Another Dream Comes True Tonight

Today, another life-long dream comes true for me again. A dream that was born in my teenage years, when I heard Pink Floyd for the first time, at the exact moment when David Gilmour plays one of the most iconic guitar solos in the history of rock ‘n roll; Comfortably Numb. My dream of seeing the legend play live will come true tonight.
Hello Toronto! If any of you are going to the show as well and happen to see me, come say hi 🙂
-Shant

Stay Safe Belgium and Turkey

In light of the disgusting events unfolding in ‪‎Belgium‬ today, ‪Turkey‬ last week and ‪‎France‬ last year, I fail to see the future of humanity. There are still cults lurking within us, waiting for the moment to demonstrate hate, induce fear and commit heinous crimes in the name of nothing but fairy tales and ridiculous beliefs.

If we; the civilized society, do not take a step towards the right direction, we will be the ones who keep paying the price.
This is a call for all of us to do all we can, to educate the ignorant and get rid of all make-believe ideologies.

I hope you guys are all safe.

-Shant

Basement Home Studio Update 4 (and Final)

Ladies and gentlemen, this will be the final basement update, as my new home studio is now ready.

If you have missed previous updates, you can find them here:
Basement Home Studio Update 1
Basement Home Studio Update 2
Basement Home Studio Update 3

We continued building “The Wall”. I didn’t realize it takes so much time and effort to finish it, specially in spare time.
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The workstation desk and the rest of the furniture, in-wall cabinet etc… arrived late January, and they started installing them.IMG_0392

At this point, the brick wall was not fully done yet, waiting for the desk to be mounted first, and then ready to be built around it.IMG_0393

After the desk was mounted we made some good progress building the brick wall again. Can’t wait for the damned thing to be done already, we ran short on bricks having one full box of broken ones, but the store was nice enough to replace it.
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We had more problems, the measurements for both cabinets were a bit off, and the problem was they were bigger than what was in the plan. The bottom one got sorted out by cutting a bit from the top part. But for the upper cabinet to fit in we had to break the wall. Luckily the painter was available next day to come and fix it again.

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Meanwhile I made some picture frames for decoration, but these are not just decorative frames. There’s a twist, they are actually acoustic panels. There’s a 2 inch padding inside the frame that works very well for sound absorption.

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I mounted these sexy looking custom wall plates that’s going to hide all the cables inside the wall. No hanging cables, no mess, no distractions, and a nice clean look. I’m loving them.IMG_0422

I started placing the equipment in their pre-assigned locations and you can see part of my music collection already loaded in the lower cabinet. Anneke’s picture frame is mounted on two sliding tracks that hide all the equipment for a cleaner look.
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And there you have it. I have waited for this moment for a very long time.
I can finally say my new home studio is complete (almost) … There’s always something missing, well it’s important too. A guitar AMP!

The screen and speakers are all wall-mounted, I had a hard time finding a fixed computer monitor wall mount for my new Samsung screen, since it has this square opening in the back, but the vesa mount that I bought from Amazon, was 2mm larger so it did not fit in the opening. I put my hammering skills to the test (on the bracket, not the monitor) but that failed. So I had to improvise with load of washers. I got it to work in the end. Now I have 100% of the space on the desk.

That keyboard drawer is also something the factory custom built for me based on my genius ideas. I wanted the drawer to go all the way back when pushed in, so my knees do not hit it when I’m sitting down on a normal computer chair. There are no sliders that extend two times over their size, so my idea was to mount two tracks on each other to have double extension. It worked very well.

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I hang my babies on this wall when they are resting. Worry not, I already have a humidifier that takes care of the guitar wood, and the electrical fireplace does not generate a lot of heat anyway. Plus the heater is located under the fireplace. I also have a heating and humidity level monitor, so everything is under control.

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All that’s missing now is the new amp that I’m planning to get very soon, I’m leaning towards the Mesa Boogies but I haven’t decided on the model yet. I’ll update you with some pictures and maybe a video when I get my hand on it.

I have to say, if you were reading this far, thank you. And I hope these post are insightful.

I will post more pictures on Instagram in the coming days, follow me at @semanticsat

-Shant

 

Gilmour Turns 70

To me, David Gilmour is not just a member of the legendary band Pink Floyd, he is an idol, he is a teacher, he is a master of his art, he is a magician, he is a painter, a piper, a shining crazy diamond.
Without this man, I wouldn’t be playing music today.
Today is my mentor’s 70th birthday. Happy birthday sir.

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