Frank Deis
Frank Deis
Griseus
F
F
transparency in translation
- Thread starter Joel Stewart
- Start date
Saina Nieminen
Saina Nieminen
In practical terms? I'll leave that to others, lol. I am the most impractical person ever. All I know is that translating between Finnish, English, Sumerian, Akkadian, etc. has proven possible though all languages have words and expressions that don't exist in others.
But terroir I think is a bad term to talk about because it's definition as used by wine geeks seems often to be muddled: there is AFAIK no commonly accepted definition.
-O
But terroir I think is a bad term to talk about because it's definition as used by wine geeks seems often to be muddled: there is AFAIK no commonly accepted definition.
-O
Saina Nieminen
Saina Nieminen
Terroir just seems to loaned directly from French. An easy solution to a difficult problem. I think that is quite a "clever" solution from languages like English and Finnish that borrow it.
Chris Coad
Chris Coad
Steve Guattery
Steve Guattery
I'd guess that the misuse among wine geeks stems from the use of the term "varietal wine". Grape names are used to describe both the variety and the varietal ("I'll have a glass of Chardonnay"), which helps the confusion. Does the cider industry describe their products with the same terminology? If so, I'd guess that there are cider geeks (rather than apple geeks) who refer to "apple varietals".
Bill Lundstrom
Bill Lundstrom
beautifal pictures. thanks. i know they are keene, nh, but your post is making me nostalgic. i went to high school in saxtons river. just a stunning area in foilage season.
Frank Deis
Frank Deis
Saxtons River doesn't have a public high school, Bill, so you must mean Vermont Academy. My mother in law, Helen Frey, was the school nurse there for years and my brothers in law are alumni. Makes me wonder when you went? Louise and her sister went to Bellows Falls Union High School, due to gender discrimination. Actually Helen went to V.A. before they kicked out the girls in -- what, 1933 or so?
Frank
Frank
Bill Lundstrom
Bill Lundstrom
frank- yes, i went to va. class of '81. i played hockey for jim frey.
this may be better to pursue by email. wlundstrom@wilmingtontrust.com
this may be better to pursue by email. wlundstrom@wilmingtontrust.com
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
On translatability, assuming that human beings are capable of communicating anything they think, then it will follow that any concept expressed in one language can be communicated in another. In that very limited sense, Otto is right that all ideas will be translatable. This is a far cry from saying that any given text will be translatable into a text in another language that does what the original text does. To translate even a joke whose punch line is a pun that isn't a pun in a target language, one has to explain the punch line and then the joke ceases to function as a joke and one has failed to translate (unless of course one has Chris to do one of his priceless joke explaining routines, and even then, one doesn't have the same joke).
On "varietal," the only reason for this error is because to the ear of snotty wine geeks who think that wine appreciation is some form of elevated intellectual achievement instead of an interesting indulgence, "varietal" sounds more elevated than variety (ungrammatical words having the advantage of being unusual and thus appearing to be elevated words). As I said on another board, this creates the toxic combination of a false elitism combined with real ignorance.
On "varietal," the only reason for this error is because to the ear of snotty wine geeks who think that wine appreciation is some form of elevated intellectual achievement instead of an interesting indulgence, "varietal" sounds more elevated than variety (ungrammatical words having the advantage of being unusual and thus appearing to be elevated words). As I said on another board, this creates the toxic combination of a false elitism combined with real ignorance.
Steve Edmunds
Steve Edmunds
And they say brevity is the sould of wit...:^)
Eden Mylunsch
Eden Mylunsch
Sould American?
BTW, you were all talking about Keane awhile ago. Here's one of my favorites:
-Eden ('l'art pour l'art)
Steve Edmunds
Steve Edmunds
originally posted by Eden Mylunsch:
Sould American?
BTW, you were all talking about Keane awhile ago. Here's one of my favorites:
I particularly like her use of shadows and light in this one, and the way that the eyes of the waif and the eyes of his puppy kind of follow you around the room as you move about. It's about as close to feeling autumnal as I get here on the "coast with two seasons" (mudslide and brushfire, no?)
-Eden ('l'art pour l'art)
I just got back from Italy, and I forgot how to spell. Did I mention Keane? Those new jet-lag drugs are strong!
Joel Stewart
Joel Stewart
Eden...how about "transparency" in amplifiers? I listened to a recording of my strat when i happened to be plugged into a marshall.....thought I was listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd (on a bad day, mind you). I can't deal with Marshall, esp. in a 10' X 10' sound box. Prefer the Fender twin reverb for the sound I am looking for, but it's hardly transparent...just a smooth fit. Not all amps are created equal as the vehicle for making a sound bigger. For my acoustic and my archtop guitars, if I had the dough right now, I'd put it into an Acoustic Image amp....about as "transparent" as I've ever heard. Originally designed for double bassists...and supposedly works great for e. basses as well. Gig size at 27 lbs even...clean, clean, clean. So clean, all your mistakes sound as fresh as the day you first picked up the instrument.
Taking this a ridiculous step further for the heck of it...what is the amp in winemaking? The barrel? Is there an amp in winemaking, or is it all acoustic? What is the damn instrument? Grape? Wine is the music?
Taking this a ridiculous step further for the heck of it...what is the amp in winemaking? The barrel? Is there an amp in winemaking, or is it all acoustic? What is the damn instrument? Grape? Wine is the music?
Eden Mylunsch
Eden Mylunsch
You wanna talk ridiculous? Time to get prehistoric in terms of ridiculosity (vocabulary check on aisle 4 - "riduculosity" or "ridiculousness"?) and sound and how it gets from here to your ears.
I don't think that amplifiers are necessarily transparent, and even if they were, it wouldn't make a difference. There are too many things to get in the way of the music arriving at the listener's ears sounding the same way that the musician is hearing it. Do you use tubes or transistors? What sort of cable runs between the instrument and the amp? What's the configuration of the speaker cabinets? What sort of power (tube or transistor) are you using, and do you use a pick or play with your fingers or get all Jimmy Page and use a bow?
All of these factors have an effect on the original sound, possibly (just for the sake of the argument, discussion or soliloquy we're holding here) something that we could call the terroir of the music. We might also need to factor into the equation the listener's expectations and experience, but why quibble...
Where am I going with this? Who the hell knows?
One of my first amplifier was a Walter Woods bass amp - a 150 watt high power switching amp that weighed about five pounds. I ran it through a variety of speaker cabinets, using what was appropriate for the gig. It was a very transparent amp- clean and direct, transmitted the sound of the bass (62 Jazz usually) perfectly. Then I needed something with more oomph so spent a couple of years playing through a whole bunch of different amps, all of them perfectly adequate but none of them 'right', despite at one time playing through a pair of MacIntosh 3500's. Eventually went back to a higher-wattage Woods amp and it was okay, but the transparency was beginning to bug me. In the studio I'd record directly into the console, and that sense of immediacy and being able to feel the sound was what I really wanted to get out of an amp for live performances. I eventually wound up trying an Aguilar DB359 and THAT was the bass sound I'd always heard in my head (I hear they can treat this now). 200 watts (4 6550 power tubes) and the thing weighs 50+ pounds but it sound so right that it's worth dragging it out to gigs. When I play live these days, from where I stand on stage, my bass sounds the way I think it's supposed to sound. I make it sound good to MY ears and if anyone else has problems with that, they'll tell me, and I'll either turn it down (the usual request) or change the tone settings so the glasses are vibrating off the table, or I'll tell them to sit the fuck down and listen, because I'm an artiste, man.
Is it a transparent amplification? Maybe, because it sounds good regardless of which bass I play through it. The only thing that matters is that it sounds good TO ME, and if that purity of sound encompasses strings rattling across uneven frets, crackly volume pots, or occasionally overdriving the preamp, well, that's just music. The people dancing and drinking and singing along don't much care about the technical stuff, but it's important that I'm laying down parts that make the drummer smile and make it easier for the singer to sing and the guitarist to go dweedle-dweedle-noodle-dweedle, knowing that I'm holding things together. So maybe I'm creating my own musical terroir as I go along, seeing as how music can change according to mood, location, phases of the moon etc...
Sound familiar?
So, let's remove ourselves from bassland and replace the above-mentioned examples with wine crap, and if take a winemaker, well then it would be the sort of winemaker who'd spent a lot of years making wine commercially (but doing it really well, like say a David Vergari or Peter Mathis) who finally had the chance to do make the wines they wanted, the way that they wanted. They're likely to stray only as far from their foundation of knowledge as they have to in order to achieve the wine they've always wanted to make, and sometimes it isn't what others might consider "pure" or "transparent". But this wine contains the sensory triggers that they've always wanted to convey in wine but weren't allowed to. Their skills won't allow them to make any bonehead mistakes (well, most of the time they won't), but they'll be making wine on your own terms. The fan base for these wines will hear about them somewhere and these anti-cult winemakers (ala Steve Edmunds, Mike Dashe, Randall Grahm, et al) may not be living in a palace at the top of a hill in Calistoga, but people will enjoy the wines and the winemakers will be respected on their own terms.
So perhaps it's like "The Wizard of Oz" and we're all just dreaming and that the important stuff is intracranial in nature. All the cultural critics would be out of work if this were true, because everyone would be able to find enjoyment in what they liked, not what they were supposed to like, no?
So maybe there isn't an actual amp analogy in winemaking, but perhaps the entire concept isn't about the conduit of transmission and production, but in our heads. We hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. Uh, I think someone already sang that. How about you can't please everyone, so you gotta please yourself? Hmmm, maybe that's been used before too. Oh well, in reality, the sound is in the hands and head and heart. Technology helps, but is only really important if you're a salesperson at Guitar Center. With wine, I suspect that a great winemaker could make palatable Pruno where they ever to end up in prison.
-Eden (not sure if any of this makes sense at all, and I can't even blame it on the 2001 Robt Weil Kiedrich Grfenburg Sptlese I'm drinking because it's only 8% alcohol and I've had only one glass)(it's pretty damn transparent though, particularly if you like drinking sweetish apple juice - it's like I've been magically transported to Vermont in the fall....wheeeeee!!)
I don't think that amplifiers are necessarily transparent, and even if they were, it wouldn't make a difference. There are too many things to get in the way of the music arriving at the listener's ears sounding the same way that the musician is hearing it. Do you use tubes or transistors? What sort of cable runs between the instrument and the amp? What's the configuration of the speaker cabinets? What sort of power (tube or transistor) are you using, and do you use a pick or play with your fingers or get all Jimmy Page and use a bow?
All of these factors have an effect on the original sound, possibly (just for the sake of the argument, discussion or soliloquy we're holding here) something that we could call the terroir of the music. We might also need to factor into the equation the listener's expectations and experience, but why quibble...
Where am I going with this? Who the hell knows?
One of my first amplifier was a Walter Woods bass amp - a 150 watt high power switching amp that weighed about five pounds. I ran it through a variety of speaker cabinets, using what was appropriate for the gig. It was a very transparent amp- clean and direct, transmitted the sound of the bass (62 Jazz usually) perfectly. Then I needed something with more oomph so spent a couple of years playing through a whole bunch of different amps, all of them perfectly adequate but none of them 'right', despite at one time playing through a pair of MacIntosh 3500's. Eventually went back to a higher-wattage Woods amp and it was okay, but the transparency was beginning to bug me. In the studio I'd record directly into the console, and that sense of immediacy and being able to feel the sound was what I really wanted to get out of an amp for live performances. I eventually wound up trying an Aguilar DB359 and THAT was the bass sound I'd always heard in my head (I hear they can treat this now). 200 watts (4 6550 power tubes) and the thing weighs 50+ pounds but it sound so right that it's worth dragging it out to gigs. When I play live these days, from where I stand on stage, my bass sounds the way I think it's supposed to sound. I make it sound good to MY ears and if anyone else has problems with that, they'll tell me, and I'll either turn it down (the usual request) or change the tone settings so the glasses are vibrating off the table, or I'll tell them to sit the fuck down and listen, because I'm an artiste, man.
Is it a transparent amplification? Maybe, because it sounds good regardless of which bass I play through it. The only thing that matters is that it sounds good TO ME, and if that purity of sound encompasses strings rattling across uneven frets, crackly volume pots, or occasionally overdriving the preamp, well, that's just music. The people dancing and drinking and singing along don't much care about the technical stuff, but it's important that I'm laying down parts that make the drummer smile and make it easier for the singer to sing and the guitarist to go dweedle-dweedle-noodle-dweedle, knowing that I'm holding things together. So maybe I'm creating my own musical terroir as I go along, seeing as how music can change according to mood, location, phases of the moon etc...
Sound familiar?
So, let's remove ourselves from bassland and replace the above-mentioned examples with wine crap, and if take a winemaker, well then it would be the sort of winemaker who'd spent a lot of years making wine commercially (but doing it really well, like say a David Vergari or Peter Mathis) who finally had the chance to do make the wines they wanted, the way that they wanted. They're likely to stray only as far from their foundation of knowledge as they have to in order to achieve the wine they've always wanted to make, and sometimes it isn't what others might consider "pure" or "transparent". But this wine contains the sensory triggers that they've always wanted to convey in wine but weren't allowed to. Their skills won't allow them to make any bonehead mistakes (well, most of the time they won't), but they'll be making wine on your own terms. The fan base for these wines will hear about them somewhere and these anti-cult winemakers (ala Steve Edmunds, Mike Dashe, Randall Grahm, et al) may not be living in a palace at the top of a hill in Calistoga, but people will enjoy the wines and the winemakers will be respected on their own terms.
So perhaps it's like "The Wizard of Oz" and we're all just dreaming and that the important stuff is intracranial in nature. All the cultural critics would be out of work if this were true, because everyone would be able to find enjoyment in what they liked, not what they were supposed to like, no?
So maybe there isn't an actual amp analogy in winemaking, but perhaps the entire concept isn't about the conduit of transmission and production, but in our heads. We hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. Uh, I think someone already sang that. How about you can't please everyone, so you gotta please yourself? Hmmm, maybe that's been used before too. Oh well, in reality, the sound is in the hands and head and heart. Technology helps, but is only really important if you're a salesperson at Guitar Center. With wine, I suspect that a great winemaker could make palatable Pruno where they ever to end up in prison.
-Eden (not sure if any of this makes sense at all, and I can't even blame it on the 2001 Robt Weil Kiedrich Grfenburg Sptlese I'm drinking because it's only 8% alcohol and I've had only one glass)(it's pretty damn transparent though, particularly if you like drinking sweetish apple juice - it's like I've been magically transported to Vermont in the fall....wheeeeee!!)
Joel Stewart
Joel Stewart
Eden: now that's some serious biodynamic feedback emitting from your bass amp tales....or maybe it's bio-feedback?.....(if it's in my head and coming out of my amp at the same time, is the moon full and the cow horn buried?) A twisty road to be sure....but as long as the drummer's grinning, who cares? At least your riesling proved to me that transparency in winemaking is no longer a myth...just sometimes slightly green tinted...
Whoa! Did I take a left turn and end up at the Asylum? Your rant reminds me of those "audiophiles" I used to hang out with who preached the gospel of flat response in speakers, tweaking the balance of their six-way crossovers and installing subwoofers to get that fabled flat 20-20k Hz. Then they'd put fucking Jethro Tull on the stereo. WTF? You need to hear sixth harmonics of Ian Anderson? (well, I guess fans of feedback might see a benefit). Of course, I still own a pair of Dahlquist DQ-10s, so I have no room to talk -- but I can justify that with my Yma Sumac collection, surely.
Mark Lipton