Nicholas Toone

  • It’s Alive!

    At the end of February, I posted about my beloved 11″ MacBook Air finally giving up the ghost.

    This morning I was reading that the last of the 11″ MBA’s were being added to the obsolete list and I started thinking about the error icon I saw:

    bork bork bork

    I looked it up. And found that it was most likely an issue with the SSD. For a goof, I pulled the laptop off the shelf, removed the back and and found …

    There was no screw holding the M2 SSD in place. How in the … ?

    My best guess is that when I took that machine apart a couple of years ago to  replace the battery, I forgot to put the screw that secures the M2 drive back in place. And in the time between then and now, the SSD managed to wiggled itself loose.

    I have this tiny, external drive that holds a 128GB M2. I took it  apart and removed one of the screws holding the M2 in place. I then went to the Mac, re-seated the SSD, put in the screw, put the back cover on.  plugged it in, hit the power button and …

    The Mac is humming away running a software update. Who knows how much longer it has, but I’ll take it.

  • Bagpipes

    Bagpipes. They’re not just Scottish, Celtic or Irish. There are Caledonian ones and Spanish ones and Middle Eastern ones. Wherever you have a goat and you have a piece of wood, all I want to say is the goat better watch out because it’s probably going to end up being a bagpipe.

    – Hans Zimmer On Creating the Dune Soundtrack.

  • Band Vs Music

    … I realized that the mistake was that I thought I wanted to be in a band. What I should have been thinking about was wanting to play music.

    – Ian MacKaye

  • RIP Taylor Hawkins

    1972-2022.

    (Photo by Daniel DeSlover/imageSPACE)

  • Roots of Inspiration

    It starts with a metronome; common time, seventy beats per. I just turn it on and let it play: tick-tock-tock-tock tick-tock-tock-tock.

    I pick up my guitar, an older electric with mismatched pickups. It never seems to stay in tune for more than ten minutes at a time. I’ve just learned to live with it.

    Start simple. Em. Then G. Back to Em. G again. I learned this nearly thirty five years ago; the basic of basics.

    tick-tock-tock-tock tick-tock-tock-tock.

    Just start somewhere. It’ll show itself eventually.

    Em. G. Em. G.

    I try adding in other basics; the variations of A minors and F sharps. Maybe even a C. They’re all bland. Everyone has heard them before.

    Pause. I sip my beer.

    tick-tock-tock-tock tick-tock-tock-tock.

    Em with G again, but a slight mistake makes it G add9. Without thinking about it I bend the A up slightly. For a just breath, it becomes a G ♭3.

    There it is.

    tick-tock-tock … I stop the metronome. Play it through a few times; Em, G add 9, bend to G ♭3 for a 16th of a beat then bend back down to G add 9.

    I hit record in the DAW, let the click run for an 8 count then play the new bit for about two minutes just so I have it.

    Stop recording. Listen back. Smile.

    “Yeah, there it is.”

    -=-=-=-=-=–=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Dramatic, isn’t it? I mean, it is the truth, but come on.

    (more…)

  • A Sorta Update

    Covid is still a thing. And there were truckers everywhere protesting about … I’m pretty sure they don’t even know what they were protesting about in the end. Needless to say I’ve been a bit of a shut-in. Or rather, more than I normally am. I’ve gone shopping for groceries, but haven’t been looking for good deals on music equipment. Like most others, I hope we’ll be in the clear at some point in the near future and can move on with whatever the post pandemic normal will look like.

    In lieu of that, here’s a sorta update.

    (more…)

  • Ashes To Ashes

    Midsummer 2011, I purchased a base model 11″ MacBook Air; 1.6 Intel Core i5. 4GB ram. 128GB SSD.

    This past week I went to turn it on. It gave me this:

    bork bork bork

    I held down the power button until it turned off. Hit the power button again and…

    … nothing.

    So this was it. It didn’t go put with a whimper. It just decided to pack it in.

    For ten and a half years, this little MacBook Air:

      • Was my portable recording unit across two bands; countless demos and jams were recorded using GarageBand and Reaper.
      • Powered MainStage at home, rehearsals, and on stage.
      • Was my backup when my work computer freaked out (and, at one point, used for a full year because a company I worked for didn’t provide computers).
      • I’ve written who knows how many blog posts on it.
      • Was my teleprompter when recording video.
      • Was very decent at photo/image editing thanks to Pixelmator.
      • Has traveled with me to many countries. It was so small I just tossed it in the front pocket of my carry-on; I didn’t need an extra laptop bag.

    In all those years the MacBook didn’t have a single issue. I did replace the battery in 2019; it wasn’t dead, it just wasn’t holding a charge for any more than an hour and and that just comes with age and heavy useage.

    That’s value.

    RIP little MacBook. You more than earned it.

  • Never 100%

    I was working on a new video detailing the last few months of 2021, but we all know how my video & audio work is going.

    In the meantime, I’ve been transcribing my video scripts to blog posts. I don’t feel pressured to finish videos because I’ve no plans to become a full time YouTuber. It’s been six months since my last video and no one is kicking in my door looking for a new one. This is just fun for me.

    So what’s been happening? Let me tell you …

    (more…)

  • How, Indeed.

    “How would you record (Patton’s) vocals back then?”

    “Uh, I dunno. A microphone?”

    – Matt Wallace. full in bloom Interview

  • Struggle

    “When it’s a struggle, it means you know what you really want to do but you’re fighting what you think you should do.”

    – Kenny Aronoff on making an important decision: – Sunset Sound Roundtable