late blog 16

My blog, my beautiful blog, left with tumbleweeds blowing thru…
I know, I missed a few weeks, it’s been madness and mania, crises and drama, plenty to go around for all.
The first phase of moving to St. Pete Beach Florida, I won’t go into all the gory details now but suffice to say once the move is complete you are all invited, well, not all, ha!
Well, with the process of the blog now under control, back on a real computer instead of a frustrating phone, now begins
the job of winning back all y’all that have left since the inactivity, winning back your faith and trust, blah, blah, woof, woof.
So anyway 16 means the fourth month anniversary, so it’s party time, spring breakers and senior citizens in perfect harmony on the beach, all the cares drift away, away…WHAT THE!?!?? The alarm clock is going off and I must get to work on time…NOT! NO MORE. Just want a little peace………..
So back on track here with regularity more next week. Thanks for listening

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blog 15

Durantula

durantula is a regestered trademark, all rights reserved. All music, lyrics and art © 2014 Mark Durante

Thanks for all the compliments on the site and blog but I ain’t no chump, your comments will not show up unless you have something to bring to the table.

I recently reread 1984 by George Orwell, I haven’t read it in years. Orwell was one smart guy. Besides “Big Brother” always watching and listening, they also rewrote history to benefit the ruling class. Do we really know what is real, or manufactured for some hidden agenda? We know what we are told on TV news, which isn’t a whole lot anyway. And speaking of cameras everywhere, between surveillance videos and red light cameras and now if you use a video phone they will be watching that too.
And also remember, the robots will be coming soon…

Next week I hope to be back on a real computer instead of this friggin’ phone, I’ll be able to get some more pics and music and things up.

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blog 14

Too busy, more to come!

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blog 13

I’m late this week, a lot going on. The big news is I’m moving to St. Pete Beach, Florida! You ask why does an industrial metal guitarist want to move to a beach? Dudes, you may not realize that next month I will be 63 years old. I’m a geezer, old fart, pops.  My middle name has always been ANGST, maybe it’s time to chill, huh? Anyway, I’ll try to get back on schedule with a double wide blog this Sat and thanks for all you readers out there!

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#12

The excitement of last week’s cliffhanger continues:

So I sez to him, I sez, “how old are you?”.”65,” he sez, “It really started when I turned 60” sez he. He sez “I know some guys that have their entire back fused” (as we discussed our surgeries and medical issues we never thought we would have when we were younger). So he sez “It’s just gonna get worse”. I thought to myself it ain’t gonna get any better. It should be a fun song anyway…

Well, let’s talk about this music nowadays. I need to vent some more after last week. Ok, so mp3s are about as good as an 8track cartridge back in the 70s, then listen thru a goddam telephone and what do you get? Another day older with shitty sounding music, as bad or worse than the 1960s transistor radios. Does anyone care about sound quality anymore? On top of that, you might be listening on line with streaming issues. The technology will get better and should improve with time though…

In the 1990s digital recording and CDs were state of the art and finally became affordable to almost anyone. Now recording gear that used to cost 2,000,000 cost 2,000 dollars. Some of the older engineers who had worked years for the privilege of operating the expensive recording equipment aren’t happy with what they hear, their main gripe seems to be what they refer to as “over use of compression”. I won’t go into a definition of this, if you are interested there are plenty internet articles that explain it. Well, they say it ruins the dynamics of the music and causes ear fatigue.  I say dynamics are created by musical tension and release, not necessarily just a difference between quiet or loud.  Anyhoo, I get irritated when I watch a movie with everyone speaking in whispers, (how dramatic), and then a big explosion, I don’t want those kind of dynamics. Then I have to ride the remote to turn up the volume for the whispers and turn it down for the explosions.

When I listen to the classic recordings from the 50s and 60s, they used tons of breathing compression all the time, especially when compressed for radio transmission, of course, the tube compressors back then were really great sounding.

On my “Welcome To Earth” album I remastered the songs for streaming, (mp3s are required by download music sites), with a little less compression, which helps, but full CD quality smokes an mp3 anytime.

On another note, it looks like “House of Durantula Studios” is moving to St. Pete Beach, Florida in the coming months!! Stay tuned for further developments!

 

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blog #11 news

This week’s blog has a little something for everyone, so read on, brother, read on. (This one could sound as if Marty Lennartz, a top radio personality in Chicago would read it, as if his character the Regular Guy, who has a very strong Chicago accent, was crossed with a stereotypical hillbilly accent, (I won’t mention his name).

Hey, I like Obama as well as the next guy but come on with this idea he has about pot being no worse than alcohol!! The “KILLER WEED” I’ve heard about my whole life is now is going to be sold by our USofA govermint to wimmen and children, while them rich fuckers watch the country go down the tubes from their ivory towers?!? Are they really expecting the country to exist with everone out of their minds on drugs??? And about marhiwanna not being as bad as booze? Whattya nuts? An encyclopedia from the 1950’s I read said that smoking a muggle, (word for joint, blunt, or spliff) would make the user go into violent rages and would be prone to violent crimes such as robbing gas stations, and haven’t you seen Refer Madness??? I say we make ALL drugs illegal, then people won’t have to suffer the scourges of these dangers and our children will be safe, and isn’t that what we all want, think of it..a world without drugs, like the song says “I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay in a world without drugs” or sompin like thet. We need to up the war on drugs before more of our precious little ones die!!! We have to fight this filthy and preverted behaviour. Ok maybe alcohol is not the best thing for you, (altho I enjoy a little nip now and again myself wooee!), but certainly pot is way worse, that’s whuts for sure is if it’s legalized, god forbid, it will destroy this great nation, with it’s justice, liberty and freedom for ALL! Oh and Obama, don’t even think about taking away my guns, remember that guns are used for safety, while drugs are used for depravity. Drugs are bad. We need more guns to fight the War on Drugs too. Once we win the war and rid the world of these big drug cartels the world will be safer and we will be able to live in a drug free world. People will forget in time why they ever wanted drugs in the first place, problem solved, tho we might need a “surge” strategy now to get a foothold but it shouldn’t cost more than a few hundred million more dollars, well spent, (what other problems are as bad as drugs?), and we could use more street cameras to catch criminals with too, hey if you’re not doing anything wrong, why worry!?

And I don’t want to hear any of this commie, socialist shit around here either, like that guy George Orwell that wrote that stupid book predicting what was going to happen by 1984, ha, ha, a little off huh? None of that bad stuff has happened, it’s not like that at all, you don’t see anything like that cool big brother dude except on the TV show now, (I have a big brother too but he is not that interested in my personal life and therefore does not use drones or tapping my phone, etc). Not sure about the govermint is up to but I am sure it is for my own good. After all they are our servants, “Public Servant” is their job description, how many are in politics sincerely to serve the public? And while we are on that, here’s a good one. I saw a news story recently about a police chief in Florida wanted to have their officers pass physical fitness tests every year to make sure they were in top shape so as to do a better job serving the public. Hows a huge, rotund out of shape donut addict suppossed to get a break around here anyway? They worked out a compromise where the officers could decline the testing for a 1% reduction in their upcomming raises or by using other loopholes. Usually I am with the unions, not this one tho…

So then I’m walking out of the supermarket and there’s one of those guys, you know  begging for money, how do you know whether it’s a worthy cause or not? Most of the time I figger it’s a cheap scam and say “no thank you”, sort of as if they had offered to give me something and walk on by but this guy caught my eye because he was discussing and taking donations for disabled veterans, (like we need to beg on the street for these guys that our government has used and discarded after they are of no more use to them). Well he was talking about WWII vets, his dad was one  and I mentioned my dad had been in the South Pacific during the war, and it got me thinking, jeez! The biggest war ever in the history of the planet and it happened so recently, and then War ended with the greatest technological scientific efforts of people working together to achieve what most would have said was a load of that science fiction nonsense. The Atom Bomb? Who would have thought that we could come up with something that astounding, so quickly!  When we put our minds to it we can do almost anything that can be thought of, (then the little guys come up with a new way of fighting too, using guerilla or “terrorist” warfare). And the naysayers said we would never go to the moon, now  they say that Solar power is not cost efficient, that we still need coal and oil, (mainly because that is the system that has been very profitable for the “powers that be”). They know we could switch over to solar power in ten years if we put our money into research and development to lower the cost and improve efficiency. There are plans to send up solar collectors as a system of satellites as solar arrays and beam the power down to receptors on earth. You might think it’s far fetched, it is not, we just need to stop wasting money on senseless wars that are only good for the war profiteers and spend our money wisely. The new war will be won not by sacrificing lives but who will first develop viable solar power. It will happen, it’s just a matter of who comes up with the technology first and can offer the rest of the world clean cheap energy. That country will rule the world without firing a shot. After all, the Sun puts out so much energy that we are very lucky that our planet’s magnetic field literally diverts the cosmic rays and keeps us people from frying. It produces way more power than anything in our solar system, all we have to do is learn how to harness the amount of power we want, there’s more than enough and it won’t ever run out!!!

To end on a high positive note, (which I am known for), my next song in the works is called “It’s Gonna Get Worse”. Yes, a positive message for a planet in need of some TLC, brougham! What it is!!! Kurzweil amoung others are predicting computers will be smarter than humans within the next 50 years, when that happens it’s anybody’s guess the results. Something to think about til next week same time, same station, see you then. The topic will be music for a change. I got some good rants about that too!

Durantula

Durantula is a registered trademark, all rights reserved

I can always be reached at durantula@durantula.com

 

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Dog #10

A sad one this week. Our dog Cupid had to be put down Mon. She had a heart valve problem that caused her heart to be greatly enlarged, we did everything we could, it was just her time. Even as sick as she was she still kept a positive attitude right to the end. She loved everyone and spread joy where ever she went.

She was my best friend, full of unconditional love, my faithful companion, I’m lost without her. All you out there thinking this is kinda silly over a foo foo dog and all, well f-u! This dog was way smarter than most humans.

She was simply the best dog ever…cupes

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blog #9, #9, #9…

AntulaglowYou will never see an advertisement on durantula.com. I have complete control, so far, I am not beholding to anyone, so if you have any “issues” with anything, the buck stops here. I have a store page and will be offering items for sale periodically but that’s it!

Durantula is a registered trademark, all music and art copyrights 1968-2014, (except where noted). “Dual Quad” pickups pat. app. for

If you see an ad for anything else on this site, there is something wrong with your computer. Fbook can get pretty disgusting with all the tacky ads and that’s why the “news” you see on TV “news” channels is so superficial and whitewashed. Most of the real important stories are never heard on the so called liberal media or anywhere else for that matter. The sponsors are big oil and the like, they don’t want to see programs about new technologies that might threaten their bottom line. Anyway, no big oil here, ha!

 

 

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guitar blog 8

107Alright, enough of the humour, (although those who know me are used to the dry wit), this week it’s all about guitars, so all you hot chicks that don’t play guitar can go back to your “reality” shows.

The electric guitar began with George Beauchamp’s horseshoe pickup in 1931. It was powerful and sounded great. It was placed by the bridge and had plenty of treble. Later in the 1930’s guitarists wanted a more mellow tone so they added a “tone” control, which simply cuts high end causing a muddy sound. Then they added a second pickup at the neck position, as the vibrations of the strings there have different harmonics. The advertisements at the time trumpeted the “Highest highs, and the Lowest lows!” To this day you still see that now and then. Trouble is, as a guitarist, the last thing I want are screeching highs and muddy lows!

I’ve struggled with this for years, so I decided to make my own pickups to get sounds not available from the now generic single and double coil designs. I have split each pickup into sections that can be switched and combined, simple and all passive. With my pat. app. for “Dual Quad” pickups I can get sounds not heard before. Back in the sixties some of the off the wall brands used a similar four coil split design, but the wimpy single coils they used were too weak to sound very good. “Dual Quad” pickups are powerful and always humbucking.

The prototype “durantula guitar” on my guitar page sported my first coils and you can see in the pic here some of my later handmade pickups in regular size humbucking rings and in front, the first of the 3D printed bobbins. Once I have all the parts sourced I might be considering offering them for sale… I’ve had requests to build and sell durantula guitars but at the moment I don’t want to work that hard, I’m getting too old!

This is the first Guitar Blog with many to follow, so comment and keep tuned right here!

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blog007

Oh, crap, Sat nite and I forgot about the blog! The blog, the blog, it’s always the goddam blog, alright, alright, let’s see what deep thoughts I can expouse today. (expouse made it thru spell check so must be ok)…

The blog, oh yeah, yeah, yeah I still have to get some new pics and music for all of youse but here is the deep thought, didn’t think I could do it huh?

The TRUTH is indisputable. It doesn’t matter what you or I think it is. How easily our minds are tricked and how easily we can even fool ourselves into thinking we know what the TRUTH is. Humans may not want to admit it but our minds are not capable of understanding so we come up with something, anything to explain it.

I’ll lighten up next week, yeah, right

 

 

 

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