Session 24 January 2026

Wonderful session! And it sounds like we’ve got the all clear for the ol’ Mellotron* used by Floyd, Zeppelin, Moody Blues, etc!

*the Mellotron is an electric keyboard that plays loops of prerecorded strings, flutes, etc, (think In The Court Of The Crimson King).
 
Evan said:
Wonderful session! And it sounds like we’ve got the all clear for the ol’ Mellotron* used by Floyd, Zeppelin, Moody Blues, etc!

*the Mellotron is an electric keyboard that plays loops of prerecorded strings, flutes, etc, (think In The Court Of The Crimson King).
Click to expand...

I always liked "The Rain Song" by Zep, it's got wonderful mellotron string sounds by John Paul Jones, who was the quiet genius in the band. Funnily enough however, I always hated their 1979 album "In Through the Out Door", which is overloaded with absolutely ghastly, garish synth sounds. It totally ruined the sound of the band. Jones by that point had bought a polyphonic synth that had been popularised by Stevie Wonder, and he was determined to use it all over that terrible album. Apparently it was known as "the dream machine". Ugh, just thinking about that album makes me want to throw up. The stuff of nightmares more like!
 
Christopher Langan's story reminds me of William James Sidis. Purportedly the most intelligent person to have ever lived (or that scored the highest on i.q tests).

They both developed very unique cosmological theories, but chose to live rather anonymously.
 
Thanks as always for the thought provoking session.

The music question is imo indeed a can o f worms. As a musician, recording and mixing engineer I have a few questions. Electronic music as defined by what exactly? By electronic music do they mean all the parts of the song are made by synths?

Let’s take pink Floyd for example, majority of their songs are drums, bass, guitar and vocals, ( non electronic) with some electronic elements as well, how does that balance out? Or does any electronic element make it “anti human”?

The majority of the music I make is sampled (real) drums, guitar, my voice, bass, sampled orchestral strings etc with some fully electronic elements, so I am interested in how that works?

Also, when we record anything, we transform it from an analogue wave into digital, then we mix and master and export it to an mp3 or wav file to be listened to on Spotify or cd or what ever. So does that process make it anti human too? Digitising it? What about reverb and delay and all the other things we use to enhance the sound? Eq is something that is in everything and it changes the frequency by enhancing or reducing parts of the frequencies in the instrument so it fits together with all the other instruments.

Ennio said:
If/when we're doing things correctly, the videos are helping to spur thought, reflection and questioning - less any emotional engagement (though I can see how they can skirt the border of informational/emotional in a few instances). So, like any tool, we just keep firmly in mind that it is the intent behind their (proper) use, and making important distinctions between what's informative and what it isn't, that matters greatly, and counts for so much.
Click to expand...

So we keep doing what we are doing?
 
“He proposes that reality is a self-simulating, self-configuring system where mind and universe are fundamentally identical and interconnected. Reality is like a self-processing language that designs and perceives itself. In short, the universe is cognitive at its foundation, self-contained, there's no external creator, unexplained, brute fact, and evolves through goal-directed, that is, tele-processes that resolve paradoxes in physics, logic, and philosophy while proving concepts like God as the global self-aware structure of reality. Now, the thing is, you know, I like Chris Langan, and I... you know, whatever. Is his model correct?”

The model is below. Consciousness created the material physical reality the human body is in. We and everything in this reality is computed/data. Physical/material is not fundamental consciousness is.

We are streams of data/conscousness “logged online” a unit of consciousness to this physical body in the physical reality.

If you read the cosmic anthropic principle it states a few material things exist to allow Earth this physical material planet to exist and consciousness finely tuned this for existence the data is carefully put in place to allow existence. For what reason?

My guess for the same reason a pilot would enter a simulator to become better without risking anything. This consciousness creates simulator and we the individual units of consciousness transmit data through our free will decisions back to the larger consciousness system so it can be a better creator.

A question for the Cs would be what created consciousness or what is beyond consciousness. I ask this question as I have never found anyone that has an answer or a good/close answer. I do know there are other realities other than this earth but again it’s created by consciousness. What created consciousness????????

 
987baz said:
So we keep doing what we are doing?
Click to expand...

Just thinking about it and when it comes to making music, the original source may be a factor. Samples are recordings of a human putting in the effort to make the sound being recorded; bowing the strings, hitting the drums, blowing the trumpet. There's energy there that's being recorded in a sample.

A synthesizer creates a sound based on electricity powering a sine wave, there's no human element there. And if the question of analogue synth vs. digital synth comes up, there's still no human effort in generating the sound. There's no soul in a synth.

In my early opinion, a sample can be modified (without losing too much of it's original energy?) because the original sound was still produced by a human. I also wonder if sounds generated by synths are anti-human because they create sounds that might not exist naturally in the universe, or that they generate a facsimile of a sound that does... or what someone believes it should sound like.
 
So I asked perplexity and got this response… so sine waves do exist “approximately” naturally, the others do not.

Natural waves are more complex and irregular and overlap making less “clean” waves. So, does that mean digital waves are too “clean” to precise and that’s why they lack “soul”? Just a thought.

Computer‑generated music ultimately produces sound waves in the air, just like any other sound you hear. These are longitudinal pressure waves: regions of higher and lower air pressure moving outward from a speaker to your ears.

Inside the computer / synth​

Before the sound reaches the speaker, it exists as electrical or digital waveforms:

  • Sine waves: Smooth, pure tones with only a fundamental frequency.
  • Square waves: Buzzy tones made of the fundamental plus odd harmonics.
  • Triangle waves: Softer than square, still using odd harmonics but weaker ones.
  • Sawtooth waves: Very bright and harsh, rich in many harmonics.
Digital instruments (synths, DAWs, plug‑ins) generate and combine these basic waveforms, then shape them with filters and effects to create different timbres.

From electrical to actual sound​

  • The computer or synth outputs an electrical signal that has the same waveform shape as the sound you want.
  • The speaker converts that electrical waveform into vibrations of the speaker cone.
  • Those vibrations push and pull the air, creating longitudinal sound waves that your ears detect as pitch, loudness, and tone color.
So: inside the system you work with electronic/digital waveforms (sine, square, triangle, saw, etc.), and what you finally hear are sound pressure waves in air created from those waveforms.
Click to expand...

Do the waves exist in the world naturally
Pure waveforms like sine waves occur approximately in nature, such as in water ripples or simple string vibrations, but they're never perfectly ideal due to real-world imperfections.

Non-sinusoidal waveforms—square, triangle, and sawtooth—do not exist naturally in their ideal forms.

Why These Are Artificial​

  • Square waves require instantaneous jumps, impossible without electronics; nature produces rounded transitions instead.
  • Triangle and sawtooth waves demand precise linear slopes and sharp resets, which don't happen organically due to inertia and friction.
  • They're mathematical constructs used in synthesis for their harmonic content (e.g., square has odd harmonics; sawtooth has all harmonics).
Natural sounds (voices, wind, instruments) are complex, irregular waveforms made of many overlapping partials, not these clean shapes.
Click to expand...
 
  • Like
Reactions: luc
You must log in or register to reply here.

Trending content

Back
Top Bottom