Tralfaz

Category: Music

  • Lunchbox from Hell

    My Lunchbox from Hell

    This weekend, I picked up the electric guitar, and fired up the Gallien Krueger to do some jamming. I almost forgot how epic the tone of this kick ass little amp was.

    I bought it way back in 1985 or so. I remember doing the Guitar Center/Guitar Showcase puch-pull to get it for something less than $500, probably a 20% discount from the list price.

    It is a small-ish practice amp, 2 4.5″ speakers, and built in reverb and chorus. It is a true stereo amp, and if you connect it to two large speaker cabinets, the chorus is lush. However, I just play it to my self.

    There are two channels, a “clean” channel, with a modest gain and some clipping that you can get a decent Fender Twin Reverb sound out of (in about 1/4 the size), but the fun is the overdriven channel. It has a very crunchy overdrive, that can deliver a very satisfying tone.

    The 4 band equalizer provides a stunning range of sounds, and tones, so that you can tailor the sound to your liking.

    When I bought it, I was in a heavy metal phase, and I played it balls out crunchy. Very appealing.

    But as I matured, and more importantly, I bought a good Fender Super 60 amp, my first (and only) tube amp. My sound evolved, and I played more straight up rock, blues, and even some jazzy things (albeit not very well).

    The GK is feeling its age. I suspect the speakers need to be replaced, and the jacks are noisy, but when I plug in, dial down the bass, and crank up the gain, I can feel the inner hair-metal guitar god come through.

    A most enjoyable hour of playing.

  • Spinning Vinyl – How my outlook has changed

    Spinning Vinyl – How my outlook has changed

    I remember my early years of listening to music. When I was gifted a modest hifi system, and began buying records (no tapes in that era), I listened to my LP’s sparingly, as I didn’t want to wear them out. As I learnt with my Sargent Pepper soundtrack (the movie, featuring Peter Frampton) you can wear out a record.

    So, as soon as I could afford it on my paper route money, I bought a cassette tape recorder, and began transferring the music to tape, and wearing those out.

    It was more like a mastering process, where I would covet and protect the vinyl, and then dump it down to cassettes to listen to. This also allowed me to “mix” the songs, my own early “mix tapes“.

    Then, in 1983 the Compact Disc was launched, and I eagerly moved to the new format. A lot of my music was still on LP, but most (or all) of my new purchases was the never wear out, play it all you want, CD format.

    Today

    Fast forward to today. Once again, I have a turntable, a modest Sony belt drive that I inherited. A decent amplifier, and studio monitor speakers.

    I am again buying vinyl, but instead of treating it like gold, playing it solely to record it, I play it to enjoy. Whole album sides.

    I don’t worry about wearing them out. I just play them to listen to.

    Latest addition: Rush’s “Hemispheres”. Great album.

  • Music Services: Google Play (and All Access)

    Music Services: Google Play (and All Access)

    Part two in the online music services reviews. Today, it is Google Play and its All Access “Subscription” service.

    In 2011 when Google announced Play and their music service, my hopes were high. I was an early adopter (from when you needed an invite to join Gmail), and I assumed Google would rock this. You could store your music in their services, and play it anywhere. Up to a whopping 20,000 tracks.

    It seemed awesome. So I downloaded the sync application for both my personal Mac, as well as my PC. In about a week, all of my library was on the Google service.

    Of course, there were wrinkles. If I synced something from both iTunes, and from my PC, one was in .m4a, and one was .mp3. One would think Google would know this and not duplicate the album/track.

    You would think wrong.

    You would think that they would have some facility to view duplicates, and allow you to clean them up.

    Again, you would think wrong. So to clean your collection you have to manually delete the albums.

    Early on, the quality of their streaming was sketchy. There were glitches aplenty. Hitches, drop outs, and freezes, all plagued playback. Google relied on their HTML5 wizardry, and their back end cloud infrastructures. Regardless of their technical prowess, there were plenty of glitches, and other things that detracted from listening enjoyment.

    In 2013, Google launched the “All Play” streaming on demand service to counter Spotify. I tried it (and even paid to subscribe for a few months). Like the rest of the Google music experience, it was clumsy, and plagued with glitches. In my initial attempt to ditch Spotify, I gave it a good run, but Spotify’s application and streaming quality slaughtered Google.

    In 2015, Google upped the number of tunes you can store on their site to 50,000, but alas, I have moved on.

    As an avowed Apple disciple, you might be tempted to passing this off on fanboyism. However, I did buy a Nexus 7 tablet, to give Android in its purest state a try. Google Music on that device was just as clunky to use.

    There is an app for the Chrome browser that helps navigate, but it still doesn’t match the performance of Spotify.

    (“Google Play Music icon” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Google_Play_Music_icon.png#/media/File:Google_Play_Music_icon.png)

  • Music Services – Amazon Prime

    Music Services – Amazon Prime

    Part one of a series on music services, I will start with Amazon Prime.

    Back when iTunes music store was top of the list, and sold DRM encumbered tracks, Amazon opened their music store, selling un-protected MP3 files. Turns out that this was more than a sharp stick in Apple’s eye, but the lever by which the music publishers lost the ability to demand DRM on music sold.

    But, it did begin the nascent Amazon sales of music. I bought some from Amazon at the time, not for any particular reason, but to have a variety (and let’s be honest, Amazon makes it so damn easy to impulse buy, that it was inevitable that I bought some tracks from them.

    side note: Some music was not available for purchase on MP3, in particularly Racer-X, so I continue to buy my CD’s from Amazon.

    Fast forward to today. Amazon Prime is their “club” where you get free 2 day shipping, access to a borrowing library for the Kindle, Video streaming (with a really weird set of movies and shows), and ahem, access to their prime collection of music.

    It didn’t really dawn on me until way late that you could listen to music like Spotify, on demand. Yeah, I am a bit dense sometimes. But I do it now, and there is even a decent PC application (and a web application for other platforms, as well as Android and IOS applications for phones/tablets).

    The positive is that unlike Spotify, you can download the MP3 files to your computer and keep them. Cool. The is quite a selection of Prime music available, from a large chunk of the Jethro Tull catalog, to some obscure albums from Journey and The Outlaws (just from my tastes), you can put together playlists that will satisfy. Also there are “radio” stations that are really more like curated playlists, so you can get an effortless listening experience.

    There is a downside though. To find the Prime music you look for the “prime” logo in the store. That means that you get pay to play, next to free tracks. You get your hopes up that a Led Zeppelin album is free, but alas, it isn’t.

    One feature of Amazon’s offering is “AutoRip”. If you buy a physical album, and they offer it as an MP3 download, the downloads are added to your collection automatically. This is really cool, as if you buy the reissue Led Zeppelin vinyl album, while you are waiting for it to arrive via their 2 day shipping, you can enjoy listening to it on your computer or phone.

    And this is not just for new purchases, since Amazon has records of all the music you bought, from the way back time, they go and automagically add those old tracks to your music. Imagine the surprise when the two Stratovarius albums I bought in 2005 were in my list.

    The last time I contemplated ditching Spotify, and seriously looked at Amazon, they got low marks for streaming glitches. It was surprising to me that the company with the AWS and ECS infrastructure to handle Netflix, and be the largest cloud computing platform could suck so bad at media delivery and streaming. However, they have gotten their act together, and a few weeks of heavy usage, I am happy to report virtually no glitches or issues.

    Summary

    Amazon is a strong contender. Spotify seems to beat it in selection, and no need to differentiate the paid versus free tracks. But, as a service, and included with the Prime account that I am going to use anyway, it is a winner.

    Next up: Google Play

  • Music Appreciation – Beggar’s Banquet

    Music Appreciation – Beggar’s Banquet

    Recently, I blogged about a seminal Rolling Stones Album, "Let it Bleed". I was of the opinion that if you needed only one Rolling Stones album to accompany you to a deserted island, it was the album.

    One of my FB friends, Joe Palmer offered up the predecessor of the 1969’s Let it Bleed, the 1968 album "Beggar’s Banquet". So I took his advice, plopped down some hard currency and bought the re-mastered vinyl.

    Wow. Starting with Sympathy for the Devil, a killer "must have" track, the album is chocked full of kickin’ tunes.

    So, if you are headed to a deserted island, and you are told you only can have one Rolling Stones album, kick that person in the nads, and take both "Let it Bleed" and "Beggar’s Banquet". You don’t need that negativity in your life.

  • Let it Bleed – The Rolling Stones

    The-Rolling-Stones-Let-It-Bleed-album-coverWhen a band has been around as long as the Rolling Stones has, looking at their catalog can be daunting. Do you buy something really early? Or how about a best-of collection? It can be a crapshoot either way.

    However, with The Rolling Stones, there is one album that you can buy with confidence, and be cure to have a set of tracks that are timeless, classic, and thoroughly enjoyable.

    I speak of the album “Let it Bleed”. It has several iconic songs that are instantly recognizable, from the Vietnam ware protest staple, “Gimme Shelter” to “Midnight Rambler”, and the theme song from my high school graduation “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.

    Unlike later LP’s, where there were 1 or 2 worthy songs, and a bunch of filler, every, and I do mean EVERY track on this album is awesome.

    I long had a copy ripped from a CD that belonged to a friend. Feeling a little guilty of its providence, I recently bought a re-issue on vinyl, and I must admit that not owning this on vinyl before was a mistake.

    A classic album, from an iconic band, there’s nothing to regret buying this.

  • Led Zeppelin

    Led Zeppelin

    While I inherited a pretty awesome amount of vinyl LP’s of Jazz and Classical from my father inlaw, my rock and roll collection has been almost nil. I am missing the collection I jettisoned in the 1990’s in my frenzy of moving. Fortunately, with the revival, there are ample opportunities to expand and augment.

    One band that I never really had a lot of vinyl of is Led Zeppelin. Not that I wasn’t a fan, I had a well worn copy of IV, but when it came time to buy records, something else always stepped in front of the earlier Led Zeppelin. I did buy several of them on CD, but like many of the mid 1980’s CD’s they were pretty pathetic sounding, a shitton of compression, and thin mixes, as the producers did as little as possible to get the CD’s to press.  I was underwhelmed.

    This last weekend, I splurged. Amazon recommended the 3 LP re-release of Led Zeppelin 1. A bit pricey at 42 bucks, it did include 3 albums, completely remastered by Jimmy Page himself, with extensive tracks from a magical 1969 concert in Paris.

    This afternoon, the LP’s arrived (including a copy the Rolling Stones “Let it Bleed”, another impulse purchase), and it is amazing. Now to get the other re-issues.

    Audible bliss, contained on 180 gram vinyl LP.

  • The joy of Vinyl

    Last year my father in-law passed away, a sad occurrence. However, we inherited his stereo and music collection. A couple hundred LP’s with a lot of jazz and big band recordings from the 50’s through the 70’s, and even some more modern items.

    This weekend, I have the stereo setup, an okay Marantz unit, with some decent bookshelf speakers, and a Sony belt drive turntable. Nothing too fancy, but it gets the job done.

    In the albums are a ton of great jazz albums. Lots of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington and many other less recognizable names.

    Right now, I am listening to Don Ellis recorded in SF at the Filmore. Damn fine recording.

    I have of course added a few of my own, but I am listening to the old albums now.

    There are some oddities though, the Scottish pipers for one.  Nothing like bagpipes in the AM.

  • Music Embarrassment – King Crimson

    Music Embarrassment – King Crimson

    I have been on a nostalgic twist in music lately, reliving my early days of prog rock fandom, and reminiscing about all the vinyl I used to have and got rid of in my flurry of moves in the 1990's. Ah good times indeed.

    There is one classic prog rock staple that I am embarrassed to admit that I have never owned any of their albums, but have followed many of the band members' later careers. I speak of King Crimson. Greg Lake, Robert Fripp, Pete Sinfield (who was credited with writing in the ELP realm), are among the many illustrious artists who were instrumental with the rise of Prog Rock.

    So I am adding King Crimson to my collection, and kicking myself for not doing so earlier. Now listening: In the Court of the Crimson King. Very very tasty.

  • Music Appreciation – Keith Emerson

    Music Appreciation – Keith Emerson

    When two progressive rock (prog rock) fans get together, there is really only one question that matters. Wakeman or Emerson.

    If neither of these names rings a bell with you, then you might as well navigate away now.

    The question is who do you prefer, Rick Wakemen (keyboard player from Yes, and who has had a prolific solo career with probably 100 albums), and Keith Emerson, master of the modular Moog. Two different styles, yet inextricably linked to the genesis of the Progressive Rock phenomenon of the 1970’s.

    Keith Emerson

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