Practice Session #24

Thanks for checking out my show notes! I’ll be utilizing this to clarify and elaborate on points that I didn’t convey as well as I would’ve liked to. I’ll also provide links to further information and resources.

We record these weekly sessions on Sundays. Please note that I try to publish episodes the day after recording: Mondays. I generally will have the transcript and initial notes published on Mondays as well. From there, I may continue adding and modifying the show notes throughout the week.

I’ll be interspersing all my notes with the transcription from the audio, which will be displayed like this:

Intro.

CK: Okay, so everything’s going? You see the waveform?

Pam: It’s pink and there’s a waveform.

CK: Sweet. I say we just go,

Pam: Okay.

CK: Okay. You ready?

Pam: I’m ready.

CK: Alright, here we go.

Heyo! I’m CK and you’re listening to Practice. I’m your functional systems integrator, and this is my podcast where practice is not just the theme of the show, but the whole purpose behind it. I’m using this platform to practice podcasting as well as speaking in general while espousing half thoughts and providing unsolicited advice.

As always, I’m fortunate to be joined by my practice partner and partner in life, Pam.

Pam: Hey, that’s me.

CK: Pam is also my pattern awareness manager, and every week we talk about my progress with this practice, along with other lifestyle practices, as well as theories and ideas behind the virtues of practice itself.

Our conversations are unscripted and unedited… unedited… unedited-ed-ed.

So that’s all going to be unedited.

We’re really doing this on the fly, so don’t hold me responsible for what I say here. Make sure to check out my show notes where I’ll provide some fact-checking, self-psychoanalysis and commentary on things I could have done better.

You may find this and more information about this project ForcesOfEqual.com/Practice.

Today we are recording on August 9th, 2020. This is our 24th practice session. I am totally not up to date with my sessions here. I think it’s the 24th. I’m pretty sure I could be around. So check the show notes if you’re really curious.

Pam: If you’re into numerology or something.

CK: Yeah. So let’s go ahead and check with checking with ourselves physically and mentally. Do you want to start?

Pam: Um, sure. Um, uh, as always a little bit tired today because we do this on Sunday, which is my run day. It did two and a half miles this morning and I’m working on some form. Um, adjustments to improve a hip flexor issue that I have. So my run was a little bit harder than usual, but I just checked my pacing and I actually did the first two miles in almost exactly the same amount of time, which is good, cause I’m really working on pacing myself.

So, um, that was good. And then, um, yeah, had a good week. I feel, even though it was the first week of the month, which was a huge accomplishment for me because his first week of the month is always really crazy with reports and invoicing and all of the client stuff that goes on. Monthly, but I’ve been working on mindset shifts to make it less stressful for me, because I tie my worth to the results that I get from my clients.

CK: Nice sounds good. And maybe we’ll get into that a little more. So for me physically, I am not in the greatest of places with my foot. So I’m still dealing with that issue. I believe I suffered two weeks ago now out on the trails and my foot hasn’t gotten any better. Are you going to say something? I don’t think it’s been that long.

Pam: I’ve done three solo runs, but you did it on a Friday. So this is the third Sunday.

CK: right. So yeah, third, Sunday, but two weeks. So yeah, the one off rule, I don’t know if we want to get into that to get an in attendance already, but yeah, my foot, something is wrong and I am on the verge of. Going in to get x-rays so, yeah, something’s not right. I can’t put my full weight on it yet. And I’m starting to get a little antsy in terms of what to do with it.

Because the, at the let’s see what was that two weeks ago, the first week after I injured it, I still kept moving around and still walking, not necessarily as mobile as I was regularly, but still moving around and still trying to stay active. And then after not seeing any progress for the last week, I.

Pretty much stopped moving other than going downstairs to put my bare feet on the grass and getting some sunlight. I haven’t been moving very much other than some body weight movements and exercises. Of course, that don’t really involve too much foot mobilization. But yeah, I haven’t really moved very much over the past weekend.

It’s still hasn’t gotten any better. Like maybe some swelling has gone down, so. If it’s, if there was any like fascial or muscular or tissue issues, I think those have kind of subsided and made way to the pain that I’m feeling, which seems more structural. So, yeah, I’m not sure I might be going in. For x-rays this week.

So yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to stay on my feet and continue putting pressure on it if there is some sort of break. So it’d be nice to know that, to take the proper course of action moving forward. So yeah. That’s yeah, with that, I’m. Mentally. Okay. It’s been quite a week. There’s been a lot of ups and downs, but I’ve been very productive.

So I’ve been, yeah, I’m making a lot of progress and I’m also working on my mindset and. Staying in the moment and still thinking in terms of being in the sweet spot of that momentum wave. And so, yeah, I’m taking things as they are in realizing that sometimes, you know, it just is what it is. And just because you’re not hitting milestones or you’re not reaching the goals that you’re.

That you set out for there’s progress being made. And so, as long as there’s forward progress, that’s good. And I can live with that. And I, and I mean, if we’re just talking about forward progress, I’ve been making a lot of that and I’ve been smelling, celebrating, smelling braiding. I’ve been celebrating a lot of smaller wins.

So maybe in terms of goals, kind of breaking things down into more micro goals, per se, we just recorded a session of not bad advice earlier. And we were talking about micro budgets. And so on a related note, I’ve been accomplishing more micro goals and celebrating those. In terms of moving forward in my progress with all this stuff.

So, yeah, I think my physical issues with my foot has also been affected, affecting my mental status, especially since I can’t do my activities outside that I normally do. Of course I can still go outside, but it’s one thing just to stand there in the sun. Versus running and feeling the wind on my face or going to the beach and feeling the ocean breeze and stuff like that.

So I think that’s getting to me a little bit, so I’ll have to figure out some things to mitigate that and engage with nature a little bit more and find some. Madonna leaves to exercise my mind and get that mind space that I’ve been enjoying with my beach days and my trail days that I haven’t been able to enjoy lately.

Pam: We’re just going to the doctor and get your foot fix.

CK: Yeah. I think that is probably the next step. Yeah.

Pam: I will, I will say that you have been handling this a whole lot better than you would have if it had, had, had happened to you even six or nine months ago, you have not been grumpy and you have not been short tempered and moody, like you used to get when you were injured or when things didn’t really go according to plan that was, I mean, I mean, that’s a big issue for anybody, but.

With your, um, your desire to get a lot done. And you’re like constant, like feeling of, of how much there is possible. Um, when you are held back by physical limitations, you get extremely moody haven’t been through this, which has been really impressive to see. Cause I think I would be.

CK: Yeah. Thanks for that. I mean, you’ve been dealing with your own physical, physical elements too. So,

Pam: Yeah, nothing like a potentially broken toe, but.

CK: yeah. Yeah, it is really a I’m kind of nervous. It really doesn’t feel right. So, um, uh, I have that optimism bias, um, working against that and, you know, there’s that little voice in the back of my mind saying, you know, it might, it might not be anything.

You just get a, just get a ride it out, but then. There’s that rational brain that says, just get a check done and find out for sure. So, yeah, I’m also, I’ve also been noticing that I become a lot more mindful and I’ve been a lot better at inserting that space between emotion and reaction. And so there was an instance.

This past week, a day or two ago where I did lash out and I lost that mindfulness, but even so it was, wasn’t nearly as bad as I would have gotten in the mood I would have gotten into before. But yeah, I mean this whole past week, the past three weeks, I’ve still been. Dealing with troubleshooting. And we’re talking about software when it comes to audio editing and music production, and even hardware with the computer, with my desktop, computer and music production equipment.

And. It’s a lot of, I mean, I can’t even count how many times I’ve restarted my computer and re rebooted all this different hardware. And so it’s a lot of waiting and a lot of doing the same things over and over again, but I’ve been able to stay in the present moment in really stay in the moment and enjoy the process in the moment.

Instead of getting into that thought cycle of man, you know, I can’t this just work in, you know, I guess what I tend to think is why does this just work for everybody else? When you know, I have no idea if it does or not. And other people could be going through the same issues or even worse. And you know, other people may have gone.

Through issues that weren’t even as me nearly as complicated and just quit. So, you know, there’s all these different scenarios and it all goes into complex systems and spectral potentiality. And also, I mean, it also crosses over into mindset and empathy and theory of mind. And so if you know about all these concepts, you can realize that.

You’re thinking irrationally, whenever something frustrated comes up and you get emotional about it. So it, that’s why it’s so great to be aware of these concepts in the first place, and then have a practice where you can maintain awareness of them and build up your awareness and your. Practice with them or your ability to incorporate them into your life somehow.

Pam: I think that’s the key is the ability to incorporate them because people think like, Oh, you learn how to be mindful. And then all of a sudden everything is different and it’s absolutely not that you know, you and I have both been on this kind of journey of learning about. All of this for years now. And it’s like incremental change.

You, you realize something about yourself for you, um, practice changing how you respond over and over and over again, you get a little bit better at it, and then you slide and you get a little bit better at it. And it takes a long time to develop that ability to like see yourself and see how you’re reacting and why you’re reacting that way.

And, and then to actually be able to do something about it.

CK: Yeah, totally. And that’s the thing, that’s the thing why Pam and I are getting so much into coaching these days, because with a lot of these self-improvement programs that they just kind of lay out everything in front of you, or there’s a certain methodology or framework that they use. And it’s just that it’s just there and you’re expected to get from zero to that goal somehow.

And there’s not a lot of in between that are, that, that you’re taking through or that you’re help through, or that maybe these practitioners even understand in terms of behavior and habit formation. So, yeah, there’s a lot of that. And I don’t know, it’s hard to say because I don’t really participate in the mainstream too much, but it seems like there’s this notion coming around in terms of evolved thinking and habit formation and cognitive sciences or behavioral sciences, um, would you agree, like, is there more of that starting to come out?

Pam: I think so. I think that that’s a double edged sword though, because there is a lot of good information available and a lot of people talking about it, but then there’s also a lot of like bros that are pretending to be enlightened. Cause they. I read one book.

CK: Yeah. That’s a great point too, because you see a lot of those articles with the title bait, you know, do these three things and. Reach all your goals or whatnot with no nuance or no understanding of complex systems or individual differences, so,

Pam: everything. I mean, you see that with diet and fitness it’s, you know, anything that happens. So the caveat there is to just be mindful of the information that you’re consuming and where it’s coming from.

CK: right. Yeah. I mean, it’s tough to discern with. The preponderance of information coming out. So where are you going to do whatever we can to continue spreading awareness of evidence based practices and take it from there and continue working on ourselves and trying to help others. So I guess we can move on and start.

Into our segments. So I’ll go ahead and get into our first segment that we always get into. And this is the podcasting segment where I talk about my process of this practice of podcasting, and I’ve already been discussing my mindset and all the troubleshooting I’ve had to do. But on a good note, excuse me. I did. Uh, okay. So actually this is. The spot where I talk about my supplementation. So go ahead and do that. I took my regular supplements today and I did take my honey, but. My voice is cracking a little bit, so I’m not sure what’s going on. Didn’t do as much vocal exercises prepare. Cause we’re yeah, we’re doing this later in the day.

I was, I’ve been messing around with it. Are set up a little bit this week. So we recorded our episode of not bad advice during our regular time. And then I wanted to change some things up for practice, to test and experiment with some things. So hopefully you guys will get to it. You’re this episode and Oh, the audio comes out.

Okay. So we’re using a different. Digital audio workstation or DAW or duh, I still don’t know. I don’t refer to it yet. I’m thinking, duh, duh, but I don’t know. Even I see people on YouTube say at least two or three versions every time they say it. So anyway, before we were using idea city, which is a free open staff DAW or de.

And it was fine for what we needed it for, but we ran into some issues with it here and there. And I, my original intention was never to stick with it. It was just to use it, to get started up with, and I think we actually started out with squad cast the online, yeah, the cloud app. So then we went through our destiny and now we’re using Ableton and Ableton is geared more towards electronic music production and they have, their workflow is align a lot more towards that.

But. They have, I mean, it’s, it’s a recording software, so you can record anything you want with it. And since I’ve been getting familiar with it through the music side, I was thinking that I would like to use that for podcasting as well. But then as I started looking into the DWS, I started looking into pro tools and I started researching that and saw that it was pretty much the industry standard when it.

Came to audio editing and especially video editing, which is something we’re also looking into getting into. And so I figured, you know, it fits this standard and, you know, looking longterm, what would be the best way to go. Um, in that dimension, the courses that I’ve been taking through Coursera and Berkeley college of music, they have these specializations.

So it’s a bundle of courses and some of the courses will overlap across the different bundles depending on the specialization. But there’s one for like general music production, which use. The pro tools interface, and then the electronic music production bundle happened to use the Ableton interface. So I was going through the electronic music production specialization.

And then when I started looking into pro tools and saw that they also had a pro tools course in the other specialization, I started going through that course as well. So I pretty much learn the basics of both. DWS and pro tools was going great until I reached the limit of their free offering. And then everything just went to crap and I couldn’t, I couldn’t do anything so their free offering, you can only say save.

You are projects into their cloud system. You can’t save it locally on your computer. And so once you reach that limit, you you’re, you have to upgrade. So I was doing, trying to deal with that and figure that out. And then. I started getting frustrated with that, because since you couldn’t say locally, you also had to wait for the software to load everything into the cloud.

So there was a lag in the software and I’m not sure, sure. If this is exactly the situation that I was experiencing, but I have a pretty good background of. Technology and software. So in, uh, and, and in terms of web development, not actual software development or anything think like that, but I, but in terms of like a general lay person, I have a pretty good technical background.

And so I think, you know, that’s what the issue was. So I got turned off at pro tools because of that. And then started looking back into Ableton and started realizing that I could. Do what I want to do and Ableton. And the other thing is that I’ve been playing with these other plugins for shaping our vocal quality and taking out noise.

And other different artifacts and just improving the quality of the audio signal and, or not the signal, but the output. And so I was starting to get used to you using these plugins in pro tools and. Started having a really fun time, manipulating audio with them. Like these plugins are awesome. They’re so powerful.

And once I started wrapping my head around them a little more, I’ll talk about them more and link to them, show notes. But I found out that I can use them the same way away in Ableton and started configuring, able to infer that. And so I got able to know configured and then started running into issues with Ableton.

And started looking into the forums and saw there’s issues. Some people had issues with like the graphic quality, so the GUI or the graphic user interface, and which is. Just perplexing to me. So one of the major issues or typical issues when people run into this kind of thing, seem to be, seem to have to do with the refresh rate, which is how fast your monitor refreshes the picture, basically, which I don’t understand why that would affect the audio and audio software.

Other than the, obviously there must be some bug in Ableton’s graphic user interface. So it’s all these weird problems like that. And that one’s a known issue. So, and that’s just one that I’m talking about. So there’s, there’s issues like that, that I’ve been dealing with. But hopefully I think I have Ableton figured out now and Pam, it seems like it’s running fine on your laptop so far.

Pam: So far, it feels like it’s, um, my computer’s running a little bit harder

CK: Oh, yeah.

Pam: than it did with audacity. Like I can hear the fan. Um,

CK: So,

Pam: it seems good.

CK: yeah. And that could be because Pam is also, do you sing a new mic or we actually both have new mikes that we’re testing out right now. And so I’m using, what’s called the neat King bee, and this is a cardioid condenser microphone. And it’s the same type of microphone in terms of condenser versus dynamic that I was talking about either last week or the week before.

So the mix that we were using before were the blue Yetis, which are condenser microphones. And so this neat can be as also a condenser microphone and. It has gotten a lot of great reviews and I’ve been listening to a lot of different mix on YouTube reviews. And I really like how this one sounds and how I think it sounds from my voice.

So testing it out for this episode and we’ll see how it comes out.

Pam: It also matches your burning man bike.

CK: Oh yeah, that’s right. It also matches my parsley tank top.

And Tam is using a sure. S M B SM seven B. And this is a dynamic microphone and this is a very popular podcasting and broadcasting microphone. It’s one of the. Industry standards between the Shure SM seven B and the electro voice, R E 20. I believe it’s called those two tend to be there. Industry standard industry standard.

You feel about those two mix a lot and. The Shure SM seven B, which is what Pam is using right now is used by podcasts was like Joe Rogan and a lot of the popular podcasts. There’s pretty much most of them. I would say if you were, if you had to guess it would probably be the Shure SM seven B, and I’m really excited about that because I feel like the way that I hear Pam’s voice as I’ve been editing it throughout the weeks, I feel like the Shure SM seven B.

Would sound really good would make her voice sound really good. And I, the word that I, that pops into my head is buttery for some reason. Yeah. And that’s for both of our voices on the shirt, SM seven B or anybody’s voice, I guess. And it’s whatever quality it is, it just comes out so smoothly. And it sounds so.

I just like how it sounds and with how Penn’s voice comes out. I think it’ll be really good. So I’m excited to hear that during the post process.

Pam: different, but I feel really cool using it. I feel like a pro so

CK: Oh yeah,

Pam: yeah, it definitely, it looks bury like what you see. You know, real pod-casters using. So yeah, I feel very professional now with a mattress behind me and dog next to me. I feel very professional.

CK: Oh, yeah. We’re dog sitting this weekend. You have a little bow. Yeah, it’s a good dog. We like him. And yeah, it doesn’t really make noise unless there’s someone coming in the door. So Pan’s also using an audio interface. So I’ve been, I’ve been waiting for an audio interface. Because I feel like that’s one of the sticking points or bottlenecks with the production audio production that I’ve been doing.

I’ve been going off of my son card on the computer and I’ve been running into a lot of issues with that. So I finally picked up an audio interface last week and I had. It ordered and I’ve been waiting over a month and I ended up finding it at the store down the street. So I just went and picked it up.

And it’s the mode two and four. And this thing is awesome. And well, it’s awesome. So far. I haven’t gone through all my testing with it yet. So I’ll leave my full review of it until later. But if you look at reviews on it on YouTube, there’s the mode two and two, and the mode two and four, I got the end four, which has four inputs and for outputs, because of all the music production equipment that I’m using.

But the more two on two seems to be like the. Best entry level audio interface. Right now, it seems to have taken over, taking the throne from the focus Scarlet solo or the actually focused , which would be the equivalent. So if you want to look into that and audio interfaces, I would highly recommend getting the audio interface.

If you’re going to be doing. Podcasting or any kind of audio work semi even semi seriously, because dealing with just the sound card, you can run into a lot of issues in terms of the processing speed and the latency and the amount of, um, Pressure that you put on your system. So, you know, having the audio interface externally takes some of the load off of the system and it has its own sound card, which are, which is built for audio or, you know, more advanced audio usage rather than standard computer audio.

So, yeah, that’s something that I’m touring around with now. And. Pam’s audio interface. What we’re using right now is a zoom. I think it’s the zoom H six, so it can have a total of six ins and maybe six outs. And it’s actually not an audio interface. It’s not primarily an audio interface. It’s primarily. A recorder like a field recording device.

And it’s really cool. I’ve been looking at this for awhile for recording out in the field where, for instance, when we recorded with my parents a month or so back, we took Pam’s laptop and we took one of our blue Yetis and recorded with that. But with the zoom H six, you can just take that you don’t need a computer or anything.

It just records everything under there. And it has it’s own Mike hookups and everything, or you could also plug in higher quality mix or even these mikes that we’re using now, it has the XLR inputs and it has a lot of great features in terms of backing up audio and saving audio onto its own SD card and, and the way we’re using it now, it’s Pan’s audio interface.

It can be as, as debt. And it has up to six inputs if there’s four inputs on board and then plus the microphone attachment that it can, that you can attach to it. And on that attachment, there’s a, also another input, like a eight inch stereo input or something like that. So there’s six. Total inputs. And you can use it as an audio interface, which is what we’re doing now.

So it’s very, first of all, and a lot of people don’t really use it as an audio interface or the it’s, it’s not really touted as an audio interface, but I’ve seen some tests that tested it against the focus rate, Scarlet that I just mentioned that is. The competitor to the M series that I’m using right now.

So it seems to be a pretty good value and very versatile for what it is. So we’re experimenting with that and I’m not sure. What we’re going to do with it. If we’re going to keep that, or, you know, how are we going to move forward with all this different stuff? Because there’s so many configurations and so many options, and maybe even through this testing we’re doing today, we might find something out.

That’ll help make our decision. So doing a lot of testing on that front. So yeah, I guess we’re talking or I’m talking a lot about podcasting. Today. And so we’re already over half an hour, right. So let’s see. Do you want to get a word in? Do you have anything else you want to talk about?

Pam: I think so I’m, I’m pretty beat. So, um, my brain’s not doing very well right now. Okay.

CK: Yeah. Let’s get to church relaxing for the rest of our weekend and ended here for now, then. But, yeah. So thank you everybody for listening this week and I’m going to continue experimenting with some stuff. There’s the studios kind of a mess right now. There’s microphones all over the place and I wanted to get a set up to like, kind of.

Do a little microphone shootout, but there’s a little more logistically that goes into it. So, you know, be doing that throughout this week and testing some microphones. But I think that we may end up with these two that we have right now. And that’s my prediction. But we’ll see. So yeah, we’ll go with that for now.

And before we leave off Pam, where can people hit you up?

Pam: You can find me on Twitter, where I am at Pamela underscore Lund.

CK: and you might be able to find me on Twitter at CK disco. And man, I really like how that sounds. I hope it comes through.

Pam: I’m going to get into ASM are doing it though. Not listening to it. Cause it creeps me out.

CK: Huh. All right. Well, maybe we’ll have some of that in the future to look forward to. I know I keep talking, but, okay. So thanks for joining us this week, and I hope you come back next week and keep on practicing to Lou