The Buzzadders and the Silent Purists
Buzzadders, my word, add sound to “buzz” the content or reproduce only the pure sound of the performer(s).
Is the buzz then to be an associated part or, indeed, so perfectly integrated as to become elemental to the pure sound?
I learned sound in the era of the vacuum tube. Lest you don’t know already what I mean by buzzadder and vacuum tube, let me explain.
By “buzzadder” I mean, strictly speaking, those who use vacuum tubes to restore the yesteryear buzz into reproduced, recorded, amplified music. I conclude that the purpose is not only or perhaps not at all a desire to return to the “old fashioned” but to add a dimension to the sound that is admirable even if one has never heard relatively ancient sound reproduced by necessity through the assistance of the vacuum tube.
That tube was the high tech of its day. Not only for music reproduction.
Having been shanghaied into the Navy (another story). Having thereafter rejected the Navy’s offer to send me to the university of my choice if I would only give them an additional two years, making a total of six. A nightmare provocateur. Having ironically then been assigned to a six months navy training course in communications that I feel was equivalent to having done the four years at university. I became a radioman. Ahhhh, a “critical” rate, Navy lingo for a function that was very important and very needed. Wow! Who? Me?
The vacuum tube was absolutely essential to my function. I became intimately acquainted with everything about vacuum tubes. Having said “intimately” I feel I must hurriedly add that the intimacy had absolutely nothing to do the vacuum tube’s size. That being approximately the same form and size as a phallos. OK, some were the form and size of a SMALL phallos. But phallos nevertheless, not its flaccid before and after alter(ed)ego. Also comparatively, I have to add that a vacuum tube could be determined to be functioning or not functioning by the presence and absence of heat.
Later, I was a computer programmer in an environment of computers dedicated to controlling and communicating with spy satellites.
I created and tested software in a test and development copy of the real thing. Nearby was another copy of the real thing. The other copy being a copy of the system controlling the North American air defense system.
One could stroll down corridors. The rooms along the corridors were racks upon racks of vacuum tube arrangments of the memory, etc. that comprised the system. That entire system could fit under my desk today.
When that test and integration copy was replaced, the vacuum tube version became a tremendous pile of junk in the parking lot. I recall the figure of six hundred dollars. I do not recall whether the junk man paid six hundred dollars for the junked system or was PAID six hundred dollars to remove the junk.
I saw the arrival of the transistor. I was impressed. I mused we must have more furnaces since the heat of the vacuum tube was gone.
Though I later avocationally wrote songs and music. Though I acquired with time thirty one instruments and learned to play reasonably well several of them and all them somewhat. Though I arranged all of my creations. Though I created albums of my music by recording each instrument, one after another onto my PC music studio. Though I even recorded the voice in, at least, three part harmony. I have used Power Tracks studio on the PC now for probably a decade. Though I considered myself quite aware of what was about in the music world. I WAS IN FOR A BIG SURPRISE.
While in Portland, rambling with a friend who lived there, we stopped at shop. I would never have guessed a shop of its function existed. The shop provided vacuum tube and arrangments for use by bands who wished to put the tube buzz back into music.
For a long while that afternoon I was lost in 1960. “Dip the plate and peak the grid.” That old tube axiom came back. The acronym BARF expectorated a lengthy smile. It used to mean Biased At Radio Frequency. I learned electronics via the vacuum tube. How would anyone learn electronics today without such graphic illustration? Ohm’s law. Induction. As a source of electricity, not a method of thinking. Dodging capacitance. I really saw a man fly out of a doorway and across the corridor I was walking down. He seemed jet propelled. He touched a capacitor. He broke the wall.
Those are two pasts.
Today, I am excited as perhaps never before.
I am in love with sound again.
You will a lot about that on these mags because what comprises mags is media. Media that convey sound, sights, moving sights, moving sounds. Doing all kinds of things with multimedia because duhhhh, we want, we want very much today to communicate high content products. For example, how would we approach the often pejorative sound of product. Traditionally, I am afraid. We fine tune it. We call it a cereal, a movie, a cell phone, a computer, a pod.
But I like to think of “product” as something someone has produced by a productive person. With any luck, a creative productive person. A product I can appreciate for how it can enhance my existence. Now there is a pejorative word. What it needs is reframing. So let’s call it wellbeing. Wellbeing is more than a good diet. it is have all the attributes of life in a state of well. OK, wellness if you prefer.
The reason I told you all the communications stuff before was I wanted a setting for a progression of interest in quantum leaps. Launch one, my early communications experience. Launch N, my current fascination with pods, podn-me. The element of sound is the focus now. I write stories into pods. I write articles into pods. I write tutorials into pods.
Yes, I am the peripatetic palaverer. I love to walk and talk. I love Aristotle as well. The original peripatetic philosopher. Walking around philosophising because he knew his legs were energy producing dynamos for his brain.
The two pod pieces, hmmmm, podn-me, are a continuation of the talk. They dwell on whether one hears best with other sound surrounding an input of content. Or? Should we wait until all surrounding sound is expelled because any surrounding sound at all will interfere with our consumption of the main sound and its content.
Why do we care? Let’s get first person personal. I care. I care because I intend to deliver much sound. I say much instead of lot because I am trying to get away from “lot” as a word for what much does a real good job at. Not that a four letter words i better than a three letter word. Just that “lot” has so many other places to be - a lot of them.
What I am doing for my speech I want to do for the other elements of my communication. Like providing the correct setting for the sound I create that will contain content that I want to convey to other people. Don’t you? Sure you do! Indeed, if you prefer slang and grunting and grandstanding as a way of life, nothing’s wrong with that. That is up to you.
But, if, on the other hand, you may want to escape the numbing norm for a while. If so, you could pod those two talks that further the title “BUZZADDERS AND THE PURISTS” farther, farther, even as far as taking them for a drive or walk or whatever.
Then handing them off or pointing a podn-ahh to them.
You will hear a … errr much… around here about how media is, and maybe should, be used.
Oh, the podly outcasts, now there is a word we need to give a good cleaning, they have been out cast on to the following location.
You can RSS our pods as well. You will see a sign somewhere around here.
Buzzadders and purists - version two
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