Grant Muller

This weekend I tuned in to a major radio station for the first time in a very long time, and was greeted with an advertisement I didn’t expect. Instead of load local car salesmen or a screechy techno beat inviting me to a night club where ladies get in free on Tuesdays, I was implored to write my congressman in opposition to the “Performance Tax”.

“Performance what?” I said.

I scrambled for the iPhone to try and understand what this new-fangled tax was, and after some extensive research (not on the iPhone), I got the real skinny on this “Performance Tax”. It turns out this is an old measure I heard about sometime ago called the Performance Rights Act, that’s been getting renewed attention

The Performance Rights Act is basically a measure drawn up by congress and supported by the RIAA, SoundExchange, and apparently Billy Corgan to make sure that performers are paid for the broadcast of their recordings.

You might be thinking “I thought broadcasters already had to pay the artists to play their songs". Technically they have to pay royalties to songwriters and publishers via ASCAP and BMI and other performance rights management associations. the argument here is that it leaves the performers of the song out in the cold. This includes people like session musicians, backup singers, and well, cover artists I suppose. Yep, that means that Orgy didn’t get a red cent in the form of royalties for their cover of ‘Blue Monday’, but I’m alright with that.

There is a whole lot to debate on this topic, and I only bit off the first few topics that were of most interest to me. Here they are in the order of least importance:

Does the broadcaster benefit directly from the songwriter/publisher, or the sound recording?

To me, This is the most immediate question. The current system is silly by modern standards in that the broadcaster indirectly pays the writer and publisher of the song, when they are actually benefitting directly from the recording. The written song is useless to a broadcaster until its put into a format he can broadcast. The broadcaster certainly shouldn’t be required to pay for both. It seems to me that if we were to remodel this system that we would create in a such a way that those who benefit directly from the work of another are required to pay for it:

Broadcasters would pay catalog holders (record labels) for access to their recordings. Catalog holders would in turn seek out the best artists to fill out their catalog, the goal being to sell access to songs in the catalog that fit the audience of a particular demographic. Artists would in turn find the best songs to play, whether they write them or buy them on the market from someone else.

If the current Act is passed and broadcasters are forced to pay this new fee, then perhaps the artists should be paying the composer/publisher royalty, not the broadcaster. The transfer of direct benefit occurred for one industry, why not another?

Why continue forcing a square peg into a round hole?

The impetus for this legislation can all be tied back to the transition from physical media (CD’s, LP’s, Cassettes, 8-tracks) to non-physical media (mp3s and digital broadcast). The existing rules worked when the sales of physical media were good enough to support the label and the pittance they paid their artists, but now that there is no physical media to sell the labels need money. The broadcasters aren’t performing the “free advertisement” service they once were since nobody is going out to buy the record of the artist they hear on the radio anyway (and why would they, they just need to tune into the radio to hear it played 15 times a day). The whole system needs to be scrapped, not just tweaked. Adding fees to the broadcaster isn’t going to restructure the industry in favor of the labels again, and it does very little for the artist. Perhaps a system like I mentioned above would be more appropriate, but even it shouldn’t be set in stone. Technology is changing constantly. Tracing the means of musical reproduction from sheet music to the digital file will make it obvious how many times our contractual process for managing those relationships has been reworked.

What this means is that we need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something that we can agree on for the duration of what is most likely a very short contract. Which brings me to my next point…

Why is the government negotiating contracts between artists, labels, broadcasters, writers and publishers?

The relationships between these industries are effectively contract negotiations. The catalog provider (record label) has this group of artists, these broadcasters would like to play those artists. Settle the terms in a contract, if those terms are violated then seek adjudication. Both industries stand to make (and lose) and lot of money by playing or not playing ball. Its an exercise in very simple risk management. Here are a few examples:

In my catalog of recordings I have the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Its not a risky catalog to broadcast, therefore I can assume I will fetch a good value from the broadcasters for access to this catalog of recordings. In turn, I am required to pay the artists who recorded these songs a value that they negotiated, along with any contract negotiations I made with back up singers, session drummers, and composers to produce the song.

Likewise, I have a catalog full of Aphex Twin, Merzbow and Muslimgauze . Its a risky catalog, I don’t know if I’ll be able to fetch a good value for it. Perhaps I negotiate a contract with the broadcaster that allows me access to a per-play fee. If I do, and one of these songs becomes a hit, I will see an excellent return on investment. I am of course required to pay my artists, backup singers and composers the value I negotiated with them, and likewise down the chain.

I can even see artists independently getting in on this game, owning their own recordings and targeting broadcasters whose audience regularly listens to their music. For instance, if I were an indie electronic artist I would seek out college radio stations and encourage them to purchase my catalog for an excellent value.

Institutionalizing what is effectively contract negotiations leaves very little room for innovation in business models, and of course, is asking government to perform a function they were never meant to perform.

At any rate, the claim is that this legislation will put digital broadcasters like Pandora in parity with terrestrial broadcasters. Sure, but the disparity was created by the acts of a federal panel several years prior, making the fees for internet radio exorbitant. What’s an internet broadcaster to do? Why not support a bill that makes it harder for the competitor to compete (which is to say, use the same strategy my competitor did to raise my fees). As you can see we have a pattern of using regulation to fix prior regulation, ad nauseum. This seems to be the pattern when we ask government to be our contract negotiator.

I’ve left out a whole lot

Will this new legislation stifle or enhance independent artists? What will be the effect on the broadcast industry? Will broadcasters stop playing music altogether? There are a lot of unanswered questions here, but I think the points I made above make it clear what my position is on the Act; no good can come of this. As an artist I don’t know what my delivery format will be in the future, to be beholden to making potentially 50% of what I could be making because a record label took the other 50% of the royalty is unacceptable to me. To let the government write the terms of my contract for me, with their inability to expediently respond to market changes would be absurd.

Several months ago Jason asked me if I could fix a MIDI Guitar. I’d didn’t have the slightest idea how to fix one, and only had speculative knowledge about how they work, so naturally I said “yeah, sure, piece of cake”. If I’d have known at the time the kind of gear lust this project would create I might have turned him down at the outset.

The Casio PG-380 is a guitar that translates the notes you pick on the strings into MIDI Notes. Think of it like a Keytar, only its ACTUALLY a guitar. You may think that the name brand somehow reduces the quality of this particular instrument, but you’d be mistaken; this baby is top of the line. It can translate amplitude, hammer-ons, and string bends with very little latency. I’d soon find out how hard to find, and how expensive, buying one of these would be.

The problem sounded simple: only the bottom two strings of the guitar were producing notes. At first I figured this must be a calibration issue or something, so I tweaked some of the pots on the board, messed with action height, etc in an effort to get the MIDI pick up to hear and translate the notes. This effort proved fruitless so I turned to the web.

How do you translate audio into midi? I had a vague idea how you could do this with envelope followers and some basic filter networks, but I wanted to understand how this thing actually worked before I could say with any certainty what was wrong with it. I looked around for a long time on the web and turned up nothing related to the technical aspects of converting the output of a guitar pickup to MIDI. In the end I relied on the premise that there must be a filter network to divide the audio by string, and a logic device to convert that analog value to a digital stream of bytes. Since 2 of the 6 strings were working, I could assume that the logic device was probably ok. I turned my attention to what I assumed was the filter network.

I cracked open the case and had a look around. I followed the traces from the pickup back to the 6 calibration pots to the series of capacitors that make up the filter network. I didn’t see anything visibly wrong so I returned to the internet to see if there were any already reported issues for the PG-380. Sure enough I came across this post, which identified a common problem as deteriorating electrolytic capacitors in the filter network. It turns out that electrolytic capacitors go ‘stale’ if left unpowered for a long stretch of time. So, just replace the caps, right? Almost.

I’m usually pretty reckless (or overconfident), especially with my own gear, but when it’s someone else’s very expensive stuff on the line I tend to be a little more cautious. I prefer to stick with old PCBS, with large thru hole components. Think of your grandpa’s large print books. This was a modern board with tiny surface mount components, something I’ve never dealt with before. I searched around for some techniques I could use to get these little caps off the board and settled on the “hot tweezer” method. This is essentially taking a blow torch to a pair of tweezers until they’re hot enough to melt solder, then gripping the cap and pulling it off the board. This worked for the most part, though there were some persistent ones that I ended up just jamming a soldering iron under an pulling off. That “technique” ended up being a little messy; there is a plastic separator under the caps that melted all over the place. Those tweezers came in handy for scraping that crap off.

As for the replacement caps, I went with the smallest long lead electrolytic capacitors I could find. I had some of these lying around already and ordered the balance from Mouser. Along with some other stuff for future projects (and posts). Replacement was easy. Cut the leads short, flux the pads, tin the soldering iron, and tack one lead in place. After tacking one lead solder the other post, then fully solder the tacked post. Just like thru hole only you’re tacking the caps on top of the board. It looks a little goofy, but not as goofy as playing a keytar…

Capacitors in place I plugged the guitar in and went to work. Whoa. I hadn’t imagined using a guitar to trigger a synthesizer would be so fun.

Here is a drone sound, with a completely unnecessary string bend at the end:

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Here are some chords, which I thought the pg-380 did a pretty decent job of sensing:

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And how about a silly FM bass chord:

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I’m addicted and I have to give this thing back at some point. Looking around on the internet, these puppies go for upwards of $1500. So, if you have a less than perfect PG-380 for sale, perhaps one that needs some new capacitors, I’ll take it off your hands.

I’ve undertaken a new musical collaboration with a very eclectic (and eccentric) group of guys called STFUnity. The project for me started when Bill mentioned putting together a completely virtual collaboration between he, Jason Blain, and myself. The idea was that rather than the traditional setting of getting a couple musicians in a room, rehearsing some material, then playing it live, we’d instead pass around a bunch of tracks and see where each member took the material. I’d never worked in this format before, and it seemed like fun so I jumped on it.

There are no set roles in the group, with any member contributing any element to the song. Still, I feel that my capacity in the collaboration falls in the realm of sound design; I usually contribute textures and atmosphere, with the occasional laying down a percussion track or some programming. The exception being Cottonhammer, which I want to point out specifically

Cottonhammer  is special to me as its the first official outing with my homegrown tool, the GOL Sequencer Bank. I struggled to find ways to incorporate it into my existing tracks. Its too non-deterministic on its own, and the unpredictability of it does not lend itself to a song that has an existing structure (at least not in my travels). So, I changed how I used the tool and stopped trying to place too much direct control over it. Cottonhammer is the GOL Sequencer Bank working autonomously with myself playing live drums simultaneously. Cottonhammer is an attempt to interact musically with a machine.

I arranged four of the six sequencers to play a different range of notes; I didn’t want too many tracks overlapping in frequency range. The other two sequencers I outputted to some very glitchy clicks and pops to keep from having too many melodic instruments fighting for space. I find the output rather soothing despite the complete lack of control and the machine gun percussion.

So far, there are four tracks completed with several more still in the works. I’ll post updates as the project continues, listen and let me know what you think.

STFUnity

Back in June, I wrote a short piece on changing my music studio environment. At the close of that piece I mentioned a buddy of mine was selling an old Alesis DM-5 kit, and that I would soon be incorporating that into my setup. Although 6 months isn’t exactly soon, I managed to tackle the task thanks to a well-timed Christmas gift and an extended vacation.

For years I’ve been trying to create a fully hybrid drum kit consisting of both electronic and acoustic elements. I took a step in that direction with the Mandala (which is playing in even larger role in the latest kit iteration), but to complete the project I needed multiple surfaces, not just multiple zones on one surface to realize what I was looking for. I reasoned that buying a simple electronic drum kit and integrating it into my acoustic kit would do that job. I would of course need something that translated the trigger inputs into MIDI (I just can’t tolerate the stock drum brain sounds), and the Alesis DM-5 kit would do it on the cheap.

I bought the used DM-5 kit not long after my last post, but ran into a hurdle. I use a Pearl rack, but the triggers all use fairly typical 1 1/2” tube clamps. I could have just bought all new clamps for the square rack, but that’s almost as expensive as buying a new rack in the first place, plus I was angling for a more universal Gibraltar rack instead (for mounting a number of other new things in the near future). So, when the wife asked what I wanted for Christmas, I sent her a link to a Gibraltar GRS-850DBL. For those with two kick drums this is a rack that will span both, for guys like me who don’t want to tune two kick drums to each other, this is a curved rack with a left side expansion.

In a matter of hours the new rack was up with the additional triggers. Everything was wired and ready to go. I created a quick drum kit in Battery with the most irritating glitch sounds I could find in five minutes, and recorded a quick and dirty test of the system that sounds a little like this:

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All technique and mixing aside, not a bad first outing with the hybrid drum kit. I have a few loose ends to tie up:

• Mount my laptop directly to the rack for stability (parts on the way)
• 5 pedals is not enough, two more will complete my feet.
• Devise a way of “patching” triggers around, sort of like a trigger rather than audio patch bay.

For those with picture lust, here are some more images:

A few weeks back I wrote about a little fitness experiment I had started to try and reduce the amount of time I spent training while maximizing results. During the experiment I needed a place to document my workouts so I could review my progress and see if I was meeting my goals, as well as plan future workouts. I had some basic requirements in mind when selecting a logging system:

• I need to enter workouts as I complete them – I have a terrible memory. By the time I’ve finished doing a round of squats or a half-marathon, I’ve forgotten my time. Its not the kind of thing that I keep in my head. I need to be able to enter workouts immediately. As in, right after I finish the lift, run, swim, whatever.
• I need to view and measure past performance – Training is one of the only things I systemize. I think I might train so that I have something to systemize. I want to be able to quickly look up what my 5k times are trending. I need to see what my last deadlift max was so I can plan the next one.
• I need it to be something I actually use – Sounds simple, but if I have to go out of my way to use the tool, I won’t use it. Bonus if the tool is something I already use for other stuff.

With that in mind I started my search. Here are some of the tools I played with:

Paper and Pen – I think this is how everyone starts. Just bring a little notepad and write it down as you go. This was how I recorded and measured for years, but you try scanning cahier after cahier looking for your most recent 5k time. Recording your workouts is fast…reviewing them isn’t.

Daily Burn – I tried this site out because they had a decent iPhone interface and I could use it online. The tracker is a little clunky, and having to enter the data into the little boxes gets old fast. It seems like it’s geared for people interested in diet and weight loss, so if that’s you’re thing, maybe its for you.

SpringPad – Ugh, don’t get me started.

Beyond The White Board – If only I had my own personal white board at the gym…I haven’t actually tried this one out, but it looked promising. If you’re strictly a Crossfitter, you should check it out. It does a lot of the tracking for you, and if you’re into the nutrition thing, it can help you track that too.

Training Peaks – Great site if you’re only interested in endurance sports, but since that makes up only half of my programming, it wasn’t a one-stop shop for me.

After exhausting the methods above, I chose to go the freeform route and use Evernote as my workout log. I already use Evernote for everything else, so there was no reason not to leverage it for my workout log as well. I created a basic system in Evernote that allowed me to quickly add my workouts in anywhere I happened to be, get access to old performance characteristics, and to track my areas of concentration to make sure I wasn’t overdoing any particular sport. Here’s how it works:

Create a Notebook for your workouts

This is easy, just create a notebook in Evernote to store your  workouts.

Enter your workouts right after (or even before) you conduct them.

Make sure you write a review (more on this in another article). This is all freeform so enter any information you need to know. (Note: in the picture I made a mistake…its supposed to be a frightening 50 Power Clean Burpees).

Tag your workouts.

Tags can be anything from running, cycling, or specific stuff that you want quick access to like “5K”, or “The Bear”. This is especially helpful if you have workouts with bizarre names. You can also have sub-tags. For instance I have a tag called run with the sub-tags 5k, 10k, 13.1, etc. This helps your organize when the number of tags you have starts to get out of hand.

Create a workout reference.

If you have a workout that is always the same set of complicated movements, its a good idea to create a reference to that workout by creating a new note, putting the contents of the workout in it, then tagging that note with the workout name. Then you can search for the workout by tag, see the workout reference and each time you’ve repeated it. You probably want to keep these references in a different notebook than your workout log to avoid clutter.

Create Saved Searches to access information quickly.

Examples “All running workouts from the last 7 days” or ”All running workouts from last week”.

If you look at my public workout log most of it should make sense, though I have developed my own personal shorthand (10×10xOHS@145 means 10 sets, 10 reps Overhead Squat with 145lbs). I’ll post a legend some day.

This should be plenty to get you going. With Evernote you can also make your notebook public if you’re sharing information with others. An additional feature of Evernote is it’s open API. This means you can access your notes from script (php, c#, etc) and display it somewhere, organize and manipulate it in various ways, etc. I’m working on extending my personal/shared training log as we speak…but that’s for another article.

UPDATE: For a more in-depth review of Beyond the White Board, check out this post from Jimi over at http://www.jsfour.com. Sounds like he and I went through the same elimination process, and we both ended up using Evernote.

Recently a friend asked how hard it was to replace the CMOS battery in Korg DW-8000 keyboard. I assumed it couldn’t be that hard, looked up what kind of battery it accepted (CR2032) and said “yeah, 5 minute job”. I failed to take into account early 80s circuit construction. Sure, its no Maestro PS-1B, but I certainly discovered some “opportunities” upon cracking open the case…

Getting it open is easy enough. As with any device built before the iPod age there are far too many screws… 2 in each corner, several straight up the middle, a bunch to hold the rather flimsy keyboard tray in place. etc. NOTE: To open this thing, you need to turn it upside down, make sure you support the bottom right corner so the joystick doesn’t get smashed.

Once open, you’re probably presented with a ton of dust and 3 filthy circuit boards populated with far-from-RoHS compliant components. Dead center in the 2nd board is the battery…

…which is soldered to the board.

This probably only sounds ridiculous to me, but really, who solders a consumable part directly to the board. Honestly, this kind of thing calls into question the entire circuit design. I got the dead little bastard freed from its pinholes and went to grab another battery holder. I was pretty certain I wouldn’t be able to find a holder with the same pin out, so I opted to get whatever CR2032 battery holder I could find and shoehorn it in there.

I found some suggestions on the internet for doing this, one involved adding some extra wires to the pins of the holder and running them under the new holder. After examining the board I decided a more stable replacement would be to drill another hole inline with the positive lead circuit trace. This is better explained with pictures:

Grab the tools you need. The battery holder (RS #270-009), a couple of reamers, and a tiny drill bit. You can go with just the drill bit, but if you need to widen any holes I like these little reamers.

Look for a spot around the battery circle that is still sitting on the positive lead on the reverse side of the board. Its easy to see through the board to spot the lead, and for me the hole was right next to the T in “BATT”. In this picture the hole has already been drilled.

Start drilling on the reverse side, at least enough so that the lead won’t tear when you drill through on the other side.

Mount and solder the battery holder (making sure that the polarity is correct), then insert the battery. Done.

No sweat, but certainly not a 5 minute job. The moral of this story? If you’re designing a circuit with a replaceable part (like a battery), please don’t solder it directly to the board. The amateur that has to repair it in 25 years will never thank you, but they’ll still appreciate it.

Let me start by saying that this article shouldn’t be considered an endorsement of a training methodology. First of all I don’t have the expertise to endorse or recommend anything. Also there is a reason that the word ‘personal’ often appears before training, it’s different for everyone and you need to make your own decisions about what is right for you. These are just the records of my observations and experiences over the course of the last few years and more specifically, last few months. I’ll periodically update this record as I guinea-pig different training methods on myself, and document any successes or failures.

In other words, this is what is working for me at the moment; your mileage may vary.

Introduction

During the winter of 2008 I began training for marathon season the way I always had. Run a lot. My typical schedule included something like 10-12 hours of running a week, around 1/4 to 1/3 of that volume occurring on one day. When you pass other marathoners on the trail on these days, you nod and acknowledge that you’re both on your “long day”. These are almost invariably Sundays. On these days you put in 14-20 miles at a snail’s pace to make sure you are physiologically capable of running a full marathon. On other days you mix in interval sets, 10K’s, 5Ks, but nothing too hard…wouldn’t want to weaken your long day performance. These long runs are great if you have a stockpile of audio books to listen to, but they weren’t helping me get any faster or stronger, and they were eating up lots of my time.

This was my predicament: after spending years training like this for every event (including triathlons), I wasn’t any faster than I had been in the first year. A glance at my 5k, 10k and marathon times from 2004 to 2008 will show almost no progress. Four years without progress in areas you dedicate a lot of your spare time to is enough to frustrate anyone. I was weaker than I had been before starting any endurance training. Compound this with a knee injury at the start of 2009, and I was pretty unmotivated to run any marathons. I pushed through the Sedona Marathon (which was worth it) and took a break until I could figure out what to do next.

A little history

I wasn’t much of an athlete growing up. I played some team sports, baseball mostly, but by High School had pretty much settled on playing the drums and video games. I got out of shape, and didn’t really care much. College was much the same; working and going to school fulltime didn’t really lend itself to staying in shape (though I know better now).

After graduating college and entering the workforce, I discovered something magical: leisure time. What do I do with all this leisure time? I decided to try out a triathlon. That turned out to be a lot of fun so I did a few more. After a while it became clear that running was my favorite of the tri sports, so I took it to the next level and gave the marathon a shot. At no point was I ever a competitor in these events, in most cases I was just racing to finish. On a good day I finished middle of the pack. It didn’t matter though, I was in better shape than I had been my entire life, and I felt good most of the time (barring any long runs).

Fast forward 4 years.

Low Volume High Intensity

I credit my brother with turning me on to low volume high-intensity training. Somewhere toward the end of 2008 we both found ourselves at a loss with our typical training methods, so he started suggesting something new. Here is an example:

• Run a punching bag up a set of bleachers 5 sets at a time, as fast as you can now.
• Pull another punching bag 20 yards, run to the other end of the rope, do it again.
• Throw 10lb medicine ball as far as you can. Run to it. Throw it back.
• Do all that again 8-10 times
• Roll up in fetal position

Since I was fine with giving up on the marathoning, this training was a welcome reprieve. I had my workouts wrapped up in the span of a half an hour, and only felt terrible as long as it took me to recuperate (which at first was a lot). I began to equate it this way:

My heart beats the same number of times as it would on a long run, I just compacted it all into 20 minutes.

Not very scientific.

We continued to train this way a few days a week, usually getting together on Sundays and the occasional weekdays, all the while I kept up my normal training with long slow distance runs, rides, and swims (here after referred to as LSD training). At some point my brother mentioned his friends were doing something called Crossfit. I had never heard of it, so I checked it out online.

The Crossfit “prescription” is “constantly varied, high-intensity functional movement”. This is the first time a training methodology has ever “clicked” with me. I am not a specialist in life. At some point I will go into a lengthy article about how I learned not to be a specialist, but for now suffice it to say that finding a training methodology that gave me the freedom to synergize and NOT specialize was exactly what I had been looking for. For a detailed account of their methodology and general physical preparedness, I suggest checking out the site linked above, FAQs, and the “What is Fitness” article.

I began doing the workouts of the day on a semi regular basis in the Spring of 2009 as an experiment while still performing my typical LSD training in the triathlon sports. Having done this on my own now, I would suggest anyone moving to a program of this sort build up a moderate fitness base before jumping in (though you can scale any workout). From dabbling I discovered the following:

• The increase in strength was having a significant positive impact on an existing knee injury (Runner’s knee). This may also be attributed to running barefoot or in Vibram Five Fingers almost entirely (that’s a topic for a different post).
• The anaerobic output during the short high-intensity workouts was translating to an increased aerobic base.
• My energy levels were off the charts.

The latter was enough to make me do a significant amount of research, and dedicate the Summer of 2009 to:

The Experiment

In June of 2009 I threw out my training log and started over intending to answer the following question:

Can I supplant my LSD training regiment with high-intensity, low volume, constantly varied training while still participating in endurance sports at the same level?

The criteria for success is very simple. Measure times for swim, bike, and run sports at a designated level at periodic intervals, while training with high-intensity, low volume (hereafter HILV) workouts. I chose the following test distances:

• Run – 5k, 10K
• Swim – 3 x 300m (to get 100m average)
• Bike – 12 Mile

These distances were intentionally kept somewhat short. For one, testing each once a month at “marathon” levels would not be feasible. Secondly, each is a representation of the leg length of a Sprint Triathlon. Last, Each of these times can usually be translated into longer distances. I’m not suggesting that the act of running a 5k is physiologically the same as running a marathon, I’m just suggesting that as a unit of measure for my experiment, it seemed the most appropriate. A different experiment will test even longer distances (Winter 2010).

If my times for these tests do increase, than the experiment is technically a success. If they get better than its a huge success.

Execution

Workout 8-12 times per week.

Select 5-6 workouts from one of the sources listed below:

• Crossfit
• Optimum Performance Training
• MEBB
• Catalyst Athletics
• My brother, James.
• Make something up (keeping HILV in mind)

Perform 1-3 workouts each on the bike, swim, or run using the the same HILV methodology (Crossfit Endurance was my main source for these latter workouts, sometimes substituting old sprint and time trial workouts).

This sounds like a lot of training time, but its really not bad. Consider that these workouts usually take no more than a half-hour, doing one in the morning  and another in the afternoon on days where there are two scheduled is not as bad as it sounds. This typically totals out to a MAXIMUM of 8-10 training hours per week, but is usually more like 5 to 7.

In practice I ended up spending more time on the run (3 times a week) than the bike and swim portions (usually once maybe twice a week). I followed another “unspoken” rule of going hard for 2-3 weeks, than going soft for 1 week. I would do this regardless of my training platform.

I didn’t modify my diet or sleeping patterns in anyway in an attempt to control the experiment to some minimal degree.

The Results

On the Run

This is massive overhaul of my 5K and 10K times. In the past I almost always ran an 8 minute per mile, 24 minute 5K without fail. To see this time reduced this drastically is a huge success. Over the 5 month period in the experiment, I tested 3 times, each time shaving almost a minute from my previous personal record.

In the Water

I tested 3 times over the period, and most of my cuts were made early in the experiment (July). Some periodization may be necessary to get much faster than this, but I’m questioning the need. I’m happy with these times, and if I can eke out a few more seconds I’ll be thrilled.

On the Bike

I have yet to perform the final 12 mile test on the bike, and it’s already getting chilly out there. Look for an update on this later. As far as my training rides go, I know for certain I am moving much faster.

Other Indicators

I always dabbled with weight lifting, even during my long slow distance days. I concentrated on a few core lifts (deadlift, squat, bench press) and very rarely made strength gains. Using HILV training I made the following modifications to my lift maxes:

These are by no means impressive numbers, but they do show an significant increase in strength over the 5 month period, which isn’t bad for someone with an endurance focus. It goes without saying that in any area where I lifted frequently I improved.

Conclusion

These are preliminary results in what will be a long experiment. If I were to call this phase one then I would call this phase a success. I was able to adopt a training program that’s flexible, not overly time consuming, and that doesn’t bore the hell out of me while bettering my times in core endurance sports and increasing my strength. Will training like this make me a world-class runner, rider, swimmer or lifter? Probably not, but let’s face it, I wasn’t any of those things to begin with not did I have any intention of being.

What would I do differently?

I would change my diet slightly. I would increase my protein intake significantly. I like to get all of my nutrition from actual food, and avoid taking vitamins, supplements, or anything in “scoop” form, but have since broken down and starting incorporating a whey protein shake after workouts in an effort to recover more quickly.

I would scale the workouts more effectively to my size. At the beginning of this experiment I would do whatever the recommended weight for the workout was, and my results would always be to slog through it. About halfway through I realized that I needed to reduce the weights for timed workouts to something appropriate for my frame. I only weight 165 lbs, so a 225 lbs deadlift 21, 15, and 9 times would not be an appropriate value for a beginner/intermediate lifter.

Next Phase

I had thought about giving up marathoning early this year. I simply didn’t have the time or motivation to train like a marathoner anymore. Given that there are several people who have already applied the training methods I’m using to long distance running (up to and exceeding 100 miles), the next phase in this experiment will be an attempt to run a marathon with the training methods I’ve adopted. Stay tuned for the results.

I started using Evernote as my training log in the middle of the Summer. If you want to see what my typical schedule was, and my ongoing progress, look here:

Training Log

With Summer over I’ll be back behind the keyboard for longer periods of time, which should give me more opportunities to post. Here are a few things I have planned:

• Experiments in personal fitness, aimed primarily at testing extremely high-intensity workouts for endurance purposes
• New features for the GOLSequencer Bank and Harmonic Table
• Arduino and Microcontroller projects
• Some new music
• Peering inside of and occasionally repairing old synthesizers, stereos, and effects

My home will also very likely be an explosion of DIY home improvement, so stay tuned for a lengthy list of things NOT TO DO.

I built some speaker stands recently for the home studio. Rather than go through the trouble to add all the steps here, I just created an Instructable for it. You can find it here:

DIY Speaker Stands for Cheap

I got the original idea from these guys, but I thought they were a bit small so I scaled them up. Here is a picture of them setup in the studio:

Check out the instructable for full build details.

Between parallettes and speaker stands, many of my recent projects have included PVC pipe. I used to really struggle making perfect right angle cuts, the end of the pipe would usually end up looking like a ragged curve no matter how hard I tried to keep the line straight. With all the practice I’ve had lately, I found a method that seems to work.

A few months back I found some instructions for making parallettes that gave me helpful little tip:

Run electrical tape around the pipe so that the leading edge of the tape exactly aligns with the measured marks. Cut the pipe at the leading edge of each band of tape…Don’t cut into the tape…

I tried this for the first time when I made the parallettes and it worked terrifically. It really helps you see the line properly, and for some reason the saw has a hard time getting through the tape, so it tends to stay next to the groove created by the tape seam. Here is how it looks wrapped around the 4" PVC that I used for my speaker stands:

Additionally, if you have to cut the pipe yourself without any assistance, you can do something like the picture and clamp a 2×4 in front of the pipe, then throw a few sandbags or something heavy on top to keep it from rolling.