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Editing Women into Wikipedia Part 3:  Notability

There’s nothing more disheartening than to create a Wikipedia article only to have it instantly flagged for deletion.  Even with hours put into finding sources and carefully formatting every section to fit Wikipedia’s style, there is one major issue that can doom the best of intentions:  Notability.  Let’s say that you want to create an article on your favorite SoundGirls Blogger.  You might be able to find an interview, a picture, and maybe even their IMDb page.  However, it takes more than that to qualify.

Notability

Means a subject that stands out from the crowd.  An event that started a movement, a company that pioneered a technology, a person who did something for the first time, these are all subjects that are deserving of note.  Celebrity status can help a person acquire notability, but it does not guarantee that they are worthy of a Wikipedia article.  In my previous articles, I stressed the importance of reliable sources of information.  By using books, journal articles, and interviews there is added longevity and importance.  A social media star usually misses these in their 15 minutes of fame.

Wikipedia editors often choose topics they care deeply about, however, Wikipedia is not the place to deep dive into a given topic.  Just like their predecessor, the encyclopedia, they are a place to start a research journey.  Every article is there to give a taste of information.  Categories are for a summary of knowledge in a selected field.  By flooding Wikipedia with the mundane, it drains the usefulness of the website.

What guarantees notability?  As mentioned before: reliable sources.  Books, biographies, interviews all contribute to the information contained in a Wikipedia article, but also add to the subject’s notability.  Notable people win awards.  Grammy night is a great time to edit Wikipedia.  Academics, while not famous, can be notable if they publish groundbreaking research or books that influence their fields.  Specifically for the field of Entertainment, notability means having worked on several popular works:  films that get released to theatres and festivals, songs that chart, tv shows on network tv, or streaming platforms.

There is a reason why Wikipedia encourages new editors to edit articles over creating new articles.  Finding a subject that fits the notability requirements can be tricky.  Luckily my user page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lyrelyrebird (as mentioned in my previous Editing Women into Wikipedia articles), as well as Wikiprojects, have lists of suggested subjects to get you started.  Remember to be bold and cite all your sources.  Happy editing!

Editing SoundGirls into Wikipedia

SoundGirls Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon

The Plumage of Punk: Review of Violence Girl

I don’t know where I first heard of Alice Bag, but it must have been when doing a deep dive into Riot Grrrl.  What I heard stuck with me:  a woman my mother’s age hitting just as hard as any punk band in their prime.  I wanted to know more, but I only found bits and pieces here and there.  An interview of anglicizing names, mentions of her influence, nothing until I was looking for more books to review for SoundGirls.  Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage by Alice Bag is an action-packed cruise through the first part of the life of Alicia Armendariz (Alice Bag’s birth name).

Violence Girl is a memoir told in brief anecdotes, like memories, and arranged mostly chronologically detailing her life until her early thirties.  We are first introduced to her parents and in a way, East L.A.  Born to Mexican immigrants, Alice feels like an oddball not quite fitting in with her classmates or her Mexican cousins.  From an early age, Alice begins to realize the world is complicated when domestic abusers go free and police both protect and battle against innocents.  In describing her life in school, Alice documents her love affair with music.  While Alice does end up becoming a musician, it is by becoming a hardcore fan that sets her future in motion.  The combination of the outcast, the fighter for justice, and the crazed fan is an alloy of punk at its most concentrated.  By the time Alice Bag forms The Bags, she is ready to rip the world to shreds.  Alice and the rest of the L.A. Punk crew have formed a movement.

I see some of Alice Bag in me.  The self-directed anger and aimless wandering through life, the outcast, the mom, the straddling of multiple genres.  Her story resonates with me, by laying bare each facet of her life, she makes her life accessible.  Embarrassment and shame have long gone.  Her confidence in who she has become is contagious.  Regrets occur, but they do not stop her from her fight.  By her side is a who’s who of L.A. Punk, but L.A. Punk is its own character as well.  Through Alice Bag’s memories, the reader is a fly on the wall of the formation of the Go Go’s and the rise of Black Flag.  These bands are mere appendages to the pulsating mutant, centering around select locations in L.A. and even San Francisco and gorging on the actions of devoted fans.  As memories do, some sections blur through a string of concerts and events, and in doing so build upon the scene as its own entity.  This mutant is greater than the sum of its parts, and can only exist when everyone is doing their part.  Fans are there to support any and all bands, venues and derelict apartments host the orgies (both of music and not), the bands are not the only puzzle piece.  The cohesion fails when the fans are cast aside or the venues disappear, and the music cannot exist in a vacuum.

Punk is more than the Angry White Boy image that has taken hold of it.  It takes us all to make a scene rise from its seed.  The roots pull from the variety of individuals, and it cannot flourish without that variety.  Violence Girl is more than an autobiography, it is a study of Punk as a community from the eyes of its biggest fan.

Available at the SoundGirls Lending Library

More on and by Alice Bag

The Women of Rock Oral History Project

Alice Bag’s Women in L.A. Punk Archives

Turn it Up

Review of A Short History of Electronic Music and Its Women Protagonist

 

Built from author Johann Merrich’s blog, A Short History of Electronic Music and Its Women Protagonists, presents the technological and philosophical developments of Electronic Music through the stories of those who created them.  Originally published in 2019 in Italian, the English version was released this past June.  Johann Merrich is an Italian musician and freelance researcher focusing on electronic and experimental music. Her blog, Short Stories focuses on creating an intersectional account of the music she is passionate about.  When I received this book to review I was excited, I cannot get enough of stories from audio history, especially one that highlights diversity as does this book.  Artists, inventors, benefactors, they all have a part to play in the chronology.  Among the names of Leo Theremin, John Cage, and Robert Moog are the names Ciani, Derbyshire, and Carlos.  It doesn’t stop there either:  layers are peeled further to unearth stories hidden from the public eye, until now.  Sisters, wives, and others who had their stories overshadowed by more stereotypical heroes finally receive the spotlight.

 

It reads more like a nonfiction novel than a textbook.  The sections are grouped together by cultural background or by artistic movements.  It allows for each character to be introduced by the one preceding, a stream of consciousness that seamlessly follows the evolution of Electronic Music at each stage.  Be prepared with a notebook nearby, for this text is a deep dive that features many unappreciated musicians and artists that are worth discovering.  It starts with the birth of Experimental and Electronic Music, covering its growth through radio and television before branching off to regional niches such as Japanese, Italian, and even Eastern European.  From there it focuses on the fringe and the mainstream before tying the past with the future:  computers.

No other book intertwines different movements in Electronic Music with the variety of perspectives that A Short History of Electronic Music and Its Women Protagonists accomplishes.  As its title suggests it is a timeline of Electronic Music, focusing on women.  It claims to be a new narrative, inclusive and inquisitive, and it succeeds.  Because of the care put into researching, no one name stands out as unworthy, each story has its place alongside another.  I feel as though I am walking through their studios and concerts, piecing together what is Electronic Music.  What a journey it is.

Keeping Afloat with Postpartum Depression

Content Warning: Discussion of mental disorders and suicide.

April Tucker has written some great articles on pregnancy and working as a mom in the Audio Industry, however, I want to focus on something specific:  Postpartum Depression (PPD).  Currently in the United States parents have been hit hard by the lack of affordable childcare, parental leave options, other childcare support infrastructure, not to mention the earthquake in the Entertainment Industry from the COVID pandemic.

PPD is a mood disorder that affects parents after childbirth.  Symptoms can occur regardless of gender and type of birth and start during the first year after birth.  While it is not possible to know for sure if you will develop it, there are several risk factors: family or personal history of mental and mood disorders, addiction, lack of support, complications with pregnancy, and childbirth.  Symptoms are low self-esteem, doubt, mood swings, irritability, emptiness, exhaustion, lack of concentration, inability to make decisions, poor memory, fear of the baby, thoughts of self-harm or suicide, thought of harm to baby or partner.  PPD is more than just “baby blues,” it is a real and serious disorder.

You are not alone

It is estimated that 15% of women have PPD, and I am part of that 15%.  My pregnancy and delivery on paper were healthy and tame.  I had a great medical team assisting me, and my husband had enough medical savvy to calm any worries leading up to and during the big day.  My family is full of healthy and supportive people.  However, I had no local support network of friends or family, had no close “mom friends”, I upended my career to become a mother, and my birth experience traumatized me.  PPD can happen to anyone, and there is no shame in that.

First consult your team: Doctor, Midwife, Doula, Lactation Consultant, Therapist, Psychologist, your child’s pediatrician.  Ask whomever you already have on your side.  They have the medical knowledge to help you, they want you healthy.  Strength lies in knowing when to ask for help.  I used the depression questionnaire as the opportunity to bring it up at my postpartum follow-up.  Even with a diagnosis, life goes on and appointments don’t happen every day.  Being a parent is more than a full-time job, and often parents have another job on top of it.  Sometimes it can be hard to keep your head above water.

In those moments there are little things that can make life bearable:

Find me on the SoundGirls Audio Moms group, reach out.  Also check out our video Breaking Norms: Moms in Audio and The Music Industry.

Circuit Bending: Learn Something Useful by Failing

 

Ever wonder about the strange noises that electronics make?  Capturing that weird and turning it into music or art?  Welcome to the world of circuit bending, where consumer gadgets are hacked into one-of-a-kind synthesizers.  Officially circuit bending has been around for as long as circuits have existed.  However, the popularity of coaxing music from frankensteined electronics paralleled the rise of synthesizers in the 1960s.  Reed Ghazala’s name pops up in 1966, when he coined the term, as the leading figure in the movement.  He has written about (Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments, 2005) and taught techniques for circuit bending, and his builds have been made it on recordings by artists such as Tom Waits, and The Rolling Stones.  Circuit bending is a chance art form.  It relies on imperfections and momentary occurrences or happy accidents.

In order to learn more about circuit bending, I interviewed Chris Bullock, a location sound recordist who also makes music as Bone Music.

What got you into synths?  And what led you into Circuit Bending/Circuit Modding?

I was working for a YouTube channel and the main talent asked if I had any use for a small synth he’d been given as a thank you for helping out on a crowdfunder. It turned out to be a Korg Monotribe, which is a gorgeous small monophonic analogue synth. I was doing a sound production module at a local college and started using it in some sound design elements for that. I found it really satisfying, there’s a meditative quality to making a synth drone, which appealed to my sensory-seeking nature. I’m autistic so playing with drones while watching a lava lamp is relaxing on another level! Ultimately, there are some limitations like the Monotribe doesn’t play unless you press a key. I ended up doing weird things like keeping it playing with my foot while using my hands to make other sounds, so I started looking at more flexible synths.

My first mod was to add MIDI capability to the Monotribe. It’s an easy thing to do, no soldering required, but it reminded me how much I used to love building electronics kits as a kid. So I started to learn electronics again, this time with a focus on music and an intention to better understand what I was doing. I also got into watching Look Mum No Computer (LMNC) videos on YouTube and really enjoyed his weirdness and enthusiasm for building strange instruments.

What is Circuit Bending?

Circuit bending is manipulating a circuit to get an output that wasn’t intended by the manufacturer, like a new interesting sound. You can do this by making new connections on the circuit board using wire or even your fingers.  It’s really important to only use battery-operated toys and stay away from stages that have large electrolytic capacitors, which can store a lot of charge.  Often bends will be things like freezing or crashing a chip momentarily, or slowing down the signal coming from a clock source. Everything sounds better slower!

How do you approach a new project?

When I start a new project, I have a look around online to see how other people are approaching the same idea. Right now, I need to make some oscillators for my synth and I’m weighing up the options like whether to make something Arduino-based or to stay analogue. There are so many ways to do a similar thing, all with different pros and cons. What I’ll do is test a few ideas out on a breadboard before I build anything. Reading comments under YouTube videos and on forums helps with ideas, particularly when things don’t work how you’d expect.

Where do you get your inspiration?

My successes are built on other people’s experiments, I have to acknowledge that. But I also get a lot of inspiration from my environment. Every time I learn something new I’m wondering ‘will it noise?’ I learned about how inductors and capacitors can be made to resonate and my immediate thought was could you make some sort of one-shot reverberation based on this? I haven’t answered that yet. I pulled an ultrasonic range finder out of my Arduino box of bits the other day and thought Theramin! It’s not just electronics, I’m always listening to things in the kitchen or out on the street, good noises are everywhere.

I used to work with seismic data and I’ve thought about making an installation piece that uses a representation of the frequency content of layers in the earth to make music, but as we go deeper we generally just attenuate high frequencies. It’s difficult to make something geologically valid and sonically interesting. I’ll probably come back to that in the future.

What is your favorite piece of gear/favorite project?

It’s a small thing, but I made a version of the Smash Drive, which is a distortion pedal built around an LM386 amplifier chip.  It’s one of the first things I got to work on stripboard, so it was rewarding having success after a few failures. I made it inside an Altoids tin. It’s silly, but I’ve always associated those tins with hobby electronics builds. I had a long-standing dream to make an electronics project in an Altoids tin.

Tell me about the Koko/Furby Project.

Furbies are a popular toy to bend, although not that easy. I was looking on eBay and saw this Furby that needed TLC. He was dormant, hadn’t started up in a long time. I felt weirdly sorry for him, so bought him. I did some research and discovered you can kick-start Furbies by spinning their motors. I had to disconnect the battery compartment because it was so corroded, but when I attached a new battery pack and kick-started it, eventually he woke up and told me his name was Koko. He’s sleepy and stubborn, but I’m very fond of him. I put switches in his ears so you can squeeze them to make connections between points on his circuit board that make him stutter or crash. I tried to slow him down by replacing his crystal resonator with an adjustable high precision oscillator, but unfortunately, he doesn’t speak in deep demon-like tones when you do that, he just says his phrases really slowly. He’s given me a few scares, a fair bit of frustration, and a small fire but I seem to have developed some sort of weird attachment to him. I put an audio jack in him and grabbed a load of samples I use in other projects.

How does failure play into your process?

I fail all the time, I try to make things where I haven’t quite understood the entirety of how something operates or interacts with other parts, and so it doesn’t work. I actually have a bag I called the ‘bag of shame’ because it’s full of little dead circuit boards. I’m waiting for a particularly aesthetic chutney jar in my fridge to be empty because I’m making an art project called ‘we are lit by the light of our failures.’ It’s going to have some soothing colour changing LEDs running off an Arduino and a bunch of my non-functioning circuit boards in the jar. Sometimes all you get is a lot of frustration, but often you learn something useful by failing. Other times you end up with the basis of a slightly pretentious art project.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out?

Don’t be afraid to fail, but start small. If you have ideas for big things, write them down to get them out of your head for a bit and try a few small things first. Kit builds are good. If you are looking for toys to bend, look for older ones with discrete components where you can identify things like the processor, clock source, and memory. Look for information on YouTube and find a community of makers. Books are good – Hand-Made Electronic Music is inspirational.  Get a decent soldering iron, don’t open up anything mains powered or with a flashgun or CRT, and don’t forget to ask of everything ‘will it noise?’

Chris Bullock’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJtuQavcjxMAce8t17MEQNg

 

2021 Recording Unhinged Review

If you ever need a feel-good audio extravaganza, pick up a copy of Recording Unhinged: Creative & Unconventional Music Recording Techniques by Sylvia Massy with her partner Chris Johnson.  As cacophonous as its cover, illustrated by the renaissance woman herself, this title explores the rule-breaking philosophy behind many iconic albums.  The subtitle says it all.  Readers be warned this is no cookbook of precisely measured formulas of gear and settings.  Think of it as a grab bag of inspiration, a light for dark places when all other lights go out.  A tool to break out of the worst ruts.

Divided into chapters by instrument, similar to a session in your current DAW, Massy fills each chapter with audio legends telling audio lore.  Some of the stories are so fantastic, that they will never be attempted again, but many of the anecdotes are exercises in “why not?” and “I hope this works.”  Emphasis is placed on the latter, with many memories featuring antique one-of-a-kind microphones and synths one burnt fuse from the dumpster.  It becomes a running theme to embrace the problematic gear as a challenge to occupy the brain so that the heart is free to ace the take.  Mistakes are not the apocalypse, instead, they are the sources of epic sagas.  Here is your permission to try the weird and possibly wonderful.  On one hand, this reduces the anxiety of a perfect session for a star client, on the other hand, it could be a recipe for wasted time.  Sylvia Massy documents those moments too.  Sometimes even the pros are just making it up as they go.

The stories alone would be enough to pick up a copy, the icing on the cake is the candid stills, and illustrations drawn by Sylvia.  Behind the scenes polaroids, and photos of iconic music history make this a coffee table book of envy.  And each illustration is as wild as the stories.  I am not entirely sure, but the chapter plates might be a Where’s Waldo of audio memes.

While Recording Unhinged stands alone, it pairs well with the PBS documentary series Soundbreaking, which follows a similar format and shares some of the same cast of characters.  For those needing more of Sylvia’s illustrations: there are two companion coloring books.  The first with a showcase reel of drawings from Recording Unhinged and the other focusing on audio icons in a Catholic saint fashion.  My co-reviewer has finally figured out which end of the crayon to use and ate it up (still hasn’t kicked her paper habit).  I love these add-ons, they are perfect for musicians waiting between takes or for decorating dorm room studios.  One word of caution to the audio parent:  some illustrations include sex, drugs, and rock & roll, use your discretion.

Nerd, as I am, I could not put this book down.  And it deserves a re-read with a soundtrack to unpack each morsel.  I would not recommend this as the only book on recording, but as a supplement to your current library.  A secret weapon to get your mixing on the next level.  Maybe put it in your laptop bag to infuse its funk in your sessions.  You never know what might happen.

You can check out this book in The SoundGirls Lending Library

Frankenbass

 

Several years ago my husband was stationed in Afghanistan.  He rescued a sad, abandoned bass tagged with a stencil of his unit and brought it home to me, disassembled.   To the best of my abilities, I attached the neck to the body and checked it for signs of neglect.  Its pickups were not secured to the body of the bass at all, and shaking the bass caused the worst maraca sound.  I was afraid to even plug it into an amp.  Besides the electronics, it was in decent shape and was playable.  I decided that this bass would be my “frankenbass.”  A monster I would experiment with, and hopefully bring it inner peace.

When I finally gathered the courage to plug into the amp, it sounded muddy, but not broken.  A slight hum from unshielded electronics only became annoying when using the tone knob.  Still, I decided that the way forward was through shielding the cavity and pickguard and replacing the pickups.  The design of this Silvertone, serial number-less instrument was influenced by the Fender Precision Bass, and my musical style often intersects with Motown, therefore I opted for 60’s replica P-bass split pickups.  More specifically, a demo model to fit my budget.

Before shielding the bass, I cleaned the electronics with rubbing alcohol.  Fortunately, the routing within the cavity was not so rough that it needed much sanding.  I started with the back of the pickguard to warm up.  Applying the copper shielding reminded me of middle school, peeling the foil off of gum wrappers to cover folders and using an eraser to buff out the wrinkles.  Side note:  I was not much of a gum chewer in middle school.  Per some internet advice, I had an Exacto knife and a rubber bouncy ball to help me with cutting and buffing the shielding.  I also used a good portion of my vocabulary while peeling the backing off the copper, as it loves to curl on itself.  Good thing I started with the shielding because that was the hardest part.

Compared with shielding, replacing the pickups was a breeze.  I clipped the wires of the old pickups (yellow for hot, black for ground), then soldered the new wires (white for hot, black for ground) in their place.  The new pickup covers did not match the pickguard cutouts, so I kept the old ones (which means I didn’t bother to get a pic of everything assembled, as it looks the same as the before photo).  Slap on some new strings and get to slapping.  When I plugged in the frankenbass, I heard a beautiful sound:  silence!  No hum!  The shielding worked.  After turning up the volume, I was greeted by the warm tone that I wanted.  Bright and clear, warm and round.  It’s alive!  It’s alive!  It’s ALIVE!  Best feeling ever.

What is a Crossover?

Crossovers are not the most glamorous or talked about gear in live sound, but they are an integral part of the signal chain.  Also known as frequency divider networks, these devices filter and route the signal based on frequency.  Without a crossover, the same signal gets fed to each driver in the system.  Imagine the tweeter, mids, and sub all playing the same song reading the same balance of frequencies.  The poor tweeter’s exerting just as much energy into sound waves exponentially larger than itself as its favorite treble tones, therefore reducing the overall output or worse.  And what about the sub, as graceful as a hippo, muddying the high end?  A crossover, at its core, is a collection of filters based on the needs of the system.  Depending on the scope of the system they can be a simple circuit, or be a highly customizable device.  However, every crossover has to address a crossover point and the frequency responses of the components within the system.

Every crossover contains at least one filter.  These filters determine the range of frequencies each speaker unit reproduces.  A high-pass filter allows high frequencies to be sent to a tweeter, a low-pass filter allows low frequencies, and a band-pass filter allows a range of frequencies.  The customization of the signal is the filter’s selectivity.  When these filters intersect, they have a crossover point.  In an ideal world these filters would be a brick wall, blocking any frequency beyond their cut-off point, the reality is that filters roll-off (a drop in decibels per distance from cut-off).  Depending on the makeup of the filter (how many filter circuits, whether it is passive or active or digital), the slope of the roll-off can be steep or gradual.  The order of the crossover refers to both the slope and the number of filter circuits required.  Most sound reinforcement crossovers are 2nd-order (12dB/octave slope) or 4th-order (24dB/octave).  Higher output systems rely on the steeper roll-off to protect high-frequency drivers from blowing out.

Knowing all of this about your crossover and about the optimal frequency ranges of the drivers or units in your system informs your choice of crossover point.  If you choose cut-off frequencies too close to each other, the crossover frequency will get a gain boost by both speakers, too far and you won’t hear that frequency at all.  If a driver is tasked with too wide of a frequency band, its power output will diminish and the signal might have other inaccuracies.  Manufacturers include recommended crossover frequencies with the signal response of their speakers and drivers to inform optimal performance.  When designing a speaker for studio use, where the system and location is consistent and stationary, this choice can be made permanent.  In Live Sound, tuning is done with each individual load-in, as the acoustics of the room can change the performance of the system.  Although not a rule by any means, these two situations describe the two basic types of crossovers:  passive and active.

Passive crossovers (aka high-level) crossovers are downstream from the power amplifiers in the signal flow.  They are often encountered as built-in circuitry in speaker enclosures, dividing frequencies between tweeters and woofers in full-range speakers.  They are economical, however, the crossover’s quality is key to the performance of the system.  Because of their location in the signal flow, they must have sufficient power handling capabilities, although too much focus on this can result in a bulky device.  Within a passive crossover is a network of resistors, capacitors, and inductors, these are known as “passive” components in electronics.  The more complicated the network, the steeper the roll-off, and the larger the components, the better power handling.  Due to the nature of a passive crossover, they are generally less efficient and not adjustable when compared to active crossovers.

Where passive crossovers are high-level, active crossovers are low-level.  They are implemented into the system at line level before the power amplifiers and are more efficient than passive crossovers.  Variable level controls for each frequency band are often available for active crossovers to compensate for devices further along the signal chain.  This is done with active components (op-amps and transistors) provide voltage gain, and resonant components (resistors, capacitors, and inductors) to select the frequencies.  Many systems use a combination of both passive and active crossovers, and even have an option of bypassing the passive portion for more control capabilities.  When used together the passive network is dedicated to the high-frequency horns and tweeters, and the active crossover covers the rest.

Other crossover styles available are digital or processor-controlled, and mechanical.  Digital crossovers offer greater flexibility than active and greater capability for brick-wall roll-offs.  Mechanical crossovers are more often found in speaker and driver designs in the form of domes, whizzer cones, and cabinet construction.  While they function differently than active or passive, the basic concept of filtering frequencies is similar to the more conventional crossovers.

SoundGirls Activity Pages

 

With each passing month, my little SoundGirl is growing by leaps and bounds.  This past month she started walking, and the month before that she figured out dancing.  Before long she should be able to hold a crayon without eating it first.  This is really exciting because there is an abundance of coloring pages for her to explore and learn from.  Taking a page from Sylvia Massy (check out the coloring books based on Recording Unhinged), I thought I would share some coloring and activity pages for SoundGirls of almost any age to enjoy.

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