The Saga Ends...

YAY!!!

Big Blue is finally finished and boy is he heavy! I still haven't figured out how I'm going to get him out of the basement...even with his wheels.

I would post a picture, but I'm really wanting you folks to come out to Cranky Yellow this Friday(07.03.09) around 8:30 to see myself, .e and Bill Tucker and friends. Then you can see my new pedal board, listen to some sweet ass tunes, and hang out with me. I mean c'mon! There should be no thinking...just GO!

I spent most of the day today at El's place making the final edits on the album. Why has this taken so long? Well, there are a few reasons...the main one being, I'M SO EFFING TIRED OF LISTENING TO THIS ALBUM...IT'S MAKING ME CRAZY...ALMOST TO THE POINT THAT I DON'T EVEN CARE ANYMORE! Seriously, it's getting pretty old...but it's work that has to be done. Editing is a very important aspect of the flow of an album and it cannot be overlooked...plus I'm picky. And having a sense of pickiness (yes I'll make up my own word) and monotonous redundancy causes me to fight with myself. Either I don't care, or I have to do this right...Pick one!

I then spent the rest of the late afternoon/evening memorizing stage banter lines that I've written for myself. I wish I had more time before this show on Friday, but I think all will be fine. Just trying to think of ways to entertain you folks while I'm setting everything up for the next song. So I'll be rehearsing for 4 hours each night until Friday to make sure that I don't even have to think about what I'm doing anymore. Did I already mention monotonous redundancy?

I also just want to quickly mention while I'm finally gained my composure and self. Michael Jackson is one of the best things that could have ever happened to me as a child. Just listening to his music brings me back to my family, summer days, bbq's, dance off's, and all around happiness. Janet's Control and Rhythm Nation does the same. So when he passed last Thursday, it felt like those days left with him. I'm glad I had this experience with him, although I've never met him, nor been to any of his concerts. (watched all the live videos 5x over with my papa though) This was something that was shared by not only blacks, but ethnic groups and generations of the world. Although I'm absolutely devastated that he's gone, I'm even more saddened at the people who cannot relate. He was the most unique entertainer I ever seen, and probably ever will see. And a handful of you missed it.

That is the real shame.


...and I still love him...

~Syrhea

Delays in Sagas

So...

Yeah...

I'm not too happy right now...

My pedal board is practically finished...FINISHED! But am I going to get to use it at tonight's show? (Viva Voce et al) Nope. Should I really be complaining? Probably not...but I went out of my way to give a local hardware store some business. They promised me my item would be in on Monday... ...that promise was made last Tuesday... have I heard anything yet? Nope. I mean c'mon, seriously? This is why Ma and Pa business are going down... I could have gotten this shit by Friday of last week if I had just ordered it online! I knew I should have done that. What was I thinking?

I guess there's always the July shows. The 3rd is approaching faster than I'd like. Mostly because I'm having a really hard time with volume levels between the Headrush, Repeater and the Jamman. The chain of wiring events goes as follows:

All instruments to Mixer
Mixer to Pedal Board
TU-12
OD-20
Big Muff
Whammy
Small Stone
Holy Grail
DD-20
Headrush
Repeater
Jamman

Pedal Board to Bass Rig

Here's a lovely picture I drew! CLICK TO ENLARGE

With this set up, the Jamman will be the "drum machine" per se, while the repeater takes over the looping and the Headrush and DD-20 can serve their main purpose. DELAY Delay delay delay. Which is a lot of fun and is definitely adding to my orchestrated sound. I still use the Headrush and the Jamman as loop pedals on the old tunes...which is where the problem I stated above lies. I'm not sure if I have the mixer output level too high or if it's the Headrush's or the Jamman's or the Repeater's but my levels aren't fitting in the correct spot with my drum machine. Yes, I could just push the drum machine volume up, but when I do so, it effects all the loops being recorded into it...causing the loop to be louder than the current instrument that I'm playing. And that poor Backline didn't sign up for that. I'm slowly breaking him, and I know it. Which is why I desperately need a PA system to run this craziness through.

So this one seemingly little problem will and can indeed cause me to spend a whole 8 hour day to figure out and fix. This is what I plan to do after I post this nonsense. And the process is painfully frustrating and monotonous. I guess the first place I should start is to re-recording all the drum beats onto my Jamman...this way I'll know that they're all at the same exact volume. I anticipate this alone taking a few hours and I already don't want to do it. But like I said before, I can only depend on myself...I can't let anything stop me...not even myself. So let's get this loopage started right...

But I'm kinda hungry...

I will let hunger stop me...

...temporarily...

I'm going to get some food...

Hope to see some of you at the stella show tonight! It's early, all ages and it'll be fun!

...that is all...

~Syrhea

The Saga of the Pedal Board (pt.6)

Happy Memorial Day!

This past Saturday, I finally traveled to good ol' Springfield Mo to visit my nephew. He's about 3 months old and this was the first time I've seen him.

The kid's adorable, and he's stuck with me. He'll soon realize that I'm going to be the craziest aunt he'll ever have.
...
...because I'm his only aunt...
...
...and I'm the craziest by default.

The 3 hour trip down and back (same day) proved to be quick. I listened to my album 4 times; twice on the way there and twice on the way back. (It's about 45 minutes long) I believe El and I have accomplished much and although there are still (STILL) some tweeks I'd like to make, if I were to release it now, I'd be pleased.

I'm really hoping to have this out by the end of summer or beginning of fall. This whole project has proven to be a lot of work...and money. I had some artist lined up to do the artwork, but they all fell through for various reasons. But this is not going to stop me. Syna was born because of former band mates not believing that my songs were "songs". I think it's fitting that not only did I record, produce, and mix (etc) this damn record, I might as well do the artwork. I'm on a mission, and I'm not going to let the nay-sayers, non-believers, jealous-opposers drag me down anymore. Sometimes, a person can only depend on themselves... So once the pedal board is complete, the artwork will begin.

But first, the pedal board.

I spent most of the early evening sanding this sommamma bitch down but only after I sanded a sample piece to test my dye. I went with blue because I think it'll look cool.

I tested the dye solution (8oz H2O) at 10gtts; 20gtts; 40gtts; and 50gtts. I believe I got the shade I'm looking for. I'm waiting for the test board to dry so that I can see if the dye solution warped the wood in any way. If I can get away with not using denatured alcohol, that would be great. Either way, I'll probably be staining the sucker tomorrow after I finish puddying up some holes and test the polyurethane finish I got. I'm pretty excited.

I'm sticking to a blue theme with this board. I've already got some sweet ass casters to add to this mega box and it's going to be the sweetness!

Anyway, for any of you Lou City Folk, .e has put together another Tower Grove Park show this Sunday. (05.31.09) I will be playing (violin/vox) as well as:
.e

the staircase

of course you realize...

true callahan

sleep in sundays

killer b and the drones

mavis concave

color blind

andrew markee

We'll be there around 1pm. Message me for the location in the park.

...also .e has a facebook page and I suggest you all should become a fan.

...that is all...

~Syrhea

The Saga of the Pedal Board (pt.5)

Sooo....that Gorilla Glue...Eff'd me up man! Most of last Tuesday night, Wednesday morning and Thursday, I was having uncontrollable asthma/allergy like symptoms on top of sounding like a man. I actually didn't go into work on both Wednesday and Thursday, but I will not let this set back stop me!

I got back to work on my precious last night. I decided to not use the Gorilla Glue but to just stick to Elmer's Wood Glue. All is well. Finished up the second box and made a mental note: If I'm ever to build another one of these again, I'm getting more expensive plywood. The wood on the bottom box of the board totally split leaving the screws visible and bare. I'll have to puddy it up and for some reason, I forgot to take a picture of it...oh well.

But the box to hold the board is complete, and HUGE.

It's seriously like a little bit bigger than a Fender Twin amp...no fooling. Wheels are a must. There's going to be no way around it.

I then propped up the board that's actually going to have my pedals on it inside of the box to get an idea of where to put the hinges.

I found some 3/4 in thick wood pieces and screwed them to the back of my box and then placed the hinges on the wood blocks so that I could have space to feed cables/power strips/etc through the void. I finished up and called it a night.

This afternoon I connected the bottom ends of the hinges to the pedal board, after conveniently making a little hole to grip the board.

Making the connections seriously took me about an hour because I needed about 4 arms and hands. After I got the board connected to the box, I realized there was about a 1/4 in overlap of where the board is supposed to land.



Frustrated, I'm thinking of ways to just cut the extra wood off without taking anything apart. Around this time a dude on the west side of the Isle of Sky came around and became the second set of arms and hands that I needed. We took the hinges off, used 1/2in wood blocks, screwed those in the back of the box, and inserted the hinges on the blocks...Success!



Well...almost. The bottom of the board still wasn't clearing the edge of the box...just barely. Here comes the sanding...and sanding...and more sanding...and sanding...and blah blah blah FINALLY!



It's looking like a pedal board! Hells yes! And to see how much room I would have for my power strip, I decided to place it in the bottom of the board...



Look at all this room in here! I mean C'mon...LOOK AT IT! I could fit a small child in there. My fear of not having enough room for power turned out to be unfounded. I'm actually going to put two power strips in there. One for the pedals, and the other for bad-ass accessories. You'll see and yes, it's going to happen.

But for now, I'm tired and dusty...

And help me think of what color I should stain the wood (I've decided to stain)

...that is all...
~Syrhea

The Saga of the Pedal Board (pt.4)

Ahh man. Now I can totally understand why a durable and efficient pedal board goes for $250-300. This is seriously hard work. I do not envy carpenters and the like, especially if they hate their job. If they like the job, then I'd probably envy them, getting a job that you thoroughly enjoy is hard to come by.

Anyway, I was working on the pedal board until about 11pm last night. I didn't want to test the neighbors too bad. I meant to quit around 9:30 but I just couldn't stop. I shaved some pieces of wood to make a border for my routing mishap and then proceeded to glue the pieces with some Gorilla Glue.

I started to drill the sides of the boxes together when I discovered two things:

• One-my length side board was cut slightly crooked
• Two-drilling is effing hard!

I actually had to get my dad to come out and drill the first 3 boards together after attempting several times on my own. Turns out half the reason I was having so much difficulty was because I was using a broken drill bit to make the initial hole before I screw. Couldn't get that sucker to penetrate the wood. When we exchanged the bad bit for a good one, I finished up the sides and turned in for bed.

I woke up at 6am this morning to continue where I left off last night...but I didn't actually get to work until about 8am because of those damn addictive Law and Order Criminal Intent marathons. I would have to say that my biggest personality flaw and strength is confidence. Well, this morning, I was very confident about using the drill...a little too confident. Not realizing that the reason the drilling went well the night before, was because I had the assistance of my dad. So here I go clamping everything down, listening to some MGMT, marking my spots, and starting my drilling.

I happened to make a mistake

after mistake

after mistake

after mistake

after mistake

after mistake


I was so disheartened. I was ready to quit.

"Maybe Paul was right", I thought. "This is way to frustrating...what was I thinking...thinking I could build this..." Around this time my dad was leaving for work. He asks me whats wrong and I proceed to show him all the mistakes I've made and how I'm afraid it's not going to be strong enough to hold all the weight.

"Oh this is all fine Syrhea. Quit acting discouraged. We can puddy all of this up. You didn't think you were going to build this perfectly the first time around did you?"
"Yeah...I kinda thought this would be easy..."
My dad laughs at me and leaves for work.

I head over to my buddy Elshua's place to record some guitar (yes guitar. I'm no prodigy but I can play a little) tracks for one of his songs. I cooled off, wrote some new stuff, and was eager to get back here to finish what I started. I managed to get the bottom drilled to the sides of one half of the box this afternoon. I took the advice of El and my dad: Drill straight and be assertive.

All in all, I think everything is fine. The picture above will be the lid to the pedal board in hopes that when I start bottom, I'll do a better job. We'll see.

On a serious note, my finger tips are all irritated and brownish looking...even worse now than this picture taken earlier.

Turns out that the Gorilla Glue is apparently a skin irritant. I also read on the back of it's label "Asthmatics, consult doctor before using". Ooooh! This explains why I've been having trouble breathing for the past two days! Who knew? Not me...

...that is all...

~Syrhea

The Saga of the Pedal Board (pt.3)

First off, Happy Mothers Day.

Ok, after realized that my intial dimensions were waaaaay to big,



I decided that I needed to cut a good 7 in off the width of the boards. I spent most of the late afternoon and early evening, doing this while attempting to relive the Asobi Seksu show last night. I re-bought "Citrus", because I've lost 2 copies, and was cranking it to my hearts delight. Plus it was loud as hell, and I wanted to hear it over the saws/sanders/routers.

After the boards were cut to a more resonable size, I started to sand the pieces...Well about a quarter of the way through, I got bored and impatient and decided to skip the sanding and start the routing.

I want to get this damn thing finished, if it's the last thing I do...besides the album *cough*.

I called upon my dad to show me how to use the router, because, well, when would I have ever used one? Wait, now thinking about it, I did use one on shop class in the 7th grade to make a yard sign that read "Conaways'". The lettering was so curvy and wavy that I only put the sign out for people to see when it was Halloween. It looked SPOOKY.

After my dad gave me the ultimate demonstration,

I set out to routing the top/botton and length side pieces. I started with the sides...all is well. Tried to finish with the top and bottom pieces...this is where the trouble began. The boards are awkwardly large for the routing table, which cause me to use the machine in a less than ideal fashion. Plus I was paranoid about losing my fingers. I managed to make it through the first board, but the second board I had a little mishap. Some how the board shot forward, and in my paranoia about losing digits, I just let go of the board. This is what resulted.

I guess it could be worst, but like I said before, I want to get this thing done. That is just one extra step I'll have to take in order to fix my mistake.

When I got all the routing done, I placed all the pieces together to see how accurate my measurements were.

Well it turns out I'll have to take another 1/4 in of the width of the sides of the boxes.

With this other bump on my road to a funtioning pedal board I decided to quit for the day. Unfortunately the garage and myself is a mess and I've got a lot to clean up...plus a nice hot shower.

...The saga will continue...
...That is all...
~Syrhea

The Saga of the Pedal Board (pt.2)

Right, well... Home Depot, Lowes...suck. Seriously I had to compromise on almost every piece of hardware that I purchased. I'm sure everything will still work out fine, but I was just overall disappointed. Apparently no one has ever heard of open hinges...couldn't find them in either store. Enough about that, I'll just rant on for the rest of the day...and theres' still so much to be done.



I did happen to pick up:

#2 Keyed Sash Locks

#2 Sash Locks

Heavy Duty Felt Pads

Chest Handle

Narrow Hinges

Wood Screws

Early Sunday morning, I started to cut up some wood when I realized that the sheet of wood my dad thought he had, actually wasn't long enough for what I needed. So I went back to Home Depot and had them cut some plywood up for me.

Apparently when you tell them to cut a 4x8 ft sheet into #2 2x4 ft, and #4 9x48 inch, leaving the remainder, that actually means #1 1.5x4 ft, #1 2.5x4 ft, and #4 10x48 in, which was the remainder. That was fun.

When it came down to measuring and cutting, my dad asked me how I was going to screw the pieces together.

"I was just going to cut each piece at an angle and start screwing"...I drew him this picture

"I could screw longer screws for this first one, but wouldn't the second on be better?" (pointing at the second image) My dad responded,

"What are you an idiot? That's the weakest possible way you could build this. What you need to do is this..." And he draws me the third image. "This way the pieces are supporting each other."

"Oh"

"You didn't didn't take this into consideration when you were calculating your measurements....did you."

"Nope...but that's cool, I added an extra 2 inches to length and depth because I predicted I'd do something wrong."

So I added an extra half an inch to my measurement of length only and we began cutting. It was fun, dusty, hot, and way harder than I expected. But as of now, all of my pieces are cut. This thing is pretty huge. I didn't realize how big it was until I saw all the pieces laying on the floor. (I might have to add some wheels to this equation.) When I'm finished typing this, I'll be heading down to sand these pieces and make sure the pedal board measurement will still be correct after making the last minute change.

I was really hoping to have this finished by this Saturday, so that I could use it for the stella show (with Asobi Seksu), but...eh...we'll see.

Off to get more splinters on my hands and sawdust debris in my lungs.

...that is all...

~Syrhea

The Saga of the Pedal Board (pt.1)

So, this past weekend while lounging around town for gear, I was thinking a lot about how I want my home made pedal board to be designed. I don't like the idea of all the pedals being in a straight line because it'll make it that much more difficult to stay center with the microphone. Two rows is a must but three rows is pushing it. Sunday, after having an awesome jam, I layed all of my pedals (and Greg's pedals)onto the floor to start the measurments:
I meant to rotate this picture but I forgot, and now I'm too lazy
This board needs to comfortably hold:

1 Digitek Jamman

1 Digitek Footswitch (optional)

1 Boss DD-20

1 Boss Tap Tempo

1 EH Holy Grail

1 EH Small Stone

1 Digitek Whammy

1 Akai Headrush

1 EH Big Muff

1 Boss OD-20

1 Boss TU-20

With my current board, I have problems accessing the 2nd row of pedals. I knew that I'd have to elevate the 2nd row some how to solve this problem. But which would be easier for me to figure out and measure? Making "stairs" or making a slope...SLOPE!!! Now that I've decided I want the slope, how much of an angle do I want? And this design will most definitely effect the box...so the box must be cut in a slope too? Does this sound right to you all? After about an hour and a half of thinking I came up with these measurements and this drawing... Another problem with my current board is storage. I thought it'd be cool to store the power strip/cables and any other stuff I might need for the stellas or for this project in the board. So I decided to add hinges one inch from the top of the Box #2 to the top of actual board holding the pedals. The bottom of the pedal board will rest on a 1/2 inch strip 2 inches from the bottom of Box #2. I will also leave about a 1/2 inch of space on either side of the pedal board from the the sides of Box #2 to flip the board up when needed or to even feed cables through. (I haven't really figured the cable acess part out yet: But I could always drill holes later...right?) So I believe phase one is complete. Just the basic measurements and ideas for the board. I'll probably head to the hardware store and look lost as hell this Friday to get large sheets of ply wood. I'd like to laminate it as well. But we'll see. I should also go ahead and get a handle, hinges, rubber stoppers, and more hinges to make sure my measurements work before I cut and screw everything up. Wish me luck! ...that is all... ~Syrhea