Mad and happy, are apparently a pretty popular combination of words and over the years we heard about various bands, venues that had taken up the moniker. It was kind of annoying. Not only that, but we don’t even use the slang, “mad” all that often. These dudes in California have a clothing company that uses the name and had pestered us for years wanting to buy madhappy.com. Finally, when they were offering enough to pay off our credit card debt with change, we decided it’s time to grow into a new name. We picked O, The Center of Wow, but realized that’s more the name of our space. So now we’re using Giggle Out Loud.
We just made facebook and instagram intersections and are off to the races, so to speak.
With some of our newly acquired money we purchased a set of batá drums, which we have been into for years and studying with Don Skoog for the last few months.
The video below is a pretty good documentation of what the drums sound like and how they’re used.
We are playing with a great drummer, Miguel Urbiztondo, and expect to resume recording of the Promise record soon.
Siket says that referencing the mixes by comparing them to similar tracks is key. He mentioned a couple of applications which are designed specifically for this:
MC Compare by Melda Productions, which sells for $69.
Then there’s Reference 4 from Sonar Works, which you can use to calibrate your speakers and/or headphones to remove sonic mirages generated by your specific environment, mixing with a flat, accurate sound.
One thing I can tell you is that the days of the loudest master are kinda over. (Thank God!) All the streaming platforms use “loudness normalization.” There’s a YouTube channel that’s really good. There was also a 30 minute lecture on Sonic Scoop by Alan Silverman that explains a lot.
Loudness Units: Measurement of Loudness, as opposed to “level”.
Null Test: Copy a track to another track, reverse polarity, and they should completely cancel each other out.
Limiter is the essential tool for Loudness/Level.
Three “decent” limiters: Xenon, FabFilter, DMG
“The limiter’s little secret.”
Compressors, although we think of them as making stuff louder, they don’t, they make stuff smaller.
Alan Silverman
Get back into using a VU meter
Current streaming and broadcast levels as LUFS:
Spotify: -14
Apple Music: -16
YouTube: -13
iTunes: -16
-24LUFS – This is your target if you’re mixing for television (-23LKFS in the rest of the world). Out of all the standards, this one is the most serious in that a television network can get its broadcast license revoked for a violation. Send in a program with a higher level, and it will be kicked back for a revision.
-16LUFS for gaming. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s what the gaming development community has settled on. Nothing serious will happen if you violate this level (you won’t lose your game developers license) so it’s okay if it’s a little off.
-16LUFS for podcasts. Since Apple iTunes has been the principle delivery system for podcasts since the beginning, this is the level it settled on and the rest of the industry followed. It’s usually not a big deal if it’s off a little.
A few years ago through our interest in International Folk Dance Music, we discovered the open source music player, Quodlibet, and made a little plugin for it which records a playlist of the sessions.
Today I wanted to open the old playlists on a different computer and the solution was to copy the playlist files from the old computer ~/.quodlibet/playlists to the new one. I also copied the plugins which are in the same location.
If you are interested in hearing some of the music from the International Folk Dance repertoire, here is a great free resource on Archive.org.
(We, HBC, were going to be doing this huge neighborhood event on October 5th, 2019 where we temporarily reinstated street side parking on the big street in our neighborhood and had a big party celebrating all the awesome culture that’s here. But things got complicated and we had to cancel, or at least postpone Slowfest.)
Since that’s my 50th birthday we’re gonna have a party anyway. And we’re going to celebrate diversity and enjoy all the various ages, races, genders, sexual preferences, economic statuses and lifestyles we share with each other in Brownsville.
Please email rivkakilmer@gmail.com with any questions or if you have ideas about what to bring. We guess there will be some kind of potluck food vibe and some music. Rivka and I definitely plan to perform under our new moniker, O as in the center of wow.
Our friend Miguel Urbiztondo aka DJ Sherpa, who just moved here is gonna bring some music as well and there are some other “acts” that might play.
As noted in the image above, we are having the event behind the old Oscar’s restaurant here in Brownsville, Pensacola. Soon to be the new Taste of Jerusalem. Specifically the address is 701 N V St.
We’ve had the same mailing list for a long time. And like everything else, entropy degrades it. So it’s been time to update it.
We use a service called SendInBlue to send our emails.
They recommended to just create a new list with the people who have opened our emails. Only thing is, we just moved to them and have only sent about three emails. First thing we had done is use an email list cleaning service. We used NeverBounce. Basically you upload a comma-separated file of all your emails and they return only the ones that are actually still valid emails. That cut our list down to about 50%. We did that before we even started using Send In Blue.
There were hundreds of fans and friends that hadn’t opened an email from us in a while. We haven’t had that much to say recently. So I downloaded all the addresses and names of people who hadn’t opened an email and added them as contacts on my MacBook.
Then hobbled together this script, mostly found on StackOverflow, which is so cool. It basically automatically does what I would have wanted to manually do for hundreds of emails.
It goes through all the contacts and one at a time, creates a message, waits a few seconds and sends it. The reason for the wait is so that the email provider doesn’t feel like it’s being attacked by a robot.
Dozens of people responded and we are adding those of you who want to be on it to the new “Real MadhaPPy Fans” email list.
set myMessage to "I'm cleaning up our mailing list. Please hit me back (or go to our site) if you want to be on the new one.
Thanks and I hope you are doing magically and wonderfully.
Blessings, Mike.
https://centerofwow.com
"
set mySubject to "New MadhaPPy email list"
display dialog "Please select the recipients in Address Book/Contacts"
tell application "Contacts"
set theContacts to selection
repeat with contact in theContacts
set contact_name to name of contact
if first name of contact is missing value then
if name of contact is not missing value then
set contact_addressed_as to name of contact
else
set contact_addressed_as to "stranger"
end if
else
set contact_addressed_as to first name of contact
end if
my send_message(mySubject, "Hey " & contact_addressed_as & ",
" & return & myMessage, value of first email of contact)
delay 10
end repeat
end tell
on send_message(theSubject, theBody, theAddress)
tell application "Mail"
set theNewMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {sender:"Mike iLL <mike@madhappy.com>", subject:theSubject, content:theBody & return & return, visible:true}
tell theNewMessage
set visibile to true
make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:theAddress}
delay 3
send
end tell
end tell
end send_message
display dialog "Sent batch ending with " & contact_name & "." buttons {"OK"}
How awesome that our old, deal friend John Siket is here for a stay. The Mouse Hole–the studio here at Temple of Wow–has been set up in one form or another for years, but always in a fairly liminal state. Liminal is a really cool word that means it’s still forming. Our friend and really cool Pensacola gardener Jen Chendea recently turned us on to it. Liminal is a step closer to manifestation than subliminal. There is something about liminality in art that has always engaged me. Maybe the greatest art is always liminal.
John has been recording and mixing music from Phish to Sonic Youth for decades and he’s encouraged us to finally hang our speakers properly. John said we should look up this little Tape-Op article about Carl Tatz Studio Design for reference and I wanted to mark it for future reference as well.
It’s the Future, July 2020
We renovated the Center of Wow and are back for reference, also adding a detail or two:
Our powered Event 20/20 near field monitors have the tweeter 12″ from the base and since we’re laying them on their sides, we want the front corners 67.5″ minus 24″ apart: 43.5″. They won’t hang directly below the corresponding hooks, which will be a few inches outside of the geographic boundaries of the hanging wooden platforms themselves.
The foundation of the vocalizing approach–in this book written in around the 1920’s–is that singing should be easy and natural and more significantly, that the singing voice is the same as and an extension of the speaking voice. Singing is just talking with melody added.
The following is a quote from Richard Wagner, who is widely considered to have transformed the art of the opera with his work.
…the vanishing of that peculiar cramp which drives our singers to the so-called head-note, that terror of our singing masters, which they attack in Vain with every kind of mechanical weapon, although the enemy is but a simple bent to affectation, which takes the singer past resistance when once he thinks he has no longer to speak, but to ‘sing,’ which means in his belief that he must do it ‘finely,’ that is, make an exhibition of himself.
It sounds cerebral, but in the end they’re just saying to stop trying to be a singer and just tell the damn story.
Writers writing from the margins do not write to be consumed. They write to be read (a different thing) and, for many, to eke out a sphere of existence that had not previously existed in the literary imagination. – Li Sian Gon
Much of this new article in Bitch–like much of the material within–goes over my head, but these two sentences resonated and I wanted to document it in a feed.
This particular song, Icicle Man was written over the course of a walk around Nashville one hot afternoon while on a solo tour. Had been reading a biography of Hank Williams and didn’t have a friend for miles around, at least that I knew of. There was also a copy of Johnny Cash’s first autobiography, Man in Black, that had come into my hands at the time.
I was in my mid-late twenties and my last romantic relationship had ended really unhappily, mostly because I was being at best a terrible communicator and at worst, an abusive, homphobic womanizer. I had emerged from a long period of heartbreak and depression feeling like a monster with whom an intimate relationship would only lead to pain, and for whom casual intimacy was the only reasonable source of sensual intercourse.
It’s possible that I had just allowed myself to become involved with Rivka, which broke all the rules of not indulging in intimacy with people who made my heart drop between my knees. This song expresses my worst fears about what being in a relationship with me might be.
Pain, horrible pain insane. That’s all you’re gonna get…
The influence of the first Wu-Tang Clan album is clear in the cadence of the refrain.
Dip into the fire with my left fist
A Johnny Cash influenced reference to The Fire as well as evoking the “evil” left-handed path.
First Verse
If you never came back, I might not notice. I’m too busy.
The work-a-holic mantra.
Watch your step, you might not blow this relation-sinking ship.
All of the verses are very short and concise, much like some of the classic Johnny and Hank songs:
Everybody knows where you go when the sun goes down.
I think you only live to see the lights of town.
I wasted my time when I wouldn’t try, try, try.
When the lights have lost their glow you’re gonna cry, cry, cry.
One of those “punch line” refrains from Johnny. Or Hank’s:
I’m a rollin’ stone all alone and lost
For a life of sin I have paid the cost
When I pass by all the people say
Just another guy on the lost highway
So good!
So easy to play and remember. These two qualities are key to a song’s practicality and longevity. With just a few phrases with a clear relationship to one another, and lyrical content that follows a simple pattern, certain songs maintain an easy place in the artists and/or the “infinite” repertoire.
Second Verse
I was cold when I left here
Cold when I returned
You never should’a let me back in your life
‘Cause all ya ended up was burned by Pain, horrible pain…
I love the drum machine part on this track. It’s just three sounds over two measures repeated. On the bass drum and side stick:
And a really tight sounding hi hat that weaves between them. There’s a sawtooth bass sound that just goes:
One pause pause pause Five pause Two pause.
That and three very staccatto guitar chords is the whole instrumental foundation. The only other instrument on this recording is the insane turntable playing of Kid Ginseng.
Third Verse
Inner conflict. The inner demon and angel. The demon will win out, the narrator fears.
Two characters to my left and right one’s tellin’ me wrong one’s tellin’ me right…
Now, who ya think is gonna win this fight? Be the one in black or…
Painting a visual image. Then elaborating a bit.
Two sides to every story. That’s the thing that’s drivin’ me mad.
So glad you’re sad you been had by
Pain, horrible pain…
Final Verse
I’ll suck you into my black hole from which you’ll emerge cursing the day that you met me. The final line was influenced by a scene in the cartoon The Simpsons in which someone stomps on another characters heart, crushing it into the ground.
How awesome that our old, deal friend John Siket is here for a stay. The Mouse Hole–the studio here at Temple of Wow–has been set up in one form or another for years, but always in a fairly liminal state. 
