The Hiss

After recording 180+ hours of improv sessions, we can say we have used many different techniques, or approaches and instruments. Some with better results than others it's true. But I think it would be wise to mention our definition of success might differ from others'. The happy accidents, the things we did not intend to do but somehow find the way to show up can be the best. They are what I personally consider the tokens we gather along the way. These are obviously unplanned, unseeked for, and yet so wanted, so awaited, not only because they trigger situations we wouldn't have come up with but also because they seem to have the purpose of prooving that journeys are different from trips. Generally you go on trips with a certain plan, a route. And even though surprises can be welcome they are not necessarily sought after as much. Now journeys are a different beast. An easy and cheesy parallelism would be life. Like somebody once said we are born without asking for it and die without wanting to. Journey is the best word to describe and understand both our sessions and our Bugs experience as a whole. Nothing is set, nothing was planned. We simply started years ago getting together and playing around with notes and -not so many- instruments. And this is were our journey/journeys have taken us so far: To the moods and moments and realms that we love to create along with the welcomed mishaps and glitches that sprinkle our sessions as we go. The problem is when the unexpected things are of a static nature. That is, not the transitional or momentary gate to something we haven't thought of before, but the steady footprint of something that not only was not planned but it decides to stay as a reminder of itself. Not a flashing card, but a desktop background that is too busy and makes the icons hard to see. A prime example of this is hiss. The Hiss. Definitely I'm not ok with hiss that could be avoided. That's the case of last week's session. In an age when you don't have to tape onto a 1/4" tape cassette recorder without noise reduction unless you want to and instead you go to a 24 bit stereo recorder you are pretty much closing the door to things like wow and flutter, and hiss. There should be enough headroom with 24 bits, right? That is until you unadvertedtly mess around with the gain stages and end up sending a pretty meager signal to such digital recorder. Then, when it comes the time to bring the levels up Hiss makes it's way. And that's what happened last week, and some other weeks before to be honest. I could have just wrote something like: Sorry about last week's amount of hiss. But instead you get the run down on why accidents are cooler than sometimes we care to admit. But not The Hiss, I'm not cool about that one.