Jim Alfredson

Good thing she doesn't check this board.... I think...

My wife once won Hall & Oates tickest and dinner for two at a local restuarant. Keep in mind this was LAST SUMMER! Needless to say, we didn't go see Hall & Oates. But we did partake in the dinner and the restuarant SUCKED. It was new at the time and had all this hoopla around it but the food was horrible. Oh well... at least we didn't pay for it!

Case in point: From our Hawaii honeymoon, Mrs. Alfredson (aka, Sweetpea):

I was out with it for a week. I caught it the Saturday before Christmas, had it Christmas Day (my wife and I hosted the family Christmas dinner this year, too) and I still have a nasty cough and crap in my chest. SUCKS BIG TIME!

Ah... that's a nice idea, but I already have the set. The Sonny Stitt set, however.... Just kidding. I haven't even listened to the set yet. I will be listening to it this afternoon as I drive up to northern Michigan for my New Year's gig. It's about a three and half hour drive, so I'll have plenty of time to soak in all the Patton greaze!

How about this slogan: Pennsylvania.

They may be attractive physically but I'm not into the whole "whore" thing. And Britney is as dumb as a bag of hammers. Major turn-off for me. Beauty and brains... that's Mrs. Alfredson for you!

Yeah, my boyz in the green & white didn't finish too strong. Oh well. The Pistons are doing all right and the Lions actually went out on a strong note! I did get the Patton Select for Christmas! My sister got it for me. How nice! What was this legal means you speak of? Joe might be interested.

By the way, the "stage" at this casino is in between the men's and women's bathrooms and is not isolated from the main casino floor at all. So all night we'll be jamming to the C major triad!! Makes for some real interesting harmonies.

Much better bread this year for me. I play New Years every year with my R&B band but we've always done this riverboat deal in Lansing and we barely get twice what we normally get when we play there. This year we're at a casino and getting about 4 times what we normally make. Nice!! The only shitty part is that we're playing tonight, Friday, and Saturday at the same casino. But they have another band playing Thursday. So we have to pack all our shit up tonight and then set it all back up again on Friday. Boo!

That dude needs to be punched in the face. Hard.

That's some funny stuff...

It was over too quick for me. We had my entire family over for Christmas gifts and dinner this year. I have six siblings, two brother in-laws, my little sister's fiance, as well as my wife's sister and father and my father and his girlfriend and her daughter. Oh yes and my youngest sister's boyfriend. It was FUN! My mission today: Go get some Christmas lights for next year SUPER CHEAP!!!

My sis got me the Patton Select!!! Woot!

Well, I can't compete with THIS STUDIO. Maybe someday.

Well, I was feeling pretty good about those recordings... and then I heard this: Jazzoo... Granted, they have some nicer equipment than me, but man... the recordings just sound so natural and open. I gotta get some better mic preamps. I gotta start saving up for a Millenia HV-3D. Our last record, recorded at a real studio, made ample use of that preamp and it sounds beautiful. I think that would take the recordings to the next level. I invited the engineer and musicians to post here. I like their sound. I'll definately be checking the record out when it is released.

Who was the bomber pilot? Was that Bonham?

Downhill Battle

Michel, The recording was fairly simple. I recently purchased a MOTU 1224 interface, which is one of their older models. It doesn't have all the fancy wing-dings that their newer interfaces have and it only does 24bit/48kHz recordings (not 96kHz like everybody is doing nowadays... for what reason is beyond me...) but it sounds good and since I bought it used it was quite inexpensive. The 1224 gives me 8 analog inputs and 10 analog outputs to and from the computer. I used Cubase SX 2.0 as my DAW program. Everyone was in the same room. I set up the recording like this: (Track # - instrument source - microphone - preamp) Track 1: drum overhead left - MXL 603s - Presonus M80 Track 2: drum overhead right - MXL 603s - Presonus M80 Track 3: snare - Shure SM57 - Bellari RP503 tube preamp Track 4: bass drum - Shure Beta52 - Presonus M80 Track 5: hi-hat - MXL 603s - Presonus M80 Track 6: organ low rotor - Rode NTK - Presonus M80 Track 7: organ hi rotor - MXL 2001 - Presonus M80 Track 8: guitar cabinet - MXL 53m - Bellari RP503 Track 9: saxophone - Studio Projects C3 - Presonus M80 As you can see there are nine tracks, but as I said the MOTU 1224 can only do 8 analog inputs into the computer at once. On the song where there is no saxophone (Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree), I used the setup listed above for tracks 1 thru 8. On the tune with saxophone (The Christmas Song), I used the hi-hat track (track 5) as the input for the saxophone, but routed it to track 9 in the computer for easier mixing. I slightly compressed the snare drum going into the computer with the Bellari pre-amp (it has a built in compressor and EQ section). The Bellari's are actually not that bad considering they cost next to nothing. I think I got the pair for $200 used. I changed the stock tubes in them which made subtle differences to the tone. I added a slight bump in the organ bass EQ at around 200 Hz. Probably 2db or so. I compressed the saxophone sllightly using the Waves plug-ins for Cubase SX and also EQ'd the midrange a bit. I'm not thrilled with the sound of the C3 on saxophone, now that I've tried it. I'm getting a MXL 67G for Christmas (from my lovely wife!) which is supposed to be a darker sounding mic. I'll try that next. I also have another Rode NTK I could try. The NTK is a really beautiful sounding tube mic (single pattern... that's the only bummer). I try to buy all my mics in pairs. I used the Waves C4 compressor on the drum sub-mix. It's a multi-band compressor which allows you to compress certain frequencies but not others. After some playing around I was able to get a real nice, natural sounding high end on the drums, but still squash the middle enough to tame the dynamics a bit. Not too much... I hate too much compression. Add a sprinkle of reverb here and there using (again) the Waves plug-ins and that was that! The biggest issue I found was since I recorded in 24bit/48kHz I had a lot of dynamic range to play with. When I down converted into 16bit, I had to really watch my levels. 16bit only has a dynamic range of 94db or so. 24bit has a dynamic range of 112db, I think. So you can push it a lot harder. I've also read that it's better to record at 24bit/44.1kHz since you do not have to re-sample the audio from 48kHz to 44.1kHz for CD transfer. You just have to down-convert the bit-rate, which is easier and less noisy that changing two sample rates that have nothing to do with each other mathematically. Live and learn! I recently acquired a MOTU 24i interface off Ebay which will give me 32 analog inputs into the computer, so I won't have to worry about stealing drum channels for the saxophone! Now I just need more mics and more mic preamps!

That website (www.whatacrappypresent.com) is hilarious. The article itself, however, is frightening. The RIAA needs to be stopped.

I was going to post the farting preacher... you beat me to it.

It's satire... don't worry.... yet....

Here's a worthy candidate for your cash: MOTU auction... By the Power of Grayskull... gimme your money!

Scary stuff... although I hate the whether sometimes, I love living in Michigan. No earthquakes, fires, mud-slides, hurricaines, etc...