Category: Blog

Lyrics and Music by Nicholas Toone. ©2022.

You wave the barkeep down, order a stronger drink;
Two parts aversion, three parts apathy
The colours are dialed low and the communal lip sync
Is written on the social marquee

Where you talk of cowering at supposed beastliness with fleeting hope
As you torch your broken bridge
And hang the crown with its own rope
Then endlessly commiserate about how you can’t cope
The anger comes and goes in waves,
Our choice between gods, prophets, or slaves

The world was promised once, yet no one led the way
Out of childish infinity
It’s the empty space that you refused to fill
Far removed from sensibility

And your avoidance of the harsh realities on which you choke
Stare at your blackened bridge
An watch the crown swing on its rope
Live constantly indifferent, vagabond misanthrope
Vexation comes and goes in waves
Our choice between gods, prophets, or slaves

You think that no one can see
The petty crimes you believe will never amount to anything
You cry out “servile!” but what’s not controversial
Is the saboteur on its knees

Arms raised and begging absolution like the past was but a joke
You can’t just fix the ruined bridge or cut the crown down from its rope
You never seemed to comprehend how slippery was your slope
Cold reason finally crests the wave
We choose to live as gods and prophets…

… but not slaves

The other day I shared Benn Jordan’s latest video regarding Spotify and mentioned that I’d post some thoughts. When I started to write this, I went back and re-read two pieces that I keep on hand:

• • • The Problem With Music by Steve Albini, December 1993.
    • Courtney Love Does The Math, June 2000.

Both of those articles opened a can of worms, especially when you think of them as older companion pieces to the video.

While a lot of people thought (and still think) the music industry was/is evil, no one was really prepared for Big Tech.

Continue reading “Music, Labels, The Internet, And Streaming Services”

I’ll add some thoughts in the coming days. For now, this is an important watch/listen.

To start 2023, I decided to move everything back to where it began. I registered nicholastoone.com well over a decade ago, so that’s where everything is going to be. The Low Budget Lifer domain will not be renewed and will fall by they wayside sometime in late April. No more clever URL’s. No more content creating on whatever the big platform of the day is. No more playing with SEO or whatnot. Just me in my little corner of the Internet.

I was going to post a big, blathering piece about 2022 but I couldn’t find the right tone. Everything I wrote sounded overly bitchy, or overly elitist, or overly preachy. In the end, I’ve settled on a short list of what could be called resolutions.

Continue reading “2023 – Here We Go”

I read more in 2022 than I have in recent years. I was a voracious reader in my teens and early twenties but tech got its hooks into me over the years and reading books just fell by the wayside. I’ve been working on changing this and for 2023, I plan to read even more.

I’m not what you’d call a fast reader. My rate is a little more than a book a month; a “book” being +/- 400 pages. I have a habit where I will re-read sentences or paragraphs that I find particularly excellent. I also spent too much time on my damn phone and not enough time with my nose buried in books.

So without further ado…

Continue reading “2022: Books”

Lyrics and Music by Nicholas Toone. ©2022.

So here they are again
They’re scratching at your door again
I gotta say that they’re surprised you went and showed your face again
They all came and paid the fee
And crowded close reluctantly aware …
( …of the expected beats that never, ever came to be… )

Now they’re not sure this is the place
And they’re not sure yours is the face
It seems to them the entertainment promised somehow was erased
So here they are again
They’re scratching at your door again
‘Cos they’re upset that you’d neglect
To genuflect only to them

— CHORUS —
That’s what was said, yes
That’s exactly what they said
Screaming under the pandemonium of your adulating rank and file

That’s what was said, yes
That’s exactly what was said
“Why did you change your style and leave us exiled in favour of everything we revile?”

(you must … they want you to … you must)

Twist and dance and spin
Exactly like your first time in
The pale light of the barfly stages, part time jobs, minimum wages
Starve so you can feed your muse
Allow the world to turn its screws
Don’t think about what’s captivating; hit repeat they’re right here waiting

From the start they advocated
So long as you were compensated
Less than they would ever see which would serve to guarantee that
They’ll be here again
They’re knocking on your door again
‘Cos they’re surprised that you’d decide to not capitulate to them

— CHORUS —

They’ll commiserate and flagellate
But there’s no chance they’ll abdicate
The righteousness and piousness that they employ to deviate themselves
… from what they view as tainted
Squeaky clean, contaminated with the pleasures of the masses
Just ignore rose coloured glasses

Chop your roots and plant new seeds
Nostalgia’s where they group to feed and
Castigate you if you haven’t spent enough time on your knees
Look, here they are again
They’re kicking in your door again
‘Cos they’re confused that you’d refuse their retrospective schemes again

— CHORUS —

I’ve never really liked the term “cheat” when it comes to learning and doing things. When I was young, the expectation was to memorize everything, be tested on it and the more you remembered, the better grade you received and, I guess, the better person you were.

We were taught that using any kind of aid was cheating, and cheating was wrong. It was an automatic fail if you got caught finding a way to complete the questions you couldn’t remember the answer for.

At my first “real job”, I remember frantically trying to remember some piece of SQL code I had learned when a Dev said to me:  “Jesus, dude, just look it up”. I seemed to have forgotten that when I was building websites on my own, I constantly referred to my HTML and CCS books. By myself, this was ok. Being an actual employee made me believe I had to know everything. They hired me because I was smart or something so how dare I cheat?

Turns out that in the real world it’s called using a reference. It took me a long, long time to shake the mindset that not using reference material was the only way to go. There is simply too much to know at any given moment to be expected.

This is true with anything, including music. Whether you’re just starting out, or have been at it for most of your life, there is so much to know and remember.

Those people out there who seem to know their craft by heart? They’ve been doing it for a long, long time and they will always refer to resource materials as there is always more to learn.

It’s not cheating. It’s experience.

The Experts Guitar and Bass Cheat Sheet. This is a good one. It gives you the basics on what to cut, boost, or roll off for guitar and bass while also giving the simple reasons why. For example, on guitar cut a little  around 250 Hz to reduce overlap with the bass.

No-Name Music EQ Cheat Sheet. Graphical page showing the main frequencies between 50 Hz to 15 kHz and what a cut or boost on each will do for guitar, bass, and drums.

Drum EQ Cheat Sheet. I love this one. It’s a perfect starting point for mixing drums. I’ve used this cheat sheet to setup personal presets in my EQ plugins and always start with them tweaking (usually a lot) as I go.

EQ Cheat Sheet for Over 20+ Instruments. Need something a little more comprehensive? This one is for you. It covers general EQing as well as all manner of instruments; not just guitar/bass/drums.

The Frequency Spectrum… I use this one when I have keys of any kind in the mix. A good, quick glance cheat sheet.

As with anything, these are not magic and will not turn you into a professional mixer overnight. What they will do is help you get started and are great as a resource while you work. Bookmark them. Print them. Make use of them.

Remember to listen as you make changes to EQ. Don’t just boost and cut exactly where the cheat sheets tell you to and call it a day. Pay attention to what is happening to the sound as you work.

This one is all Linux. No WINE, no recording on Windows or Mac and bouncing over to this computer.

It’s Reaper and Linux native plugins running on Fedora

This few seconds is raw and not anywhere near a final mix. The drums are completely dry. The guitars are run through ToneLib. There are no plugins loaded on the tracks, buses, or master channel. I just “threw up the faders” and hit render.

All mics and DI were plugged into my beloved US-16×08.

Drums were miced as follows:

• • • Snare top and bottom: SM-57
    • Toms: GLS-ES57
    • Overheads: M-audio Pulsar II
    • Kick In: SM-58 with the pop screen removed.
    • Kick out: Samson C01
    • Room: Behringer C-1

Still a work in progress, but it turned out much, much better than I anticipated when I started this whole experiment.