To earn some extra bucks in college I signed up for a psychology experiment. Basically you did math problems, relaxed your muscles using biofeedback, and did more math problems. The biofeedback machine was a simple tone model, the more relaxed you became, the lower the tone. I got good at it till I quit from the stress.

One day I was doing quite well, the tone was getting lower and lower. Lower than it ever had actually. I was feeling quite proud of myself and my low tone when it kept getting lower and lower. It finally got so low that the tone quit all together!

I jumped up from the couch and tore off the electrodes as I was convinced I had relaxed myself to death!

Nah, the battery had just died.

Last time I ever did biofeedback though, it alsmost killed me!

Trey

Drtrey3 wrote:

To earn some extra bucks in college I signed up for a psychology experiment. Basically you did math problems, relaxed your muscles using biofeedback, and did more math problems. The biofeedback machine was a simple tone model, the more relaxed you became, the lower the tone. I got good at it till I quit from the stress.

One day I was doing quite well, the tone was getting lower and lower. Lower than it ever had actually. I was feeling quite proud of myself and my low tone when it kept getting lower and lower. It finally got so low that the tone quit all together!

I jumped up from the couch and tore off the electrodes as I was convinced I had relaxed myself to death!

Nah, the battery had just died.

Last time I ever did biofeedback though, it alsmost killed me!

Trey

As a longtime migraine sufferer I was directed to try biofeedback as a means of helping to prevent my frequent migraine attacks. since I had and have tired just about everything else I figured I'd give biofeedback a shot.

This biofeedback worked with numbers rather than tones, the lower one could get the number the better "control" one had over one's brain's waves. Better control is supposed to help one over come a migraine. Okay so I sit there with all these electrodes stuck to my head and learn how to bring the number down. At first I was able to get the number down into the target range rare slowly but after a few sessions I was able to bring the number down very quickly into the target range. However in spite of my biofeedback prowess the migraines did not go away. So no more biofeedback but still plenty of migraines.

Drtrey3 wrote:

To earn some extra bucks in college I signed up for a psychology experiment. Basically you did math problems, relaxed your muscles using biofeedback, and did more math problems. The biofeedback machine was a simple tone model, the more relaxed you became, the lower the tone. I got good at it till I quit from the stress.

One day I was doing quite well, the tone was getting lower and lower. Lower than it ever had actually. I was feeling quite proud of myself and my low tone when it kept getting lower and lower. It finally got so low that the tone quit all together!

I jumped up from the couch and tore off the electrodes as I was convinced I had relaxed myself to death!

Nah, the battery had just died.

Last time I ever did biofeedback though, it alsmost killed me!

Trey

... the punchline was going to be, "and then learned I'd answered all the math problems incorectly."

Actually, I still like my version of your story better, heh.

I like your version of the story better too!

Jazzfan, I get occasional migraines, and most of mine are just the visual disturbance (sometimes called occular migraines.) Once I know one is coming on, I get some caffeine and nicotine in me and it often helps. Have you tried this?

I feel for you brother.

Trey

Drtrey3 wrote:

I like your version of the story better too!

Jazzfan, I get occasional migraines, and most of mine are just the visual disturbance (sometimes called occular migraines.) Once I know one is coming on, I get some caffeine and nicotine in me and it often helps. Have you tried this?

I feel for you brother.

Trey

A fellow migraineur and one who understands my pain :)

I usually don't get the visual disturbance, I just get the pain. I often know when a migraine is coming on and I too reach for the caffeine and one of many triptans I keep handy but no nicotine, since I'm not a (tobacco) smoker.

Now here's a little something to throw you for a loop: when I have a medium to bad migraine, but not a really one, I find that listening to Cecil Taylor beat the hell out a piano helps to ease the pain. Go figure.

But that's interesting - I also get migraines and I also tend to go to Cecil Taylor on the up or down side of the worst of it (not during the peak where I don't listen to anything). I find it soothing, almost like the sounds/notes of his piano help dissipate the pain.

michaelavorgna wrote:

But that's interesting - I also get migraines and I also tend to go to Cecil Taylor on the up or down side of the worst of it (not during the peak where I don't listen to anything). I find it soothing, almost like the sounds/notes of his piano help dissipate the pain.

On a related note, in Jonathan Lethem's novel "Motherless Brooklyn" the protagonist, who suffers from Tourette syndrome, finds that listening to Prince helps him calm his Tourette enraged brain. So we have Prince for Tourettes and Cecil Taylor for migraines.

What an interesting idea about using music, and the Cecil connection makes me feel like I am in a Twilight Zone episode. I had never thought of using music to help with the times I get the headache. Got to try it though!

I smoke cigars on occasion, and have found that the nicotine can help. Not always, neither does the caffeine. But I get less than 4 headaches a year, and less than 12 visual disturbances, so it is easy for me to deal. I know folks who get the cluster headaches, and so it is easy to count my blessings.

But I will try Cecil Taylor after two recommendations.

Trey

Quote:

So we have Prince for Tourettes and Cecil Taylor for migraines.

And Milford Graves for everything else.

Drtrey3 wrote:

But I will try Cecil Taylor after two recommendations.

Trey

I would be careful when attempting to use Cecil Taylor's music to help ease the pain of a headache since it's more than likely that this may cause a rebound headache.

And of course 98.786% of any random sampling of people will say that Cecil Taylor's music IS the cause of the headache to begin with. Poor Cecil, so wonderful and yet so misunderstood.

Don't get Cecil Taylor! ;-)

RG

Glotz wrote:

Roy Hall's advice in Mfg. Comments for Stephen is pretty spot on.. and damn funny! 'Worry less, fuck more' is my new mantra for the month.

(Talk about a guy that normally induces migraines... I'm surprised that the Stereophile staff hasn't ordered a hit on him already..!)

While i read Stephen's piece I completely ignored Roy Hall's manufacturer's comment and so here we are writing about migraines and Cecil Yaylor when we should discussing things like old farts, obsession with high end audio and sex.

Perhaps Roy Hall has given us the real reason that so few young people really care about good quality audio: they are too busy trying to get laid!

So while us old farts worry about things like WAF, the younger generation is struggling with arriving at the right balance between good sound and good sex. Given that choice I think it's safe to say that concerns for one's sexual well being far outweigh having a kick ass audio system.

And was Kal really born in the 17th century?

jazzfan wrote:

Perhaps Roy Hall has given us the real reason that so few young people really care about good quality audio: they are too busy trying to get laid!

Everything I do I do for the women.

Glotz wrote:

'Worry less, fuck more'

No! Order a hit on him? Roy Hall is really just an unpaid Stereophile columnist! He is the outraged and erratic other half of the magazine Odd Couple, Sam Tellig be the obvious other half. The best thing about him is that his hyperbole, and often drunken ranting is so out there it cant even be considered a "comment" in the usual sense. I'm not sure what "it" is but I look forward to reading "it" whenever he shows up. They really should just have him in his own space I think. If I were another manufacturer I might even demand it.

My Roy story:
A few years back I had a mysterious problem with my pre-amp/sub out on a Creek integrated amp. It was a weird issue where if I hooked up a sub-woofer with both RCAs out and into a Y-adapter to one cable from the pre-amp, I lost the left channel tweeter (or something, as it's been a while). I had bought the amp from Needle Doctor, but of course Roy Hall was the distributer. The guy at Needle Doc called Roy on another line while I was still on the line, and Roy starts yelling "He did it to it! He fucked it! He did it! He fucked his amp! It's HIS fault! What did he do? He fucked it up, I know it!". Yes, that was his full professional assessment of the problem to a customer, heheh.

Nice. So I got a personalized Hall Treatment as it were.

Anyway, both the guy from Needle Doc (all of whom are awesome to work with and buy from BTW) and I had a good laugh about it after. It turned out we never could figure out the problem, but it was solved by running two parallel cables out and everything worked fine after. I had no hard feelings about Mr. Hall, but learned then that the rants you read from him, and Sam T.'s jibes and descriptions of him and not in fact exaggerated or fictitious, but how he really is! Glad I don't have to deal with him on a regular basis though!

As usual Stephen, great column! It's now the second one I read (used to be Analogue Corner after As We See It).

dbowker wrote:

As usual Stephen, great column!

Roy Hall's response cracked me up. (Natalie and Nicole thought it was pretty funny, too.)

Stephen Mejias wrote:

I prefer the good, old-fashioned days when having a good stereo was a means to getting laid. Brown chicken brown cow.

Everything I do I do for the women.

First what does "brown chicken brown cow" mean?

Second I've always found it strange that men will jump through hoops in an often vain effort to entice women to sleep with them when all it takes are one of two things (or both, if possible):

1) extreme good looks

2) extreme wealth

There really is no great mystery or fancy tricks involved unless you don't possess either of these two essential (essential that is for easy access to women) properties. And women say men are shallow!

jazzfan wrote:

First what does "brown chicken brown cow" mean?

Stephen Mejias wrote:

jazzfan wrote:

First what does "brown chicken brown cow" mean?

What are the two sexiest animals on the farm?

Hey Stephen I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and don't know nuting 'bout no stinkin' cows and chickens. So you either answer the question without anymore stupid riddles or I send my boys to get the freakin' answer. You know what I mean?

jazzfan wrote:

Stephen Mejias wrote:

jazzfan wrote:

First what does "brown chicken brown cow" mean?

What are the two sexiest animals on the farm?

Hey Stephen I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and don't know nuting 'bout no stinkin' cows and chickens. So you either answer the question without anymore stupid riddles or I send my boys to get the freakin' answer. You know what I mean?

Stephen Mejias wrote:

I'm from Newark. This should help. And, if that doesn't clear it up, this should.

The two links did help, sort of since I still had ask my two daughters (aged 25 and 23) for additional help.

Brown cow my ass!

Q: What are the two sexiest animals on the farm?
A: Brown chicken brown cow.

But you gotta say it with sass and a little bob of the head and so that the words run together -- just as one would say, "Bow chicka wow wow."

Gets them every time.

has backing music?

Who knew!

Trey 8)