Audio Island
jfiore | May 18, 2009What do you expect when you pick up an autobiography of a rock musician? Sex? Drugs? Rock-n-roll exploits with a chainsaw and a gallon of baby oil at the Ramada? Scandalous stories of band-mates and sundry hangers-on? You get virtually none of that in Bill Bruford The Autobiography. It's much better. Insightful, entertaining, and well-written, Bruford gives the reader a unique view into his 40 year career as a drummer to see just how he got to where he is and precisely how this business works (or doesn't, as the case may be). You don't have to be a follower of his music or even a drummer to…
jfiore | May 17, 2009Master of the drum kit and poly-rhythmist Bill Bruford celebrates 60 years today. Well known among all manner of percussionists and drummers, Bruford's work spans 40 years from his early days with Yes, his tenure with several incarnations of King Crimson, and his own band, Earthworks, along with work in bands such as National Health, Gong, Genesis, UK, and others. While perhaps best known as "the godfather of progressive rock drumming", Bruford's efforts in the late 1980s to now turned increasingly to small jazz ensembles. Bruford announced that he has retired from public performance in…
jfiore | February 16, 2009Sad news for the drummers and jazz lovers on SciBlogs. Jazz drumming legend Louie Bellson passed away unexpectedly on Valentine's Day. Some details here.
Update: Here's a short bio video with some nice bits of Louie playing and some rather unique kit layouts.
jfiore | December 29, 2008And now for something almost completely different on The Refuge: How well can you count? No, not like in grade school. I wrote and recorded a tune the other day. It's called Timmy Umbwebwe Lights A Candle (yes, I have a thing for odd titles). The initial beat was composed on the drum kit. Not that I planned it this way, but it turns out that the main theme is comprised of three measures of 9/8 followed by a measure of 13/8. This counting is somewhat "plastic" though, and if you prefer you can think of it as alternating measures of 5/8 and 4/8 with an extra measure of 4/8 thrown in at the end…
jfiore | December 2, 2008Well, at least Stevie Van Zandt and Britain's Youth Music seem to think so. A recent article in The Times refers to research by Youth Music indicating that the games have prompted upwards of 2.5 million children to take up musical instruments.
I'm skeptical. No doubt the games are a lot of fun for people who can't play a musical instrument and they're probably preferable to your average shoot-em-up. Further, it's a decent wager that they do pique interest to the point where the kiddies bug mom and dad to buy them a guitar or a drum kit. But these games, while they mimic real instruments, are…
jfiore | November 27, 2008Much has been written on the Refuge regarding what might be termed fine motor co-ordination experiments. That, and something to do with playing the drums in a manner that most drummers don't, you know, like backwards. Some might ask "What is the point of practicing a double paradiddle on a bunch of left-side mounted toms for a right handed drummer?" I guess one could be philosophical and say "Because it's there" but ultimately, doing something musical is what matters, at least to this little bonobo. Exercising your brain to perform unusual patterns at will simply gives the musician a larger…
jfiore | November 6, 2008New from Audio Designline is this three page FAQ on class D audio amplifiers. Not extremely technical, but it answers many questions for the technically minded. I remember studying class D amplifiers many years ago in college. In those days the quality was decidedly not hi-fi and the reliability was somewhere in the vicinity of a well-worn Yugo. How times change. Now they seem more common than fly dung and class D controller ICs and ASICs are offered by numerous manufacturers.
jfiore | August 10, 2008There had been reports of the usual last-minute rush to complete facility construction at the Beijing Olympics. Now I wonder if they completed the main broadcast center. While watching the coverage yesterday, at one point NBC went to Bob Costas at the center and I noticed something strange. It was apparent that Mr. Costas was close-mic'ed, but it was also obvious that there was an inordinately large amount of room reverberation leaking in. The RT60 seemed long enough that it appeared Bob was speaking from inside of an airplane hangar. I wonder if they had time to install any acoustic…
jfiore | July 22, 2008So says the BBC. Researchers tested oxygen uptake and heart rate for rock drummers, including Blondie's Clem Burke. They concluded:
"It is clear that their fitness levels need to be outstanding - through monitoring Clem's performance in controlled conditions, we have been able to map the extraordinary stamina required by professional drummers."
and further,
"It is hoped that the results could help develop outreach programmes for overweight children who are not interested in sport."
Hey, a study aimed right at the intersection of my avocations. Wonderful! I've been drumming for about 40 years…
jfiore | June 19, 2008As part of my continuing adventures in drumming symmetry, I have been working on a dual electronic hi-hat pedal. The idea is to have a single hi-hat pad respond equally well to either a left or a right foot pedal. It is similar to having both left and right kick drum pedals. For the hi-hat, this effect is sometimes realized through the use of a switch, but that requires some extra motion and it's not possible to use both pedals at the same time. These pedals (both an FD-7 and an FD-8) are used with a Roland TD20 drum controller. The hi-hat pedal uses a resistive position sensor to indicate…
jfiore | April 1, 2008There's a nice series of articles on acoustics and pyschoacoustics over at Audio Design Line. Part One, for example, looks at pressure waves, propagation velocity, frequency, wavelength, and related items.
The sequence is a nice overview if you're interested in the mechanics of music and audio but have no formal training in the subject.
jfiore | January 3, 2008Audio Design Line has a handy new link for its top ten articles of 2007. Lots of good stuff here including the loudspeakers & cables series referrenced a couple months ago, class D amplifier design, and audio data compression (you know, that MP3 stuff and the like).
Fun reading for a frigid Friday (or Thursday).
jfiore | December 1, 2007I have added two new categories to the refuge, Audio Island and Pattern Juggling, for the convenience of those interested in a couple of my "off the beaten path" jaunts. I have gone back and retagged a bunch of old posts and will use these tags in the future. Audio Island is basically a catch-all for audio/acoustics/electronics gear, new technologies, observations, and the like. Pattern Juggling is the location for my ramblings regarding the intersection of drumming, co-ordination, art and so forth (for example, the DIY Neuromotor Experiments posts). Audio Island is perhaps a bit obvious,…
jfiore | October 18, 2007Sometimes I can't seem to find just the right lab equipment I want for a particular experiment so I design it myself. Such was the case recently for a course I developed and teach entitled Science of Sound. This course is a natural science elective and deals with the physics of audio and acoustics. We start with a few very basic concepts such as harmonic motion. One of the laboratory experiments involves vibrating strings. I like this experiment because students can relate to it as most are at least familiar with guitars and other stringed instruments (the guitar players really like this one…
jfiore | October 8, 2007A previous post featured a short film about members of the Audiophile Club of Athens and the rather extreme sound systems their members have created. Some members spent in excess of $300,000 to build their systems. You may be wondering just what manner of gear that sort of money would buy, and would it really sound that much better than a more modest (yet still comparatively "high end") system of say, several thousand dollars. Before we go any further, let me state that in no way am I making fun of the way people spend their money. Heck, I've been known to drop some coinage on musical…
jfiore | August 23, 2007Regular readers of the refuge know that I've got a "thing" for audio and music, and that I've had some harsh comments regarding the poor quality audio that so many people tolerate these days in the name of convenience. But what of the other extreme? Who are the audiophile extremists? To what lengths will they go in their search for audio nirvana? Is 230,000 Euros enough, and what do they spend it on? Check out this short film of the Audiophile Club of Athens:
Film about Audiophile Club of AthensUploaded by skaloumbakas
Up front, I've got no problem with someone spending six figures on their…
jfiore | August 2, 2007On the audio front, National Semiconductor, long a player in analog semiconductors, has announced a couple new op amp families producing a total harmonic distortion plus noise spec of 0.00003%. These devices are aimed squarely at higher end audio applications and also offer a very low voltage noise spec of 2.7 nanovolts per root-Hertz with a flicker noise corner of 60 Hertz. I find these numbers to be pretty impressive, especially considering a starting price of $1.35 per unit in 100's (up to about $10 depending on package and other details).
During my college days it was something to find…
jfiore | July 12, 2007Curious about what's inside an iPhone? Well, the good folks at Audio Design Line (via EE Times) have a teardown.
Mind you, it's not like the old days when you could just pop off the cover of your new electronic doohickey and look at the manufacturer's part numbers on the chips. These are the days of self-branded ICs. So what did the folks at the technology evaluation/investigation company Semiconductor Insights do?
To get inside the chips, SI resorted to decapping, a process that involves immersing the chips in acid to dissolve the outer packaging and then manually scraping away any residual…
jfiore | June 28, 2007Shifting gears from the usual ranting at the Refuge, I came across a nice series of articles from Audio Design Line on the usage and selection of bypass capacitors in electronic circuits. This is a topic with which my students often seem to have difficulty. There is a nice tutorial on the modeling and behavior of capacitors and some practical info regarding the various types, with strong and weak points for each. One of my favorite bypass tricks is dealt with in some detail; namely placing different types and sizes of capacitors in a parallel arrangement to create a sort of "super cap" that…
jfiore | June 13, 2007Audio is where I spend much of my time, both professionally and as a hobby. In fact, quite a few years ago I used to design public address systems and components (most notably loudspeaker systems and subwoofers). That venture didn't last too long because I discovered that many people just didn't care that much about high quality audio and weren't willing to pay for it. If only I had been born 20 years later.
One of the pro sound magazines I receive is Pro Audio Review. Lots of material on new equipment, studio redesigns, and stuff like that. They have a column entitled "Worship Audio" which…