I’ve been gettin’ my music thing on pretty heavily recently.

I didn’t think I was going to derive any good dating topics from studying mix engineering, but I most definitely did! >:D

I’ve been looking for a long time for a good analogy that explains the type of relationships that some of y’all are in, where you think you have say in things, but you really don’t.

The way I’m going to do that is by talking about two pieces of musical equipment that do the exact same thing, but in significantly different ways.

Volume

Let’s say you’re recording a vocal (someone singing). That person might sound quiet at times and loud at other times, during the same line of a song, or even during the same WORD in a line.

That might be useful if you don’t have much instrumentation behind them and the volume changes express certain feelings. It ISN’T useful if you have to keep their voices at a certain level to remain above the background music. Sometimes, they will be heard, and sometimes, they won’t.

You can’t just turn up the volume so their most quiet words can be heard, because the parts where they get louder will jump up over the mix in an unrealistic fashion that ruins the listener’s immersion, and probably their ears, if they’re using headphones.

One way around this is to “ride the faders”, meaning that you listen to the entire song and change the volume of their vocal to compensate for how they recorded it. An easier way is to run that channel through a compressor.

Compressors

Basically, what a compressor does is it only gives you back a lesser percentage of what you give it.

Let’s say that volume ranged from 0 – 10. Without compression, if you speak (or sing) at level 5, you’re perceived at level 5. If you speak at level 9, you hear 9. At level 10, you hear 10.

Let’s say you put a compressor on that channel, set the threshold (volume where it begins compressing the signal) at 0 and set the ratio at 2:1. If you speak at 2, you’re heard at 1. At 4, you’re heard as 2. At 10, you’re heard at 5. For every two decibels of volume you give the compressor, it gives you one back.

The value of this is that it automatically decreases the range of fluctuation in the volume of that channel. Assuming that the loudest that vocalist could get is 10, the loudest you’ll ever perceive them is 5, which is much easier to sit into a mix. You could make it even easier by using 4:1 compression, meaning that when that person perceives themselves on level 8, you’re hearing them on level 2.

I’ll be getting to how this is relevant to dating in a minute. >:D

Limiters

Limiters do the exact same thing that compressors do if you’re able turn the ratio on the compressor up extremely high.

Let’s say a limiter is a compressor with a ratio of 1000/1. This means that your vocalist’s 1-10 volume range will always be perceived as less than or equal to wherever the threshold was set.

Limiters are used to make sure that regardless of what happens, the sound never gets louder than X. If the threshold is set to 6, at 1, the sound is heard as 1. At 3, heard as 3. At 5, heard as 5. At 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10, heard as 6.

Let’s say we make the threshold 8. So long as the vocalist stays between 0 and 8, they get back what they gave out. There’s no compression on them before 8. Whatever they do, however, including bringing other people to yell into the mic with them or breaking out a bullhorn to amplify their voices, they will NEVER be heard louder than 8… unless the mix engineer raises the threshold to 9 or 10 or removes the limiter from that channel entirely…

Relationships

I’ve really wanted to explain this properly for a long time, because I’m not a “compromise” type of person. I’m excellent at doing what *I* want to do, and horrible at doing something someone else wants me to do that I don’t give a flying **** about.

What I realized about myself is that anything I do for someone is, in fact, a gift that I’m giving them. It’s not something I’m compelled to do for some externally-based reason.

I don’t have a job. I’m a freelance video editor. I do the jobs I feel like doing, and I don’t do the jobs I don’t feel like doing. I don’t answer my phone. I don’t check my voicemail. The people that want to hire me know to email me.

I don’t have one girlfriend. I get in where I fit in. We’re hooking up, or we’re not. If I show up somewhere, it’s because I felt like it, not because I can be coerced by threat of a sex embargo if some chick doesn’t like what I did or said.

Basically.. My doing what *I* want to do will ALWAYS be more important to me than doing what YOU want me to do. This means that regardless of what you THINK is going on in the relationship, I control the compressor and/or limiter on the reality of the situation.

I’m not saying this is a one-sided concept. I get compressed and limited every single day. Women have compressors and limiters up the wazoo! :D It’s completely ridiculous how many invisible walls pop up in front of me when I’m interacting with chicks, most of which, they’re doing to themselves and it has nothing to do with me.

“I don’t want to look like a ho!”
“I don’t want to eat in front of guys!”
“I only do that after you call me your girlfriend!”

BLAH, BLAH, BLAHBLAHBLAH, all this nonsense that The Kid has to circumnavigate just to get a chick to BE HERSELF and do what’s ovbious that she WANTS TO DO! :D .. So, the concept DEFINITELY works in both directions as far as compressing and limiting relationships.

What This Has To Do With You

I’ve wanted to explain this for a long time because people keep claiming they have free reign in their relationships, when they most obviously DO NOT! :D

I wanted to find a way to tell them that they’re only free to a certain point, and then the door slams shut on them. Some people are the compressors and have freedom to do whatever they like, without getting shut down by their SO. Some people are in actual, authentic two-way perfectly free relationships. Some people are being compressed and/or limited, and they don’t even know it.

Compression would be the more obvious of the two. When people interact, they’re usually discussing frivolous, unimportant issues. “Where are we going to eat, tonight?”. “Which movie do you want to see?”. “What time do you want to leave to go snowboarding?”. If you get a lot of static and ‘direction’ and potentially CORRECTION during discussion like this, you’re being compressed. Your SO is telling you that your ideas aren’t as good, so here’s the right way to do things, try to learn it for next time, so I don’t have to compress you again about the same issue.

If you don’t get resistance to your concepts, you may very well be in a free relationship. Unfortunately, a free relationship looks EXACTLY like a limited relationship until you hit the limiter. The limiter usually kicks in when there’s an IMPORTANT decision to be made, such as “Let’s get married” or “Let’s have a baby” or “Let’s have MORE babies! :D”.

So long as your ideas have no real effect on your SO, you never hit the limiter. You get to run around telling your friends that you’re in an equal relationship and y’all make decisions together, when, in fact, your SO’s making all the decisions by allowing your concepts to pass without being vetoed.

Examples

A guy is being compressed when he’s scared to death to look at other girls when his girlfriend is with him. When she’s not there, he’s all about checkin’ out some ass, but all eyes are on her as soon as she arrives. Compressed.

A gal is being limited when a guy’s willing to come to her crib and hit it on the regular, but refuses to a) go anywhere with her in public, and/or b) admit to anybody he knows that he’s messing with her. If she presses him to make people aware that they’re involved.. or, even worse, decides to announce it HERSELF! :O .. She ‘might could’ get dumped, because his reputation is more important to him than hooking up with her.

A guy is being limited when he can’t stand the concept of not having sex with this one particular chick. It’s not something she’s doing to him. He’s doing it to himself. No matter how much he swears up and down that he’s not going to XYZ, the bottom line is that if it seems like she’s going to stop producing, he’s going to do WHATEVER. HE. HAS. TO. DO. to make sure he still has physical access to her.

Unfortunately, dudes like this often rebel against the facts and akk tha FOO instead of calming down and accepting the current circumstance of their lives. It’s bad enough that THEY KNOW they’re whipped. It would be worse for the viewing public to know that, so they try to act braver than they are when it comes to other chicks. Behind closed doors, it’s all about “Yes Dear”, “Right Away, Dear”, “Coming Right Up, Dear”… Limited.

A gal is being compressed when her guy is always trying to tell her what to do, what to wear, what NOT to wear, how she should have her hair, who she’s allowed to talk to, who she’s allowed to be friends with, what time she needs to be home, what time dinner needs to be served, how she should behave, which fork to eat with, how much alcohol to drink…

Limitations

Like Clint Eastwood said.. “A man’s got to know his limitations”.

Some men & women actually are experiencing free relationships.

They really can disappear for an entire week without contacting their SO and still have a relationship to come back to.

They really can have sex with other people, threaten their SO with violence or actually put their hands on them, withhold sex from them indefinitely, and do anything else they can possibly think of, and not have a single worry in the world that the other person might end the relationship or impose sanctions on them that make any difference at all in their lives.

Everybody else’s relationships are regulated by the limiter, whether they realize it or not.

I was having some laughs with some guys and somebody brought up the line from the Chris Rock routine where he says something to the effect of “I would never hit a woman… BUT I’LL SHAKE THE **** OUT OF HER! >:D”.. The importance of that line being that SOMETHING will be done to get her to stop trippin’ out, even though it won’t be punching her in the face.

Apparently, this was the first time in life that one of the guys there had heard that, so while everybody else was laughing, he was obviously imagining a scenario in his mind of that actually happening. He looked dazed and confused for a while, and then he says something like “oh.. I could NEVER shake MY wife! :O”. Limited.

In fact, he CAN shake his wife. He’s physically capable of it. He’s not WILLING to even CONSIDER shaking his wife, because he doesn’t want the cascade of consequences that comes with that, such as her leaving him, amongst other things. He’s not scared of HER.. He’s afraid of what he would lose if he did that.

I happen to have met his wife, and she’s a charming and lovely woman, and I can’t see any reason why he SHOULD have to shake her. That’s not what he was thinking about either, that she’s too nice of a person to shake.

In fact, were she not that type of person (which is purely hypothetical, because he probably wouldn’t be with her if she were like this), and she got in an argument and slapped the BEJESUS out of him, he’d probably just take it. He’d take that and anything else she decided to do to him because he’s mentally restricted from physically stopping her from acting stupid.

There’s nothing wrong with that way of being.. Some people actually call that “civilized”. Whatever you call it, it’s a limitation. He’s not free to do ANYTHING in his relationship, because there will be consequences and repercussions.

Perhaps, in that same hypothetical, she’s limited as well. He might be willing to take one beatdown, but not two. o_O He might decide to leave HER because she’s not who he thought she was when they decided to share life together. So, while she THOUGHT she could lay hands on him with nothing happening to her, she was actually experiencing an illusion of freedom.

Hitting The Limiter

There are two people affected when somebody hits the limiter. The limitEE realizes that their relationship is actually different from what they thought it was this whole time, and the limitER now has to deal with someone that’s suddenly become aware that their power in this relationship was only loaned to them by you.

If you set the limit high enough, it won’t happen at all. Even if they hit the limit once or twice, they might not understand what it was. An example of this would be when a gal wants to escalate the relationship, and the guy keeps putting it off. Sometimes, that means he’s honestly not ready yet to break out the girlfriend, fiancee or wife titles. Other times, that means he’s just stalling as long as he can before she INSISTS on a title, at which time he has to inform her that he’s he’s not interested in committing to her at all, which means she’s likely to bounce from the relationship.

Compression is different, because there are constant reminders of what the limiter doesn’t like or doesn’t want the limitee to do. That’s more of a “You’re still letting them do THAT to you? o_O” situation. That’s when there’s a buildup, until the limitee decides they’ve had “all they can stands… and they can’t stands no more!” and ejects.

The potentially saddest part about hitting the limiter is the ensuing discussion about compromise. In music, you use a limiter instead of a compressor to say “You can DEFINITELY NOT get any louder than this, or something bad will happen to my mix”. With a compressor, there’s room for potential compromise. If the vocalist brings another singer along, increasing the volume entering the channel to 20 from their individual maximum of 10, if they’re being compressed at a 2:1 ratio from a threshold of 0, their voices combined are heard as volume level 10. OTOH, if the vocalist was being limited at 7, they can bring as many people as they want and get as loud as they want and they’ll never achieve a volume louder than 7.

That’s what’s sad.. When people think they can negotiate their way to an 8 or a 9, because all the way from 0 to 7, they felt like they were an equal partner in making policy. They thought their opinions actually counted, when, in fact, those things only happened because the limiter agreed with what they said, or he or she didn’t deem the issue important enough to veto.

Some people never get it and keep trying to negotiate. Others understand what happened and are left with the choice to stay in a relationship that they know is limited, or bounce and have no relationship at all.

Neither choice is fun, but it sometimes becomes necessary to decide what you really want for yourself. In fact, some people never even understand what they’re doing in relationships until they hit the limiter and are forced to recognize the reality of their current situation. If they wanted more kids, they’re gonna have to have them with somebody else. If they wanted to get married, they’re gonna have to do that with somebody else. If they wanted to move to Arkansas….. They’re gonna have to do THAT with somebody else! :D

Realizing that you’re limited in your relationship brings up important questions, such as “Do I want to go along with this?” and “How long do I think I can keep this up?”. Ultimately, it comes down to the type of person you are. Do you want to do what YOU want to do? or do you want to do what someone else dictates to you to do?

If you can roll with the limits, good for you! :D If you can’t, you’re better off single until you become involved with someone you’re on the same page with… or, at least someone who imposes limitations that you can stand. :D
–
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Boo Hoo Hoo! :D

Around February, 2008… approximately five (5) months ago, I decided to ask a member of the video message board, Seesmic if he REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted to represent himself as he did in a video that he made.

What happened? People started crying. BOO HOO HOO! YOU’RE BEING MEAN! YOU’RE TELLING HIM WHAT TO DO! BOO HOO HOO! :D

Fast forward 5 months to this week’s events… where a *different* person got penalized for video that HE posted to the internet. Did he post it ~ a year ago? Yes. Was he penalized for it this week? Yes.

So now, maybe people can stop CRYING and WAKE UP! :D It doesn’t matter if you’re having a so-called private conversation with a so-called friend of yours if it’s AVAILABLE FOR THE PUBLIC TO VIEW. People are going to look at the one video that you did and make their own decisions about your content and about YOU as a person. They’re going to decide whether they want to socialize with “a person like this”. They’re going to decide whether they want to HIRE “a person like this”. They’re going to decide whether they want to SPONSOR “a person like this”.

The point I was trying to get across, almost half a year ago, is that all of your content is standalone. You have to treat every video and every text post and every picture as if people are going to look at that ONE item and form judgements about you. You can’t rely on OTHER posts to pull you back into the frying pan out of the fire. You can’t rely on other people vouching for your character, ESPECIALLY when your video is viewed outside the realm in which your friends have juice. If nobody’s ever heard of your friends or they just don’t care what your friends opinions are, you’re short.

The reason people were CRYING is because they want the internet to be about freedom of speech. Unfortunately for them, they’re missing the other side of the coin…

Yes, you are free and clear to use whatever low-class terms you like when you make video, audio or text posts to the internet. What happens next is… PEOPLE SEE YOU AS LOW-CLASS. Good for you. You’ve achieved your goal. You expressed yourself, and people have a new image of you that you’ve created. Similarly, if you create a video that people see as offensive… PEOPLE SEE YOU AS AN OFFENSIVE PERSON. That’s the way it works. You express yourself, and then, as Otir pointed out, you have ZERO CONTROL over what other people receive and internalize based on what you posted. This is what’s simultaneously fantastic and unfortunate about communication, especially on the internet.

Does it matter that whatever video you’re getting penalized for is a year old? No. People that saw it for the first time TODAY… feel upset about it TODAY…. NOT last year. Unfortunately, the fact that posts, especially video and audio are STANDALONE items means that whatever the focal point is of people being upset can now be embedded ad infinitum all over the web. Guess what? Your context is GONE! The text you wrote on your original page with the video? GONE! The links you had on that page to supporting material? GONE! Your entire library of work up until and surpassing that time? GONE! Comments from posters and/or supporters? GONE! The only thing that’s left is the content that you uploaded and the thoughts of the person who’s newly embedded your video on their page so they can show THEIR FRIENDS that you’re “a person like this”.

I was having a conversation IRL just last night, in which I thought I was anonymous, and then the chick… um… woman says “I’ve read your blog“, hahaha and it was time to change gears. Not because I was being inauthentic beforehand, but because now, I was aware that I wasn’t working with a clean slate. :D We still had a great and interesting convo, but it had already been tinted by her impression of who I am or what I’m about from reading my blog.

That’s the way it works. You express. Other people receive and take away what they want from what you expressed, regardless of your intentions when you posted the text, audio or video. I touched on this in a joking way in “Do NOT Let This Happen To You! :/”. I was saying “some stuff” and then Annie broke out her xacti and it was time for The Kid to say “other stuff”! :D

That was my whole point back on Seesmic.

I couldn’t care ANY LESS how people express themselves on the net.

I wanted people to realize is that they eventually might have to OWN the consequences of their actions/words/videos, and that’s what we all got a front row seat to this very week.

Welcome to the real world, Neo.

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