the happiness, excitement, and general contentedness thread

[phantasmagorovich]

So, after MONTHS of no practice my band got together last night and jammed. We smoked three different types of hash, plugged in, someone started riffing and then the jam WAS ON...

For two hours straight.

It was the most fun I've personally had since forever and the music we made was so amazing I'm hoping everyone is as affected as I am so we can start making music like that. It was the greatest feeling to be with my four best friends/bandmates just grinning like and idiot because what we were doing was beyond anything we've ever done. It went from Mogwai style post to bonecrushing core to super sludge-y doom to really ambient and space-y goodness and everywhere in-between.

Also, I found some pedals in my garage late last week (DOD Death Metal and Flashback Fuzz) and tried them out to see if I could push them into goodness and I was surprised how much fun I had with the Death Metal Pedal. The Flashback is busted, methinks. Gnarly high pitched squeals (not the good kind). After all that though (and tons of cable routing because I'm all out of patch cables) I ended up liking my tone the best when I ran through my good old GK 1001RB. The break up when I overdrive the input just enough is so magical... I forgot how awesome my equipment can sound without fuzz I had been using it for so long. The only pedals I used yesterday were my Echo Park and Bassballs (which I never really got the hang of using until yesterday) in tasteful amounts from time to time.

My passion for music was rekindled yesterday. A true holiday in my book.

This post makes me happy.

[tuffteef]

so i sold my m5 and the guy from cubiseffects turned up at my door to pick it up
pretty coo

so i'm assuming the M5 wasn't a keeper after all

nope didnt really stand its ground enough
cool pedal though


and i just found out he works for mi audio building amps and fx which is based in sydney apparently which i didnt know

[snipelfritz]

Last night I sleepwalked into the office, surfed eBay, and bid on a ZVex nano head. I didn't bid much, so I probably won't get it, but is a hilarious and surprising present for my waking self from my sleeping self.

PS None of you are allowed to go and outbid me for lulz. I know I'm probably going to lose, but getting a zvex nano head this cheap would be awesome. Especially considering my lame apartment building noise restrictions and the fact that my Weber attenuator still hasn't come..

Been hitting the zolpidem, eh?

I slept for 12 hours today. Now I get to sit around the basement, watch TV, smoke res and eat some foodies.

[nieh]

Pixies. Tomorrow.

[madmax1012]

just watched Adventureland again. I love that movie so much. such an underrated film.

[siamesegun]

just watched Adventureland again. I love that movie so much. such an underrated film.

I went looking for that movie on netflix yesterday so I could watch it again. 'tis great.

[snipelfritz]

I got my hair cut today and I kept looking behind me in the mirror and seeing this on the magazine rack. It was difficult to not start laughing


also, the chick who was cutting my hair kept inadvertently sticking her ta-tas in my face.

[mathias]

I got my hair cut today and I kept looking behind me in the mirror and seeing this on the magazine rack. It was difficult to not start laughing


also, the chick who was cutting my hair kept inadvertently sticking her ta-tas in my face.

That's the reason to have girls cut your hair. That and the scalp massages. I learned this in college, when my hairstyle (or the lack of quality thereof) didn't matter and I could just trim my head to #5 on my beard trimmer if it really looked bad. Lots of girls in teh dorms wanted to play hair stylist with my locks.

[mathias]

The Milwaukee Makerspace has been a serious positive force in my life over the past 6 months or so. I'm building stuff again, which I couldn't do at previous apartments, and it rekindled my interest in building effects pedals, tube amps, etc.

I took a screencap from our grand opening video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQC69lsf8K4[/youtube]
and added some captions:


We had over 500 people show up to our grand opening. I'd say it was a success! I spent most of the day at this table, showing kids how I circuitbent 3 toys and letting them make weird noises with the glitchy bent toys. I made a couple Altoids-tin contact mic shakers filled with various dry media, into a tiny mixer, and plugged that into the EHX Bassballs so that it took the short attack of the piezo disc and spread it out into a warble. We also had a trio of Atari Punk consoles, the Rubens Tube (which is a tube with a speaker on one end, filled with propane, that when lit, shows the standing wave of the sound in flames above the tube), a handmade theremin, and more. We kept getting asked to turn down the PA all day, which I think means it was a success

Plus learning how to use all the tools in our machine shop, how to weld, etc just prepares me for rebuilding civilization after the impending zombie apocalypse.

[StudioShutIn]

We had over 500 people show up to our grand opening. I'd say it was a success! I spent most of the day at this table, showing kids how I circuitbent 3 toys and letting them make weird noises with the glitchy bent toys. I made a couple Altoids-tin contact mic shakers filled with various dry media, into a tiny mixer, and plugged that into the EHX Bassballs so that it took the short attack of the piezo disc and spread it out into a warble. We also had a trio of Atari Punk consoles, the Rubens Tube (which is a tube with a speaker on one end, filled with propane, that when lit, shows the standing wave of the sound in flames above the tube), a handmade theremin, and more. We kept getting asked to turn down the PA all day, which I think means it was a success

Plus learning how to use all the tools in our machine shop, how to weld, etc just prepares me for rebuilding civilization after the impending zombie apocalypse.

I really wish we had one of these around here..

There may be one where my sister lives, but I'm usually not in town long enough to be able to explore like that..

[mathias]

If you ever make it to Milwaukee, I'd be more than happy to give you a tour!

This goes for everyone on ILF!

[TroySanders]

I got my hair cut today and I kept looking behind me in the mirror and seeing this on the magazine rack. It was difficult to not start laughing


also, the chick who was cutting my hair kept inadvertently sticking her ta-tas in my face.

[Achtane]

That makerspace really seems amazing.

[starcastic]

That's really cool, Mathias! Do you guys have any upcoming events?

[mathias]

That's really cool, Mathias! Do you guys have any upcoming events?

We'll be participating in Bay View's Gallery Night, I think. We've got room for some really big installations, so we're pitching that to the gallery night folks to see if they can send us some artists.

Tuesday nights are club meetings, open to the public, but not the most exciting thing on the planet.

Thursday nights are electronics night and open to the public. This is typically when I build guitar pedals. This Thursday I worked on my tube amp and got into an argument with three EE-types about why tubes don't suck Although we agreed that I should build a solid state practice amp with a JFET gain stage (like the OLC pedals) and maybe a built-in tubescreamer in front of that. The electronics music guys (including me) are currently working on printing up some Cacophonator PCBs and working on atari punk consoles and such. The rest of the members are building lots of stuff: electric cars, biodiesel reactor (which is churning out about one 70 gal batch a week now), laser cutter, a CNC router made from scratch, Makerbot 3D printing, building a lathe and bandsaw stuff, building camera equipment / time lapse rigs, etc. Lots going on.

Come down on a Thursday night some time, I'd love to hang out with you guys :-)

Edit: This is the Cacophonator, but the version we're building has switches for photoeyes as well:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hveXcUy6Cw[/youtube]
Tons of crazy noises inside that thing! And a huge charge cap for a power supply, so after you turn it "off" it takes about 20 seconds to charge down, making weird glitch noises along the way.