I have vague memories of being three years old. Thats about as far as I can go with explicit memories of the kind containing distinct people or places and situations. I love trawling through this kind of data. It becomes accessible sometimes during some of my heavier psychedelic escapades, usually under the influence of oral DMT or 4sub-DMT materials. That is one of the reasons I have such a soft spot for them. They allow a bit of psychological spring cleaning at times, in the way that they can sometimes elucidate areas of ones personal narrative where you have not necessarily been honest with yourself. Although psychedelic drugs have a reputation for illusion (indeed 'Hallucination' means misperception or perception without stimuli), there is some element of truth in that which can be divined from them. So although memory can be fickle and becomes more so with passing years, I find that amidst my sometimes chaotically tripped out minds eye, there are sometimes nuggets of biographical information which go beyond the information usually available in consensual reality.Over the last year or so, I have been revisiting some of the real-world things that have come to light under these kinds of conditions.
I have always had a reasonable aptitude for musical matters. I'm no genius or savant, but I have a grasp of things which I sometimes assume are obvious to others, but apperently are not. Thanks to my dear M + D, I was given piano lessons up to a reasonable standard, learned to play the cello and the double bass too. I still play guitar and bass guitar now. I had the chance to play in a reasonably competent youth orchestra which gave me a broader listening taste than most. I have played bass in bands for years and I compose music with my pc. Since Christmas I have been learning slide guitar and I have a couple of blues harmonicas which I'm getting round to messing with. Ioften wondered where this kind of thing originated for me.
Listening to music has long been a favorite pastime for me. M + D always had music of some form or other around, be it on the stereo, or just Dad banging away on his piano. He was in his element when he played. He had many other instruments, brass, woodwind, guitar/banjo etc. I think the urge to tinker musically with whatever is at hand was inculcated from very early. I was weened on the Beatles, folk music, classics.
In 1976, my Uncle Jimmy died. He was my father's Uncle really. He had stayed in sheepfarming while my Grandfather managed to get into law at Cambridge. When Jimmy died, he left a small but handsome share to my Dad. Now at the time I didn't know that stuff. But I clearly remember the excitement that year when my parents spent the inheritence. I recall the arrival of our colour tv, the stereo, Dad's piano and later at Christmas, I received a Tonka (which still exists, somewhat rusty and well played with), and a yellow teddy. In the way that childhod memories often are, it was a shiny year. I can picture my parents as a young couple too, Dad 35 years younger than I am now.
I developed a kind of obsession with records. The items themselves are to me a satisfying thing. I like the ritual of taking them from their sleeves, and putting down the needle. They even smell good to me. OK, sometimes they are a little crackly, but the intonation of their voices is somehow warmer and more pleasurable than any digital system (Perhaps I'm biased). Anyway, I have a shed full of vinyl records which I am not going to part with. They all play OK on a decent turntable. Much of the collection is old and vintage. Some LPs have written messages to people, having been gifts between friends or lovers. I have a vintage copy of Love's 'Forever Changes' with just such a personal anotation dated Christmas 1968. I like the feeling that somebody has interacted emotionally with the record before me. Part of me wants to know who the cool lady was that bought such a tasty LP for her significant other. When I was little, I remember my dad being quite protective of his records and turntable, not surprisingly since at that age, my fingers were usually stuck up my nose, or clarted up from making a mud pie. The turntable was a beatiful sleek black unit an I had a clear impression of it's delicate nature and precision, even at age 3.
You can imagine my delight at finding the exact same model (Strathearn - STM4) on eBay last year. I had a few record players in different rooms of my house already, but I coundn't resist bidding for it. I won thanks to a final bid of 75 quid in the last seconds.The seller lived near my Father in law's home so he agreed to pick it up for me and bring it on his next visit. It arrived the week before I got married last September, so after a quick look I boxed it away for later examination.
When I came back to it, I discovered it was not in working order. The platter was in contact with the body and thus wouldn't spin. My heart sank at this, and I wondered if repair would be within my ability. The mechanism is very elegant in theory, aiming to minimise unwanted noise from the vibrations of moving parts. The platter itself feature a magnetic tape strip around the rim underneath so that it represents one half of the electric motor. In the base, a series of electromagnets pulse sequentially to provide drive to the platter, modulated by a quartz governor to maintain the correct speed. According to the manual, the deck can sometimes start up backwards, but just requires stopping with a gentle hand, and pushing clockwise to correct. Unfortunately the central hub of the platter had pushed upward during transit. The hub seemed to be wedged into the central hole of the platter, but I couldn't work out how it would go back in properly and stay. It was an incredibly tight fit. Perhaps the platter was heated to expand the hole, and then contract again at room temperature, providing a rock solid grip (a technique simillar to that used to attach new running surface tyres to railway wheels). In the end I used judicious brute force to get it into place. However, on replacinf the platter on the spindle, the hub kept pushing out almost immediatley. In despair, I pulled out the superglue and weighed books on the hub to be sure of the fix. Super glue struck me as a cop out and sort of unsatisfactory. It worked though and I found the deck spinning happily away.
I pulled out my Dad's old copy of Tubular Bells to christen the set up. As the virgin needle I had bought touched down on the groove, I began to realise two unpleasant facts. Firstly, the 33rpm setting was roughly 20% too quick. Not a quantity that can be ignored. Mum's Sgt Pepper LP sounded like a freakish chipmunk novelty spoof version. Furthermore, the pitch was not even consistant. It wavered slightly all the time. I realised the whole thing was going to have to come apart again. Regarding the speed settings, I scrutinized the printed circuit board for some master control relating to them. Sure enough two variable resisters with screw head controls could be seen, labelled 33 and 45. I adjusted them several times before their pitches finally matched the records played with identical digital recordings on another stereo.
The wavering still remained. I cleaned the inside surface of the platter, the magnetic strip, and basically any surfaces where the clearances were very fine. During this process, I recovered one long dead spider, who had been smeared around the inside of the spindle near the central ball bearing. I assumed that he was the culprit of the problem and reassembeld yet again.
To my horror, I found the tone arm had now snapped and flopping hideously on its flimsy wires. I went off to have a joint, prefering that to the thoughts of violence I was then beginning to harbour towards the turntable. As I smoked, it occurred to me that if the quarts pitch control circuit was dodgy, there was absoloutely nothing I knew that could help. My electronics nous is poor. Then as I finished my joint, one last hope leapt out at me. I would dab a little bycycle chain oil on the central ball bearing. Also, perhaps, with extremely carefull use of Superglue again, I might even be able to fix the tone arm. It had snapped a clean break diagonally across the plastic (very stiff plastic, almost like ceramic) just where the cartridge meets the arm. An hour later, I returned to the incident scene and made my final bid to resurrect the thing.
Success. Tubular Bells sounded great, clear and pitch perfect. I checked the 45 setting and it too was right. I had fixed it up and was slightly chuffed. Continued . . .
I have always had a reasonable aptitude for musical matters. I'm no genius or savant, but I have a grasp of things which I sometimes assume are obvious to others, but apperently are not. Thanks to my dear M + D, I was given piano lessons up to a reasonable standard, learned to play the cello and the double bass too. I still play guitar and bass guitar now. I had the chance to play in a reasonably competent youth orchestra which gave me a broader listening taste than most. I have played bass in bands for years and I compose music with my pc. Since Christmas I have been learning slide guitar and I have a couple of blues harmonicas which I'm getting round to messing with. Ioften wondered where this kind of thing originated for me.
Listening to music has long been a favorite pastime for me. M + D always had music of some form or other around, be it on the stereo, or just Dad banging away on his piano. He was in his element when he played. He had many other instruments, brass, woodwind, guitar/banjo etc. I think the urge to tinker musically with whatever is at hand was inculcated from very early. I was weened on the Beatles, folk music, classics.
In 1976, my Uncle Jimmy died. He was my father's Uncle really. He had stayed in sheepfarming while my Grandfather managed to get into law at Cambridge. When Jimmy died, he left a small but handsome share to my Dad. Now at the time I didn't know that stuff. But I clearly remember the excitement that year when my parents spent the inheritence. I recall the arrival of our colour tv, the stereo, Dad's piano and later at Christmas, I received a Tonka (which still exists, somewhat rusty and well played with), and a yellow teddy. In the way that childhod memories often are, it was a shiny year. I can picture my parents as a young couple too, Dad 35 years younger than I am now.
I developed a kind of obsession with records. The items themselves are to me a satisfying thing. I like the ritual of taking them from their sleeves, and putting down the needle. They even smell good to me. OK, sometimes they are a little crackly, but the intonation of their voices is somehow warmer and more pleasurable than any digital system (Perhaps I'm biased). Anyway, I have a shed full of vinyl records which I am not going to part with. They all play OK on a decent turntable. Much of the collection is old and vintage. Some LPs have written messages to people, having been gifts between friends or lovers. I have a vintage copy of Love's 'Forever Changes' with just such a personal anotation dated Christmas 1968. I like the feeling that somebody has interacted emotionally with the record before me. Part of me wants to know who the cool lady was that bought such a tasty LP for her significant other. When I was little, I remember my dad being quite protective of his records and turntable, not surprisingly since at that age, my fingers were usually stuck up my nose, or clarted up from making a mud pie. The turntable was a beatiful sleek black unit an I had a clear impression of it's delicate nature and precision, even at age 3.
You can imagine my delight at finding the exact same model (Strathearn - STM4) on eBay last year. I had a few record players in different rooms of my house already, but I coundn't resist bidding for it. I won thanks to a final bid of 75 quid in the last seconds.The seller lived near my Father in law's home so he agreed to pick it up for me and bring it on his next visit. It arrived the week before I got married last September, so after a quick look I boxed it away for later examination.
When I came back to it, I discovered it was not in working order. The platter was in contact with the body and thus wouldn't spin. My heart sank at this, and I wondered if repair would be within my ability. The mechanism is very elegant in theory, aiming to minimise unwanted noise from the vibrations of moving parts. The platter itself feature a magnetic tape strip around the rim underneath so that it represents one half of the electric motor. In the base, a series of electromagnets pulse sequentially to provide drive to the platter, modulated by a quartz governor to maintain the correct speed. According to the manual, the deck can sometimes start up backwards, but just requires stopping with a gentle hand, and pushing clockwise to correct. Unfortunately the central hub of the platter had pushed upward during transit. The hub seemed to be wedged into the central hole of the platter, but I couldn't work out how it would go back in properly and stay. It was an incredibly tight fit. Perhaps the platter was heated to expand the hole, and then contract again at room temperature, providing a rock solid grip (a technique simillar to that used to attach new running surface tyres to railway wheels). In the end I used judicious brute force to get it into place. However, on replacinf the platter on the spindle, the hub kept pushing out almost immediatley. In despair, I pulled out the superglue and weighed books on the hub to be sure of the fix. Super glue struck me as a cop out and sort of unsatisfactory. It worked though and I found the deck spinning happily away.
I pulled out my Dad's old copy of Tubular Bells to christen the set up. As the virgin needle I had bought touched down on the groove, I began to realise two unpleasant facts. Firstly, the 33rpm setting was roughly 20% too quick. Not a quantity that can be ignored. Mum's Sgt Pepper LP sounded like a freakish chipmunk novelty spoof version. Furthermore, the pitch was not even consistant. It wavered slightly all the time. I realised the whole thing was going to have to come apart again. Regarding the speed settings, I scrutinized the printed circuit board for some master control relating to them. Sure enough two variable resisters with screw head controls could be seen, labelled 33 and 45. I adjusted them several times before their pitches finally matched the records played with identical digital recordings on another stereo.
The wavering still remained. I cleaned the inside surface of the platter, the magnetic strip, and basically any surfaces where the clearances were very fine. During this process, I recovered one long dead spider, who had been smeared around the inside of the spindle near the central ball bearing. I assumed that he was the culprit of the problem and reassembeld yet again.
To my horror, I found the tone arm had now snapped and flopping hideously on its flimsy wires. I went off to have a joint, prefering that to the thoughts of violence I was then beginning to harbour towards the turntable. As I smoked, it occurred to me that if the quarts pitch control circuit was dodgy, there was absoloutely nothing I knew that could help. My electronics nous is poor. Then as I finished my joint, one last hope leapt out at me. I would dab a little bycycle chain oil on the central ball bearing. Also, perhaps, with extremely carefull use of Superglue again, I might even be able to fix the tone arm. It had snapped a clean break diagonally across the plastic (very stiff plastic, almost like ceramic) just where the cartridge meets the arm. An hour later, I returned to the incident scene and made my final bid to resurrect the thing.
Success. Tubular Bells sounded great, clear and pitch perfect. I checked the 45 setting and it too was right. I had fixed it up and was slightly chuffed. Continued . . .