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StoreTags: surgery, simplicity, renoise
Author: ModuLR on July 07 2007 Viewed 2076 times. 11 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: Otterfan, Roshi, bitbare, skab, stringedthry, daswesen, bla, energygiant, bbwax, cbit, license
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Long time no blog... but if there is anywhere I can post something, it's here. Three weeks ago I underwent a stapedectomy to correct 15 years of progressive hearing loss in my right ear. It got to the point where the lows were nonexistent, and the highs were fading. Anyway, they go in thru your eardrum with an assortment of micro-surgical tools, vaporize the smallest bone in the human body (the stapes), and replace it with a piece of stainless steel. All of that under a local, while pumped up on demerol to keep you nice and relaxed. For the first week post surgery I could hear absolutely nothing out of that ear... with the bonus of mild nausea. It felt like an eternity, and in that week I had to fight a bit of depression as your mind really starts to focus on the things we all take for granted. So in all of that time I had to sit around and think (because actually "doing" anything made me either tired or nauseated), music was one of the many recurring themes. I began questioning "my process" over the last 7+ years, because with the thought of losing my hearing... it dawned on me how little I have to show for my efforts in that timespan.
Early on, all I needed was a hand me down record player from my brother, a stack of vinyl and tapes., and goldwave/cooledit (if you can believe that... mixing as I went along). I was then introduced to Impulse Tracker... and things were good. It finally felt like I could use a computer much like the hardware I simply couldn't afford. Somewhere along this timeline however, VST gets introduced, and I'm thrown off a path of creation... to fucking about with new technology. Fast forward to improving internet speed and a growing number of interesting applications... and there is even more reason to get absolutely nothing done. This fucking about has consumed me for years, and it took surgery for me to finally see how much time I've been wasting.
All that being said, I have been inspired. I was lucky enough to get a macbook thru work, so that frees up my old pc laptop as a focused music machine. I created a nlite XP installation, dumped all unnecessary services (including wifi/internet), formated the drive, reduced my VST collection to the absolute minimum, and replaced the explorer shell with bblean which gives me access to only 5 options...
(1) Renoise (back to tracking! as it will basically turn the laptop into sampling hardware)
(2) Wavosaur (removed sf, because this feels like editors fromway back, simple and fast)
(3) SampleCatalog (to organize my library)
(4) Windows file explorer
(5) Shutdown/Reboot
now the goal now will be to fill it with creations... btw, the ear is healing nicely according to the doc, and the audiogram revealed that it's back to normal even tho high frequencies are a bit shrill. I feel pretty lucky, and incredibly fortunate... so I don't plan on wasting time in the same manner as before. | |
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07/07/07
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Otterfan
Dude, you double-blogged.
07/07/07
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Otterfan
Good to hear about the ear though.
What was the cause? Overuse with loud musics?
07/07/07
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ModuLR
damn! Em411 went to a blank page after I posted that.. so I thought something timed out. Shoulda looked... oops..  Back to the ear thing, from what I understand it hereditary (tho I can't pinpoint anyone in my family). Basically that little bone builds up scar tissue that stops it from moving properly.. and thus not transmitting the sound properly to the inner ear. One freakish thing is that certain frequencies say in someone's voice would sometimes sound like they were being run thru a distortion pedal. Bugged out.
07/07/07
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Zanf
glad youre recovering your hearing.
2 health issue blogs in one day! [3 if you count p*wels stinky body odour one as well].
A few people on here have had hearing/ear problems that thankfully, have been resolved for the better. I myself, have issues with tinnitus and i cant hear anything above about 14.5 - 15KHz and cant stress the importance enough to people about caring for your hearing.
good to know youre ok though.
07/07/07
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j_chot
fucking straight.
a stack of records and ableton is how I do.
07/08/07
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bitbare
fucking straight up and down on a hard shaft over and over
07/08/07
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sprouts
wow, that would be a dick, ironic bitbare, ironic
07/08/07
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j_chot
that's sexual harassment.
07/08/07
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yghartsyrt
good to hear, your hearings are back.
now lert's hear some cool tunes.
07/08/07
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jack123
Sounds like a nice set up, but what is the point of Wavosaur? renoise has one of the best sample editors out there.
P.S. Thats great news about yer hearing!
07/08/07
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Squeal
your blog title needs a semicolon on the end ;)
07/08/07
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claudia
really sorry to hear about your ear, but it seems like you using it as a positive, which is wonderful, will your hearing come back in that ear though after it heals?
yea, i have tinnitus in my right ear and i cant hear anything above about 10k, but i try my best to look at is as a blessing b/c now i take care of my ears so much, custom ear plugs @ clubs or shows, never listen to anything to loud, etc...still sucks though
07/08/07
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ModuLR
Thanks for the kind words ppls...
I've had tinnitus for ages now too... the surgery actually didn't fix that (tho it might mellow out as things heal), but I'm accustomed to it. The good news is it takes roughly 6 weeks to attain maximum hearing from the surgery... I'm three weeks in, and my audiogram is now in the normal hearing range for that ear... up from a moderate hearing loss where I was down like 50db in certain frequencies). I hear ya claudia... def gotta protect your ears. I bought some ear plugs and will be ower my listening levels... tho I was never a speaker hugger or anything along those lines. Funny thing is now everything has too much bass. Since bass freqs are pretty non directional, and my brain was kinda acustomed to getting bass info from the good ear... now that I've got two good ears with bass is on blast even at low levels.
regarding wavosaur... it basically can do batch processing... I'd agree tho, I can get most editing done within renoise.
07/08/07
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Geddupnoise
congrats on getting ur hearing back, i dont know how i would cope if i lost mine. Also, nice setup, i wish i had an extra computer to make it that simple.
07/08/07
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claudia
so amazing its going to come back, congrats, thats great!!! yea, be careful w/ your new ear, its weird you know, its really like a new ear
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