin' great so far

here's a good one, the bass is full root, but when it bits that maj7 its half step flat from root, and on the sus2 its way up playing the 2, plus lots of refrain walk, so a mix of approaches https://youtu.be/k5Pk0-xF8WE?si=toEvdaJIgKT-3mlX

This one is a gem. I'd never heard it. Must be a demo that didn't make the album?

I'm a fan of Bruce Thomas' approach. He seems to have studied his Jamerson and usually keeps things interesting without ever being too showy.

I'm going to have to transcribe this one to wrap my head around it, but it's homework I'll enjoy. Thank you.

and for melodic use of mainly roots this the greatest: https://youtu.be/NZMfZe7OFFk?si=pdxphasKvENZzTDv

I've seen The Last Waltz... I think... it's clear they're talented dudes, they just never really leave a strong impression on me. I love that they give the bassist some room in the mix to operate here. I will study up.

Thanks Jim!

But here is one from a church nearby : https://youtu.be/YCTL8Xy--Zk?t=284

It's very groovy music, Let me know what you think 😅

This is even better than I expected. I've been listening for several minutes now, no plans to stop -- it's wonderful.

A Makossa Praise can happen spontaneously like our Praise Breaks here in the states, right?

Do they always last so long?!? I don't think I've ever seen a praise break go longer than 10 or 12 minutes here.

it was a hard job because I had to record time code start and stop synced to the cameras and it was midi in the DAW and then I had to turn up to convert to smpte, video was pretty analog then

Ahhh, the good old days of BetacamSP...

I had a great temp gig in my 20s doing FOH and recording audio for the video records of a gospel megachurch in a repurposed move theater...

I'm envious. Sounds like a blast.

Churches still train & educate more musicians here in the United States than universities do. I'm not a religious person, but I'd never turn down a chance to see one of the great gospel or pentecostal church bands here in Los Angeles do their thing on Sunday. Churches are one of the few places in this country where you can still find live musicians playing complex jazz-influenced music... AND everyone is up on their feet dancing and enjoying themselves, instead of sitting in their seat stroking their chin.

I'm curious to know what kind of music you play at your church? Is it similar to our urban gospel here in the states?

If you ever find a free moment, link us to a YouTube video of the kind of music you play at church. There are lots of people reading this thread who are just as curious as I am... people who are lurking, just like you were, lol.

Nice.

Ship it?

UPDATE: my robots tell me only 17% of detected variants were skipped (no other matches) in the tiny corpus I experimented with, but it thinks the 58-ish% skipped rate in your full-scale run is to be expected, given I cherry-picked well known artists with more or less complete discographies on Spotify. Is this your thinking too?

Yeah, it's quite hard to find fellow band members from m region online.

What about out finding fellow musicians out in the streets? Is there a music scene in your part of Nigeria?

Nice! It was a fun way to start the day.

Thanks again for building all this stuff. :D

I'm having second thoughts re: including "version", if for no other reason than the problems it would cause with Taylor Swift's discography... someone may want to take a broader look at the album/release database and see if "version" is really a worthy keyword to filter for.

I just ran a quick test in python using the album names copied from the item edit interface for Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Daft Punk, Prince, Mac Demarco, Taylor Swift, Metallica and a few others.

To compare and group the matches, I normalized each title with the following:

1. I removed the date parens at the end of each title.

2. I normalized capitalization, punctuation and whitespace.

3. IF the album title contained any of the following keywords enclosed in parens or brackets, I removed everything within the offending parens/brackets:

• deluxe
• expanded
• anniversary
• remaster
• remastered
• edition
• version

Then I compared by normalized titles and grouped the exact matches, with each match-grouping representing multiple versions of the same album that should (ultimately) be displayed as 1 title to the user.

The results were clean.

There were no false positives (that I could find)* and the only thing annoying that slipped through was TRON: Legacy - The Complete Edition (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), because the "Edition" wasn't bound by parens/brackets, but situations like this are exceedingly rare in your current album database, if my tiny sample set is any indication.

Anyway, you're a wizard -- I know you'll find a smarter upstream-focused solution, it was just an interesting problem and I needed to warm up this AM with some vibe-coding. Godspeed!

UPDATE: Apologies to the Swifties who know that the "Taylor's Version"s should count as separate releases in this context, due to each being a ground-up rebuild of the original album.

Hello & welcome, Oyale!

In what city/town are you looking to start this band?

Ive gone ahead and added a bunch to the Daft Punk page, but I can't lie, now that Im actually filling it out, this is alot harder than I initally thought!! Noticed a few speculation additions on the Daft Punk page that had been marked as true (See entry for MS-20 for example)

Finley, damn... you tagged so many DP items with albums today. Absolute legend.

One quick question - Regarding duplicate album pulls (I.E. Homework, and Homework 25th Anniversary Edition, and all the countless versions of RAM) is there any way to filter this down so that we dont see gear tagged with the same album twice (Or even three times!)?

I've been noticing the same thing. The more geezer the band, the greater the glut of remasters and deluxe editions to choose from. How do we keep people from using anything other than the vanilla/original version of an album for tagging? I don't want people to have to check 4 or 5 different boxes to filter an artist by a single album.

like the robocop slogan only with equine/bovine attributes:

half man, half horse, all bull

I'd buy THAT for a dollar!

sorry, I try to keep politics off EB, but I'm pretty salty this month.... I also thought that cenOtaur was like minOtaur so like the man, the horse, the bull

Stay salty, Ponyboy.

I thought a cenOtaur was like a centaur, except both halves were all-horse AND all-man... but also all-bull. https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExa3hyMnFmb3BpMHR5eDVreHA0dm4ydnp6dHZ0bmkzYjVvdTVhaWJobSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/BhqCNnw7Zpj0c/giphy.gif

I got that PKK.

https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZDJnY3p2cGhtMHI0aG9wcWQ2bjExcnlkY2Q2dHVzZDltZTJsd2RkdCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/I3EsiEPZWgpqg/giphy.gif

Looking great so far, nice work!

I just tested it out on Aphex Twin -- worked great -- but someone else needs to go in and re-approve that entry now... (please?) ;)

I'm also surprised & happy to hear the timeline idea might happen one day :)

Also: "Cenotaur" sounds like a line of vitamin gummies at GNC that are laced with male-enhancement ingredients.

She'll love you like a man when you're hung like a horse and have the stamina of an adolescent bull... try Cenotaur today at GNC... we now return you to Info Wars

100%, Exactly.

Those are 2 good examples. As a point of interest, Larry Carlton wrote the charts for both those LPs.

You've just sent me down a new rabbit hole (thank you)... see y'all in 3 months...

I knew guitarists loved Larry Carlton, but looking at what scraps remain of his charts, I've got a whole new level of appreciation. Judging by what I'm seeing in the first page of the Deacon Blue chart, I suspect Chuck was anchoring to the notes Larry put in the chart most/all of the track... and that those bass notes Larry charts were probably also in the keyboard and voice demos from Becker/Fagan that Larry used to work out the charts & arrangements. For the section of Deacon Blues shown in the link, Chuck plays the root unless the chord is written as a slash, in which case he of course plays the slash. I'm guessing that pattern continued for the other page or two of the charts (which I can't seem to find).

OK, so the scenarios you're talking about, perhaps it's something like what's going on with the bass in Deacon Blues?

The verses start off really grounded with the bass playing the lowest note of the keyboardist's chord voicing, for the most part.

Then, those grounded 8 bars are followed by 8 bars that aren't so weighty and grounded, and in those sections, I think Rainey is playing extension-function bass notes (2/9?) rather than reinforcing the harmonic floor, which seems to compliment what that section is trying to achieve.

(EDIT: I shortened and cleaned-up some of the logic in the section below, based on findings later in the thread, for the sake of the 1-2 humans that may stumble over this bit in the decades ahead.)

The chords in this less-weighty section are complete as-is, and the bass isn't necessarily defining the harmony here. Rainey sticks to just playing the one note that is (presumably) defined in the chart, not a root5 pattern -- he doesn't deviate from the anchor tone until he's transitioning into the next chord. In a situation like this, I'm not sure he'd have a lot of freedom to play anything more than just the one note in the chart. Among other concerns, he's gotta preserve uncertain/questioning vibe in those 8 bars, making each return of those grounded sections feel that much more peanut-butter in the contrast.

This is where I'm currently at/struggling in my learning. I'm trying to figure out what kind of freedom/good-choices a bassist has in all these different slash chord scenarios... do these sections in Deacon Blue demand that the bassist keep things pretty conservative, or are there equally-viable options that I just don't see yet? (probably the later).

Then there is Babylon Sisters, where Chuck seems to be establishing root notes that are NOT in the chord voicings floating above... and so he's playing a root/5th pattern throughout the verse sections, presumably to define a harmony that wouldn't otherwise be there.

In Babylon Sisters, Chuck's playing seems to be treating the chords voiced by the keyboard as upper structure/color. Is Chuck doing exactly the opposite of what Chris is trying to do in these Dog & Pony tracks? Chuck is hitting those 5ths to pull the harmonic center of gravity away from the keyboard parts, and Chris is avoiding 5ths to avoid shifting gravity in that same way.

Also: "Cenotaur" sounds like a line of vitamin gummies at GNC that are laced with male-enhancement ingredients.

I'm always experiencing conflict between my inner King Buzzo and Walter Becker.

Speaking of your inner Walter Becker, the approach I often end up having to take when writing bass lines over slash chords is pretty similar to Chris's approach: cling to a root-only pattern until I get to a safer chord. E.g. if D/F#, I play an F#-only pattern for most of that bar.

This works, but I'm thinking you might have some more creative examples of how to honor the specified bass without clinging to 1 note the whole time?

More like lead tones for the main riffs. He wanted to avoid 5ths oi r 7ths at allcosts

Educated men pretending to be barbarians.

... I approve.