Category: News

My sister’s co-worker and friend Allison has a brother, Scott, and Scott’s friend Jon was a staff member of Joe Biden’s in the Senate. (That’s four degrees of separation, if you’re counting.) (Thanks to Allison for telling this story on FB a couple weeks ago and reminding us of some of the details. I also think Lisa Silberstein was involved from Bear’s posts on the 6th, but I’m not sure how.)

As Bear’s cancer was progressing in 2014, Allison and Scott asked Jon if he could get Joe to send a selfie or something to give her a little boost. It doesn’t sound like Jon was optimistic, but said he’d try.

On March 6, Joe actually called and left a voicemail:

Mary, Mary, Mary, this is Joe Biden, Vice-President Biden. I just called to say hello to you and tell you I’ve kind of been where you are, and you’re an incredible young woman. And also to wish you happy birthday, and I hope if I’m around Chicago on March the 20th I’d come to your birthday, I don’t know whether they’re going to have me…

I’ll try you again but I just wanted to, I hear nothing but wonderful things about you, and you know, you’re going through hell now, and that’s happened to my family too, but guess what; don’t give up hope, don’t give up hope…

I’m going to try you again if that’s OK, and I hope I’m not being presumptuous calling you, but I’m going to try again later. Love you, kid. Keep it up.

Joe Biden to Mary Howard, 2014 March 6

Remember that Joe’s son Beau was also in treatment for brain cancer at this time, having been diagnosed in 2013.

True to his word, he called back on the 20th and left another message, only hours after returning from Poland following Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. Bear was unconscious by then but we’re told she could hear, and Joe’s message was played for her:

Mary, happy birthday, this is Vice-President Joe Biden. I told you I’d call you on your birthday kiddo, and I’m thinking a lot about you. I’ll try you again but I just want you to know I’m thinking about you, you’re a wonderful woman. Anyway, happy 30th birthday, child.

Joe Biden to Mary Howard, 2014 March 20

I’ve mentioned it in passing before, but here it is officially; recording for “Fight Songs,” my seventh solo record as Sally M/S Ride and first since 2015, is well underway.

“Fight Songs” is the punk-, Motown-, and Elvis Costello-influenced follow-up to “Ventura” (“Valiance” being a kind of one-off).

My aim on “Fight Songs” is to absolutely nail the rhythmic feel of those influences, and the key to that is the bass. I’m using a James Jamerson-style rig, with the foam-deadened strings you can see above and a fully DI sound.

Customizations to the bass sound include:

• Running the pickups in series for a bigger timbre
• Using my Falcon Heavy prototype pedal for some clipping and saturation
• Using my Wheeler Leveling Amplifier pedal
• Using a transformer-based DI box with a wider pass band than Jamerson had available (I may end up high- and low-passing the signal a bit more in the mix)

I’m really happy with the timbre, have four songs down (out of 14, one of which will be a Cool Drugs song), and am working at a pace of a couple songs per week.

Writing bass parts has become one of my favorite things to do, musically. It utilizes all of my rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic sensibilities while not requiring me to step into the spotlight like a vocal or solo would. Mid-major solo artists and bands seeking ringer bassists, get at me! Cory and Drew can provide unbiased references!!

Next Friday, 8/14, we’re dropping the first of several (!) quarantine releases. It’s a synths-‘n-drums collaboration between Nate Holt (Asterales, Life Absolute, Approach) and Howie and you can hear three songs right now:

The Boss Dimension C / Dimension D effects are famous for their seemingly unmoving modulation, providing a widening and deepening* effect on sounds without being warbly like a traditional chorus effect.

Here’s how the same effect can be created and customized in almost any DAW. I use this often for turning mono synth signals into stereo.

It takes four channels of audio. In Reaper I do this all in one track, with an extra set of track channels and plug-in pins. In ProTools you might use a send from the main track to a stereo auxiliary or two mono auxiliaries. The details will vary; the important thing is four channels, Ls panned 100% left and Rs panned 100% right.

The signal path:

Source – Can be mono or stereo

Split/send – Duplicate both the left and right channels of audio so there are 4 total (4 track channels in Reaper, original track plus two mono aux tracks in ProTools, etc.). One L/R pair (the “dry” signal) will go straight through to the mix stage with no further processing

Highpass (“wet” signal) – Adjust this to taste. On an individual sound source like a mono synth sound this could be skipped. On a full mix with drums, bass, and other sounds, I probably wouldn’t set it much lower than 140 Hz but I might set it higher; 200, even 300 Hz. The reason for this is to keep bass frequencies from bouncing back and forth between left and right

Chorus – The different sides of the wet L/R pair need different chorus settings, so you’ll almost certainly need two instances of your chorus plugin (this is where two mono auxes can be helpful in ProTools, rather than a stereo wet aux). Both need to be set to 100% wet output. Adjust depth to taste but use the same depth on both sides. To the best of my knowledge the original Dimension effects use the same medium-slow chorus rate/speed on both sides, with the LFO polarity inverted for one side (so when the L channel is high the R channel is low, and vice versa). I like just using slightly different rates for a less predictable, almost polyrhythmic type of movement

Invert polarity – This is key; invert the polarity of *one* of the wet channels. This has the result of phase-cancelling frequencies that are the same in both channels, leaving only the differences (like mid/side processing)

Mix – Bring it all together. In Reaper I use an 8-to-2 track channel mixer to mix back down to stereo. In ProTools with auxes your “mixer” is just your master track, and you mix via the volume levels on your dry and wet tracks. The more wet-to-dry in the mix, the wider the stereo image will be.

By creating our own processing instead of using a Dimension unit we can have greater clarity (bypassing the hardware’s inevitable amp stages and filtering) and control (setting our own high pass cutoff, chorus rates, and mix levels), making new sounds in the process.

My hat is off to whoever came up with the idea for this circuit, though, it’s truly brilliant and sounds fantastic.

*Creating “dimension,” natch

The Thereatari is my own adaptation/revision/expansion of the classic 555 timer / Atari Punk Console noise synth with photoresistor control of 4 parameters, tone control, alternate voicing (gives alllllmost a full chromatic octave on the fine pitch control), current starve, and control voltage inputs for the oscillators.

I had been doing research for this project before the lockdown, designed and breadboarded it in late March / early April, ordered parts, made some other music, soldered, made some other music… and finally got it troubleshot and put together last weekend.

The jacks on the sides are separate passive mixers; in addition to the noise synth, this box is designed to pull together my Monotribe / Volca Bass / pedals mini rig.

They were out of blue 1900 knobs when I ordered parts so the “Fine” tuning knob is temporarily black.

More music with the full mini rig is definitely coming. Even in the half-assembled state it’s been in it is super fun to jam on.

Three big album releases are coming in fairly short order, too.

< sunglasses >

1. Piece of gear (Dreadbox Utopia in this case, the orange thing)
2. List of things it can do musically (additional things will be discovered in the course of #3 below)
3. Patch up something from the list and start messing around until a piece emerges

If history is any guide, spontaneously discovered sounds will add between half again as many and double the patches on the initial list.

I haven’t started this record yet, and I’m in no rush to. Plenty going on, and I’m trying to decide if this is a collaboration or a solo jawn. It’ll be waiting for me when I’m ready.

A few weeks ago JT Hills reached out and asked us to record a stay-at-home version of “Blues or Astroblue” for Pride. We threw in “When Breathing” for good measure. They’re featured in the United Church of Big Rapids worship service this morning, embedded below, with stand-alone videos to follow.

On Friday we will release Night Mode’s Your Pain Matters in celebration of Bandcamp’s fee waiver. We hope you’ll add it to your list of purchases on Friday!

Your Pain Matters is my follow-up to Dirac Spike. It’s a solo Night Mode effort recorded from March to July 2017, with the setup* used on the first Night Mode trio jams** and shows*** plus some overdubs****.

* Alesis Micron, Korg Volca Bass, Poly app for iPad, effects pedals

** What became Load Exceedance and Load Transcendance

*** April 2017

**** Rhodes, guitar, etc.

Musically and emotionally, Your Pain Matters is really the beginning of my story with making instrumental synth music. I absolutely stand by Dirac Spike but it was only a first experiment, and all of its pieces are based on the Poly app. (The app is fun, but I have not used it since Dirac Spike.)

For Your Pain Matters I began writing and performing parts for synthesizer with no sampling or sequencing; just me, at the keys & knobs, coming up with sounds and playing/recording live. This is largely what I continued to do for several more albums yet to be released, and am still doing. I did a bunch of it last weekend.

For the few who might care to trace Night Mode’s sonic development, here’s an attempt to sort out who was doing what, when. Of course reality was and is messier than can be fit into these boxes. We’ve had this idea of a Drew solo > Howie solo > Some type of collaboration (duo or trio) release cycle; Capsule was a departure from that, and it seems likely we’ll continue to deviate from that idea. It was a cool plan, but it doesn’t line up well with the pace at which we finish things individually or together.

Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, the world’s first Thereatari; a photoresistor-controlled dual 555 timer “Stepped Tone Generator” synth (the famous “Atari Punk Console“) with a bunch of bells and whistles.

It’s nice to be building again, after a break since early fall when I made the run of FNTSTC octave fuzzes.

This Thereatari will mostly live in the minirig, along with the Monotribe. The enclosure will also hold two passive mixers: one for submixing things to the Monotribe’s audio input, and one main mixer to produce a mono output from the whole system.

I might do a run of Thereataris later. In addition to putting them in others’ hands, it would be cool to have one for Night Mode shows to put at the front of the table and invite audience members to play.

There’s a shortage of perfect indie-punk records in this world. Would be a pity to miss the 20th anniversary of Idlewild’s 100 Broken Windows.

(Thankfully I’m not alone in remembering this album, like I seemed to be with Goldfinger’s Hang-Ups (read from the bottom up))

I must have heard the band first through KDNE. 100 Broken Windows came out before I was even at the station, so my guess is the label may have been giving it a push in the run-up to releasing Idlewild’s next record (The Remote Part). I got comp tickets to The Remote Part tour through my connections as Music Director. This show also introduced me to the French Kicks; I remember both bands’ sets clearly.

All to say, I wasn’t quite in on the ground floor, but I made up for it in listening. Every note on 100 Broken Windows is as familiar as a favorite hoodie, and if CDs could be worn out my copy would be.

100 Broken Windows is a perfect indie punk record; it doesn’t waste a breath, it maintains momentum from start to finish, it’s stuffed with hooks, and it has a perspective.

This is expressed most clearly in Roddy Woomble’s use of repetition. Look at the lyrics to “Roseability.”

Roseability, there is no roseability
Roseability, there is no roseability

You’ve got off with too much now
You’re getting off with too much now
Stop looking through scrapbooks and photograph albums
Because I know
They don’t teach you what you don’t already know
You’ve always been, dissatisfied

Gertrude Stein said “that’s enough”
(I know that that’s not enough now)

Roseability, there is no roseability

You’ve got off with too much now…

Gertrude Stein said “that’s enough”
(I know that that’s not enough now)

Roseability, there is no roseability

You’ve got off with too much now…

Idlewild, “Roseability”

Across three verses there are only two lines (“Roseability…” and “Gertrude Stein…”). Both rhyme words with themselves, and follow the self-negating form [Thing] / [not Thing]. This is a recipe for boredom and cloying simplicity, but Roddy and the band make it work beautifully. They pull this trick off over and over across the record, and it still works.

For twenty years I’ve been happy any time I played this album, and I’m sure I will be for twenty more.