Grab Bag

A roundup of some of the things I have experienced this week.

The Bees

First, we have a sage bush out front that in prior years was a destination for the honey bee pollinators. This last winter was wetter and colder than usual, so the “blooms” happened later than usual. In prior years, our bush was mobbed with honey bees by now, this year, I have yet to see a single honey bee. Alas, we do have some pollinators, carpenter bees, but there are far fewer of them

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I will be totally bummed if the bees don't come back.

First Rose-gasm of the Year

This is much later than usual, when the first bud and flowers bloom on our rose bushes. In our front yard, we have two bountiful bushes that go bonkers, and throw off nearly endless blooms. The weather has warmed up, the irrigation has turned on after a long wet winter, and finally the blooms are out in force.

We also have a lot of roses in our back yard, but since our greyhounds (who weren’t “markers”) have passed, replaced with a hound that delights on pissing on our roses, they get a lot less blooms. Shame!

Music Topics

As with many of my posts, I will talk about a couple of musical items.

On the Synth/Electronic Music Front

As I assemble the rudiments to seriously dabble in electronic music, I picked up a software based analog synth, called Sylenth1, and while it has 500 presets – including a reply killer Blade Runner theme arpeggiator – the interface is daunting.

While I can select a patch, and make cool sounds, the thing that drives me nuts is not knowing what does what and how to make it do these cool things.

There are online tutorials but they all seem to assume that the learner knows something about how it all works.

To shortcut the learning curve, I splurged on a special learning solution call Syntorial. It is a self contained training module that starts at zero. You learn what the controls are, and how to make them work. It challenges you to replicate its sounds, and in the process it teaches you how to use your ears.

It wasn’t cheap ($129) but it is very good, and enjoyable.

It is greatly shortening the learning curve, and it is fun.

The Guitar Front

On Tuesday, I got the email notification that the 3.6 version of the Helix firmware was available. This is the first major update since I received my Helix a few months ago, and I just have to say wow. It adds several models, and it makes some of the existing models better. I was able to greatly improve the sound of several of my presets, and it added a few new amp/cabinet models, including an iconic blues amp.

My blues preset is beginning to sound really awesome, and my favorite preset, based on the Mandarine Rocker (an Orange with 2x12 cabinet) is really my go to.

It just sounds amazing.

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