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Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

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Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#231

Post by m3047 »

xtiansimon wrote: post #180
rmason wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The imagery of 1969, I remember it well. The Vietnam war was the first war that was televised. Everyone would watch the nightly news at 6:30 pm (take my word for it) and hear the choppers, gunfire and real life screams of people. I thought it was sheer genius that Hendrix was able to subtly bring that into the national anthem which made it resonate so well with those purchasing his music. But without that background…

> "The imagery of 1969, I remember it well. The Vietnam war was the first war that was televised. Everyone would watch the nightly news at 6:30 pm (take my word for it) and hear the choppers, gunfire and real life screams of people." Slightly off-topic-- Before my time, but my professor* recalled to our class his experience watching a _live_ news report from Vietnam. Something shocking happened during the broadcast.…

The thing which blows my mind is that the NIC handle database is simply gone. This was the database of everyone who was responsible for some internet asset (typically a domain name) in some fashion such that it was recorded for operators' use. You could look it up, it was public. Now it's simply gone. (I'm FWM6)

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#232

Post by thr0waway001 »

nicodjimenez wrote: post #202

Part of what makes Hendrix's live performances so great is how completely unreproducible they are. Even Jimi himself could never recreate that one note sustain when he begins the solo on Machine Gun. To re-create it, you'd have to set the room up exactly the same, tune the guitar exactly the same, position the guitar relative to amps exactly the same, etc. So Hendrix being very sensitive and connected to the room was…

Although I love Jimi Hendrix’s performances I’m not sure if not being to reproduce something necessarily makes it great. One could say the same thing about any disorganized person’s process but it doesn’t make it great. It just makes it not reproducible.

One could make a bunch of random noises with a guitar that are hard to reproduce but the music could be shit.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#233

Post by jawilson2 »

IAmBroom wrote: post #186
nineteen999 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I love Mitch's drumming and Noel's bass, can you imagine if Hendrix had worked with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce - both much more confident and strident players than the Experience's rythym section. That would have blown the doors off of everything. I don't think there was another as "out there" guitar player as Jimi until EVH came along - a little more controlled, but just as confident and chaotic. EVH was quit…

Jimmy wasn't as good as Miles at collaboration. Miles always impressed me with his ability to pick the best to back him up, and /then/ let them take the front. Some tracks he barely plays on, waiting minutes for his entry. Jimmy wanted the best to back him up. But I agree with you; I'm just pointing out why I think he didn't.

Agreed! Like Pharaoh's Dance on Bitch's Brew, Davis doesn't come in for like 4 minutes. Same with In A Silent Way. He just lets the band groove for a while, THEN takes the lead.

In Davis' autobiography, he mentions trying to work with Jimi. I don't think it would have worked really, but who knows. Jimi was completely self taught, while Miles went to Juliard, I don't see how they would have communicated musically, literally. Like, if Miles tells Jimi to try a diminished chord here, or some modal scale there, Miles would have ended up doing a LOT of teaching along the way. And I say this as a guitarist of 30+ years who loves both of them.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#234

Post by jawilson2 »

arrowsmith wrote: post #170
jamesgill wrote: post #126

Hendrix and Mayer created a great sound, but I've always thought the most incredible thing about Jimi Hendrix was: he only played the guitar about 11 years. TOTAL . He picked it up around age 15, and died age 27.

It's incredible what people were able to accomplish with their free time before smartphones

Just humans, living in the moment, not a phone in sight.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#235

Post by racl101 »

arrowsmith wrote: post #170
jamesgill wrote: post #126

Hendrix and Mayer created a great sound, but I've always thought the most incredible thing about Jimi Hendrix was: he only played the guitar about 11 years. TOTAL . He picked it up around age 15, and died age 27.

It's incredible what people were able to accomplish with their free time before smartphones

In general complete devotion to the craft by constantly practicing like it is a habit and not just when inspiration strikes is essential.

One could argue this lack of devotion predates even the smartphone. Heck, I remember getting a Nintendo Entertainment System in the late '80s and then not going out biking or playing basketball as a result.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#236

Post by jmalicki »

alephnerd wrote: post #56
jmalicki wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came into a CS and math background without CE or EE, and took two dedicated optimization courses (one happened to be in a EE department, but had no EE prereqs), as well as the optimization introduced in machine learning classes. To be honest a lot of the older school optimization is barely even useful, second-order methods are a bit passe for large scale ML, largely because they don't work , not because people aren…

> Isn't Nagle usually introduced in a networking class typically taken by CS (non-CE/EE) undergrads Networking, OS, and Distributed Systems is increasingly treated as CompE or even EE nowadays in the US. > Just because EEs are exposed... That's the thing - I truly do not believe that EE and CS should be decoupled, and I believe ECE as a stopgap is doing a disservice to the talent pipeline we need for my verticals to…

I know multiple people who went to CMU who dropped out of CS to CE because they couldn't handle the rigor of the OS fundamentals course required for the CS major, as the OS course where you had to implement large parts of a kernel was required for CS, but not for CE.

Yes, you need solid fundamentals. I am saying CE/EE is not where you get them unless you actually are designing circuits. If you're doing the hard tech like you're describing, take the more academically rigorous program of CS instead of the easy CE/EE program where you learn irrelevant skills like circuit layout (that is now done by an AI anyway!) rather than very relevant skills like OS and networking, and algorithms which is not required by EE.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#237

Post by jawilson2 »

dwd wrote: post #177
solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

Similar to the Theremin is the ondes Martenot. Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) describes it as a "very accurate Theremin". You can hear it particularly on "Where I End and You Begin" from Hail to the Thief. Ed O'Brien compliments its sound using an EBow (back before he had the sustainer) in that song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot

Yes! I always think first of How to Disappear Completely, which I think was the first song he used it on. I remember watching some concert in college from the Kid A days, and he would have like 3 Ondes Martenot players on stage with them, crazy stuff from the band that wrote Creep like 5 years earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvWwMhRsRgo

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#238

Post by solomonb »

schwartzworld wrote: post #199
solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

> have a fundamental problem with human expression. How up to date is this opinion of yours? Expression on guitar is pretty intuitive, but modern electronic instrument manufacturers have been working on this problem and created modes of expression that definitely solve this problem. For example, EWIs allow you to use breath control for expression with many of the same techniques available on actual wind instruments.…

> What makes a guitar more expressive than a cello or trumpet with a pickup/mic running through effect

The difference lies in the pickup! On those other instruments you will be using a contact mic (piezo-transducer) wheras the solid body guitar is using an inductive coil.

The contact mic is going to pickup only physical resonance whereas the the coil is measuring an electromagnetic field. Plucking the steel string induces a change in voltage in the coil. This means that the coil can pickup all sorts of interesting electromagnetic interference from the tube amplifier that is all frequency dependent and involve that in whatever feedback loops are occuring.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#239

Post by SoleilAbsolu »

arrowsmith wrote: post #170
jamesgill wrote: post #126

Hendrix and Mayer created a great sound, but I've always thought the most incredible thing about Jimi Hendrix was: he only played the guitar about 11 years. TOTAL . He picked it up around age 15, and died age 27.

It's incredible what people were able to accomplish with their free time before smartphones

???

Hendrix was a working musician who paid his dues on the chitlin' circuit with artists like The Isley Brothers, Little Richard, Ike & Tina Turner, and Sam Cooke before making it on his own. AFAIK those are pretty high-pressure assignments, and count as real work...

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#240

Post by fwip »

xcf_seetan wrote: post #220
schwartzworld wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have a fundamental problem with human expression. How up to date is this opinion of yours? Expression on guitar is pretty intuitive, but modern electronic instrument manufacturers have been working on this problem and created modes of expression that definitely solve this problem. For example, EWIs allow you to use breath control for expression with many of the same techniques available on actual wind instruments.…

> What makes a guitar more expressive than a cello or trumpet with a pickup/mic running through effect A whammy bar?

You can bend pitch on both trumpet and cello, it's the kind of skill you'd expect most highschooler players to have.
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