(dc) mechanically minded

yesterday i had a good excuse to take apart my sony tape deck. a close friend had asked me to dub all her family's precious tape recordings onto CD for them and my machine had trapped the first one inside and frozen. i got out the screwdriver and remembered to unplug the device before operating. i found the little mechanism that wasn't releasing and took it apart, and still had to force the tape out. it had unwound itself into the guts of the machine, but in the end, i was totally triumphant. unfortunately, in the end, my machine seems to be failing to drop its heads appropriately when not recording, so the door doesn't open and tapes can't go in and out. this is bad news for me. it will probably cost more for me to send it in to SONY than it would just to buy a new deck. we'll see.

but i was reminded just how much i like to take stuff apart (and put it back together). my friend chad was mixing in the studio at the time, so i had the bonus perk of hearing him sculpt a kick drum for the duration of the time i took me to disassemble, rescue, and reassemble. it reminded me how important it is to get the kick just right in a mix, and i also got to hear how he built the sound. i think this studio merge idea was brilliant, and i'm looking forward to more evenings like that: puttering in the studio listening to a world class mix engineer make sounds fabulous.

at one point in the evening when i was trying to kick devin and chad out so i could work on music, their engineer intern called and was in the neighborhood with a friend and they stopped by. they were blown away by the space, and it really got me and chad and devin re-excited about what we're creating. it reaffirmed just how special our space is and how much it's going to be in demand when word starts to get out. devin called later and told me he'd gone out with these to guys after they left. apparently they were gushing about the space to another musician who joined them at the bar, and devin got to hear how nick was describing the place to the other guy. i think we are going to be popular. i'm a little worried about the place - preserving its integrity (musicians can be...umm....i dunno...hard on their environment, let's say). but i think chad and devin and i are totally aligned in our philosophy and our aesthetic, so whatever comes up, i'm feeling good about how we'll work things out.

and that's what's up at tiny planet.