Oxalic acid caused kidney damage in fetal sheep and rats and disturbed the estrus cycle in rats. Increased sperm abnormalities were seen in the second generation of mice administered 0.2% oxalic acid in the drinking water.

Originally posted by FeTT
http://spamusement.com/view.php?id=139

Originally posted by kyle90
Well, mine isn't clear, but the link that was there isn't appropriate for posting on massassi.

Originally posted by Acura-C
BAD WORD HERE

don't ask
G-Man may understand what it means :p

Mixing Made Easy

Most people think mixing is complicated. It's really not. Most pros (myself included) like the fact that there's an air of mystery surrounding what we do. It makes us look smarter. It also allows us to charge more money. But, let's face it. It's not rocket science. It's really just the practical application of basic physics, a little bit of psychoacoustics, and a pinch of good taste.

The best way to learn anything is to copy the masters. Listen with headphones. Listen with nobody else around to bother you. Shut your eyes.

Take a blank piece of paper and diagram what you hear. Draw a head in the middle of the page (bird's eye view). Listen for the kick drum. Where is it? Dead center? Great -- then draw a little box near the center top of the page and write "kick drum," in it. Snare Drum? Same deal. Bass guitar? Also down the middle. Piano? Low notes in the left ear. High notes in the right. Isn't that remarkable? The piano's laid out just as if you were sitting at the keyboard. You're starting to get the idea.

Most mixers will mix their instruments from the perspective of the listener or the perspective of the player. I mix from the player's perspective. In other words, my drums are panned with the high tom on the left and the floor tom on the right.

When you shut your eyes, you should be able to visualize an aural "landscape." It's like standing near a mountain lake in Colorado. In the nearfield you would find the grass you're standing on. In the semi-nearfield you'd find the lake. In the distance, a stand of pine trees on the other side of the lake. To the far left, a patch of aspen trees. On the far right, a small row of mountains. And far beyond the lake's opposite shore, a majestic mountain range. Each of these items has a space within the landscape, and together they make up the whole picture. Mixing is just like that.

Let's take a look at an imaginary track for a pop/rock song. The kick drum, snare drum, and bass should all be down the middle, and should be the most predominant elements in the mix with the exception of the lead vocal. The bass and drums form the song's feel or groove. If they're mixed correctly, you're already half way home to a great mix.

Start with the kick drum. Adjust your mix monitor level to where you normally like to listen. Bring the kick fader up to a point where it kicks the mix bus meters (the console's stereo output) up to -3db VU. I like to work with VU, not peak meters. Peak meters are for wussies. Add a little 2.5 K for attack if you need to. Roll off a little 300HZ if the kick is a little tubby in the lower mids.

Bring up the bass guitar fader until the bass becomes a cohesive unit with the kick, and the two of them seem to hit you in the chest. Now add the snare to the mix. Bring it up to a level that rivals, but doesn't exceed the level of the kick and bass. Add a little plate or room reverb to the snare. Try a 1 second decay time for starters. Adjust to taste.

Bring up the toms and overhead tracks. Keep them panned so that the cymbals on the left side of the kit are panned to the same side of the mix as the high tom. The mid tom should appear don the middle, and the floor tom and cymbals from the right side of the kit all appear on the right. If your toms sound like cardboard boxes, try adding a little bottom, rolling off some 300-500HZ in the lower mids, and adding a little top end to give them some crack (not that kind! You've got a sick mind). I don't bother with a hi-hat most of the time. Someone once told me that it usually takes care of itself, and remarkably, it does!

Let's add the guitars next. First, the electric. Pan it almost full left. Take a short delay from the guitar and pan it almost full right, but a slightly lower volume. Your brain will tell you that you hear a big, wide guitar that appears mostly on the left side. Pan the acoustic guitar to the right. Add a little harmonizer to it. Detune it one cent. Pan it to the left. Result? A big, wide acoustic guitar that cuts through the mix, but doesn't require more volume to do it. That's the secret. By careful thought and panning, you can have a full mix that doesn't compete within itself.

Let's add the piano now. I usually pan it as if I were sitting at it, but if the guitar on the left is playing in a lower register, then I don't pan the low end of the piano there as well. They'd compete for space with each other. In this case, let's assume it's okay to pan the piano to nine o'clock for the low end and three o'clock for the high end. By using a stereo compressor set to a fast attack and slow release, you'll make the piano "tinkle" a little more on the top end, and "growl" a little more on the low end. Hence, you'll be adding another instrument, but once again, it won't fight for space.

Time to bring in the background vocals. Let's make the assumption that we have two tracks of group vocals -- three voices in each stack. Let's make them sound like the Eagles. Pan one group far left, and the other hard right. Suck out some lower mid-range to make them sound airy and angelic. See? Just like the Eagles. OOPS -- better add some stereo reverb. A nice plate sound with a 1.5 second decay ought to do it. there you go. Eagles.

And now for the big kahuna -- the lead vocal. Piece of cake. Slam it right down the middle. Make it loud. It's important. Treat it as such. This year, the pros seem to like their lead vocals dry -- so you can eschew the reverb if you'd like. If not, try a little plate or chamber on it. Again, keep it short for most types of tunes. You can also try a little delay on the lead vocal. It will make it more apparent without adding volume.

That's one of the real tricks to mixing. Making instruments easy to find in the mix, but without using volume to do it. Eq can be a huge help in that department, but it takes time to understand what eq does to individual instruments, and how it affects a whole mix when the instruments are all added together.

The mix I described above is rudimentary, but it will help you get started. Use the formula over ad over until you master it and you mix sounds great. When you can get it to sound great at the drop of a hat, then, and only then start experimenting. As with most disciplines, practice and experimentation are the keys to success.

During Michael Laskow's 20-year tenure as an engineer/producer, he worked with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Eric Clapton, Cheap Trick and countless others. He continues to write articles for magazines like Recording and Electronic Musician. He's also the founder of TAXI, an independent A&R company that links record labels with unsigned artists and songwriters.

Turning 21, a boy from Duluth Minnesota named Larshad heard stories of an amazing family tradition. It seems that his father, grandfather and great grand- father had all been able to walk on water on their 21st birthdays to the boat club across the lake for their first legal drink.
So when Lars' 21st came around, he and his pal Sven took a boat out to the middle of the lake. Lars stepped out of the boat and nearly drowned. Sven managed to pull him to safety. Furious and confused, Lars went to see his grandmother.
"Grandma," he asked, "it's my 21st birthday, so why can't I walk on water on my 21st birthday, to the boat club across the lake, like my father, his father, and his father before him?"
Granny looked into Lars' eyes and said, "Because your father, grandfather and great-grandfather were born in January, you were born in July.

Within the text of chapter nine of Hudson Smith’s “The World’s Religions”, Smith implies an argument that while the civilizations of the modern age may be technologically, materially, and intellectually more “advanced” than those who live in primal religious society, they are spiritually backwards. Smith makes an attempt to expose this through the contrast between the two religious views in the sub chapters of chapter nine his book that focus on oral, place, and time.

On the topic of oral, Smith explains why primal religions prefer oral over written form by explaining that oral is considered to be more dynamic and better suited to preserve the virtues within a myth/legend. “To commit living myth and legend to lifeless script […] would be to imprison it and sound its death knell.” (Smith 368)

As for the topic of place, the difference Smith presents is that primal religions do not have places of interest like historical religions do. Historical religions have specific places such as cities that are considered sacred such as the city of Jerusalem or the city of Mecca. For the primal religions, everything around them has spiritually importance. An example of this is presented in the second anecdote found on page 371 of Smith’s book, the example of a tribe gathering together in a ceremony for a prayer that involved naming of all the animate and inanimate objects found around them. Smith is essentially arguing that primal religions are more spiritual because of their sense of oneness with the world around them rather than giving specific places or objects their own level of importance.

For the last topic on time, Smith makes the contrast that primal religions do not believe that time is linear and progressive but believe that time is non-moving, yet objects in the world are slowly moving back to a “divine origin”. However, for something to return to its “divine source”, it has to be done manually by the people in the form of rituals and ceremonies such as the boat repairing ritual practiced by the people of Polynesian Island of Tikopia. Smith is most likely arguing here that the people of primal religions are not slaves to time but time itself, as far as divine source is a concern, is slave to them.