[sdiy] Spouse Gating

[Scott Stites]

Congratulations Ryan; not married yet, but you have already been introduced to the concept of 'wife gating'.  This is a term Larry Hendry and I coined a while back through an email exchange.  To be fair, the term should be changed to spouse gating, to cover that .01% of husbands who have wives that are into Synth DIY.

The concept is this:  you are the envelope generator, your wife is the VCA, or low pass filter, or low pass gate, depending on her personality.  If she's a bandpass filter, you may be in real trouble, depending on her Q.

Anyway, the idea is favors, money, attention, repairs around the house, etc. replace voltage as the medium of control. The goal is that you generate a long, sustained, life-long note.  You apply the bias ("Here honey, I thought you'd like this new set of diamond earrings" or (to be fair) "Oh look honey, here's a special on chrome wheels for that lovely hopped up and still-not-too-rusty 1980 Toyota pickup of yours").  This opens up the spouse gate, and lets the signal (IE parts purchases, junky rooms, weird noises, etc.) pass through unattenuated.

Some people don't quite get the hang of spouse gating.  They're like Morton Subotnick on a Pixie-Stix(TM) binge and fire off a series of rapid, short blips of bias.  Not good.  You wind up with only brief periods of contiguous Synth DIY time, and forget that Batz room.  You want a nice, flowing Tomita attack with a very high sustain and infinite decay.  This keeps the good stuff coming.  Until of course, the electric company (read credit card company) pulls the plug on both the EG *and* VCA.  So be careful about that.

A real-life example of spouse gating:  My wife has been on an extended return home to VN.  She took X amount of dollars with her.  Vietnam is still a fairly inexpensive place to be (it's getting more expensive) but she took plenty of dough.  I get a call the other day..."Honey, I'm out of money can you send me some?".  That's the trigger.  I could have easily inverted the envelope by exclaiming "What??!!!"  (that's all it takes, you know), but sweetly it was "How much and when, honey?".  This will allow the ex-post-facto purchases I've made in her absence pass through, though maybe still with a bit of high end clipping.

Cheers,
Scott


> I'm not married yet, but my fiancee has told me that I can have a room of
> music/electronic stuff (the basement, I'm guessing) if she can have a room
> dedicated to shoes.  See, it's all about compromise. ;)
> 
> Ryan
> 
> > Definitely!  Just curious about something though... something that
> > some other bachelors are perhaps also wondering about: Those of you
> > who've gotten married, and kept all of your valued posessions, how did
> > you do it?  Those of you who've gotten married and had to get rid of
> > valued posessions, what early warning signs should we be on the
> > lookout for before it's too late?  Such vital information needs to be
> > passed down to others in the best intersts of mankind and SDIY.
> >
> > --
> > Copyright (C) 2004 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & 
> other animals:
> > All Rights Reserved            an unnatural belief that we're 
> above Nature &
> >                                her other creatures, using dogma 
> to justify
> > such
> > www.rddavis.org 410-744-4900   beliefs and to justify much 
> human cruelty.
> >
> >



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