Kitted Out

This week I’ve been taking photos of my musical instruments and associated equipment. There is quite a lot of it, and much of it hardly ever gets used, but all the same, it is nice to have around. There is something about the physical presence of a drum machine or a portastudio which a computer can’t replace – though maybe it’s more about the absence of the big bright multi-tasking monitor, the necessity of peering at small grey LCD displays and muddling through the over-complex functions which have been squeezed into too few keys, which forces your attention back to the sound. For me, anyway. I always want to know How Things Work, and whilst it is quite possible to absorb over a few months all the tricks and foibles of, say, an SR-16 drum machine (these are brilliant, by the way), the same just is not true of computers, which are complex enough in themselves, and furthermore have access to all human knowledge within a few clicks. Too much information! With Linux audio, which is such a great undertaking, I found myself spending more time on the Linux than the audio, and even less time playing guitar (though I still have a Pure:Dyne memory stick for emergencies). So – back to the boxes.

A note on the guitars pic: I used to keep them like this in my old flat sometimes, where the sofa was – not unnaturally – against a wall opposite the telly. S. would wonder what they were watching, eventually reaching the conclusion that it must be tennis, because of the strings.