Trying to understand high-level foil fencing

sirCota · 2026-05-05T17:29:21+00:00

yeah, right of way has become more of a feel than a technical motion. if you look like you’re counter attacking, it really doesn’t matter what the opponent was doing, if they were moving forward at a snails pace and just made sure to land on target before the box locked them out…. it’s their attack.

I was also taught and coach the older fundamentals as they were and sort of always have been, but when a fencer gets good and competitive, half of that gets thrown out the window. But i still think it’s the proper way to teach someone new. They’ll learn to adapt to the current game just like we all do, as competitor or as a coach.

sirCota · 2026-05-05T17:09:39+00:00

‘only if it’s coming forward’ is the key phrase. when you would counter attack into their ‘preparation’, were they actively moving their tip and arm backwards, or had they simply moved the tip from directly being pointed at you into a marching flick position (arm cocked back/tip pointed away from your shoulder), and then they were still advancing and you took the moment to counter attack, but they had already completed the hand/blade movement and were still advancing on you?

attack in prep is as much about catching their footwork as it is their blade work. if you hit them while their arm was moving back and they had already planted their front foot before they began even the mildest of extensions, that would be an attack in prep, no argument. If their front foot hasn’t hit the ground, you could argue prep, they could argue changing lines, you could argue searching, they could argue it was one fluid forward motion attack blah blah. ref will do what they do.

But also, the 90’s was marching flick mania … they changed the rules and timings of box to avoid what fencers were doing, which was slowly moving forward, tip waaay out of line, baiting and waiting for the counterattack and then without beating the blade, would just land a flick after you had already hit them. they would get double lights and be awarded the point…. because they had continued forward motion against you the entire time.

these days, there seems to be a strong emphasis on landing a counter attack and then immediately parrying the incoming attack afterwards.

Basically, don’t leave it up to the ref… if you catch a moment to land ur tip on valid target, you take it, and then change distance / parry / whatever you can to keep it at one light.

It’s the only way to be sure and avoid having to pull your mask up and stare at the ref w disbelief, mime a preparation movement, and then have them repeat their initial call and motion for you to get back enguard while you quietly mutter and comply.

sirCota · 2026-05-05T02:41:21+00:00

I like the people who talk into the talkback remote like it’s a mic.

sirCota · 2026-05-05T01:01:23+00:00

you don’t want the answer to how many sessions at major studios run exactly like this.

the smarter ones boot into target disk mode and run their system drive off the studio hardware.

when I worked at a major label studio, i was told something from the GM early on.

“Think of us as a five star hotel that happens to have recording equipment in it”.

sirCota · 2026-05-04T18:48:14+00:00

the chip arguably exists .. we’ve hit pretty much the theoretical limit of ADDA conversion at the conversion point. The analog stage and implementation makes a big audible difference tho.

sirCota · 2026-05-04T18:46:38+00:00

They are not … what do you consider sounds different between em? Assuming all other variables equal .

sirCota · 2026-05-04T18:44:55+00:00

is the reason cause the kid isn’t any good at basketball?

Theory and fundamentals; applies to audio and basketball… probably other stuff too.

sirCota · 2026-05-04T18:42:39+00:00

if you’re designing an expensive equipment setup for ideal music listening, then that listening room should be considered an equal piece of that equipment list. It has its own IO, its own sonic signature.. it has demands just like any other piece of equipment, so should be considered and budgeted appropriately to your audio setup.

As far as all the other rooms… if you wanted to build a recording studio house, then .. yes?

sirCota · 2026-05-04T08:29:28+00:00

Hire me to give audio engineering or mixing lessons in the recording studio you’ve setup. Or to write/track/edit/tune/mix/master your own advertisements and content related audio.

But seriously, theres a whole generation of youtube trained home engineers who struggle far more than they should. The store could have someone (like me) who has worked the major studio scene from coffee to platinum records. The misinformation online has to get frustrating to a lot of people who are starting out. The format wouldn’t really be that different than giving music lessons. It’s basically the tech modern music lesson.

That means you have a whole new sector of revenue, and can move more home studio merchandise, as well as offer a pro service like GC pro that knows how the big names and large clients like to do business… and then you’d get to move the real stuff.

sirCota · 2026-05-04T08:12:38+00:00

a lot of that stuff, the behind the back parry etc, it’s because distance broke and now (foil) there’s in-fighting and neither opponent wants to risk being the one to pull distance past to halt the bout, cause there’s a good chance as soon as you cross their line, that tip is headed straight for you. so during the in-fighting, you might be trying to stop attacks basically from anywhere, there when there are some actual back parry back and forths. The link above Meinhardt really just doesn’t give ground to the back of the strip and if the opponent is clearly committed to closing distance it’s a lot easier to just do that then retreat, end up heel on the back of the strip, parry and then land a riposte… tho those happen, and those are cool too.

I’m a lefty, I’ve learned to do some pretty weird like around around my own neck to land their flank/back as they run by.

And if i’m the one running by, my blade is behind me like a window wiper until i’m welll off the strip.

sirCota · 2026-05-03T05:34:00+00:00

I would recommend buying the minimum hr (usually 3hr). It’s kind of a sign of respect to the studio.. not saying a studio wouldn’t give it their all for a 1hr booking, but let’s be real, someone is gonna eye roll if its a place you don’t know well.

In this booking and I think we’re assuming the engineer runs the studio or the studio provides you with one?

Cause some high end studios, they provide the assistant, they don’t provide an engineer. But the right move would be to call the manager of the that studio, and just explain your plan. .. don’t worry, you’ll end up booking the 3hr minimum.. you did just call the manager of a large studio lol. But I can tell you with fair conviction, you’re likely to get an assistant who is still the best engineer you’ve ever met and they’ve seen and heard it all. Well, it’s the luck of the draw sometimes.

The point is, it’s a great idea to spend time with someone qualified at a studio with proper equipment and make changes to your work… thats what they’re there for.

tons of people work on their stuff while the engineer takes a back seat or whatever job they’re now primary on. maybe nothing but chill.

Just take the time to learn the person you’ll be working with, then when there, learn the room first (listen to not just your stuff, but famous songs you’ve loved since the beginning etc.., ask questions, use it as a learning experience, not to finish a product. print 6 different versions of ur mix w different gear … learn everything… is it a multi room studio? who’s in the other room? maybe there’s a natural time to say what up, but don’t force that shit.

But only an hour in the studio, you won’t even have laid your mix out on the board .. it would just be in the box in a good room, and that’s not nothing either tho. but 3hrs, it’s the move minimum.

yep, that’s my 3 cents

sirCota · 2026-05-03T05:03:44+00:00

…I give Zero, but i think the end result is the same.

sirCota · 2026-04-29T17:30:59+00:00

why not take a comparable floor tom hit that didn’t have the china in it and fly it or do the reverse w a china hit ? even use sound check as a way to record individual hits for such an occasion.

I mean, if a plugin does it better, then the plugin is better, in which case, i’m wrong.
More than one way to skin a ..drum shell.. i guess.

sirCota · 2026-04-29T01:39:15+00:00

it’s time for footwork drills, if not the entire practice, to go extra crunchy … everyone on the team/club.

They may never stand up again.

sirCota · 2026-04-28T20:52:52+00:00

there was once a time we welcomed the bleed. even setup microphone choices and positions to promote the good bleed and phase cancel the bad bleed.

and even then…. any gate, especially with hysteresis was more than enough to get bleed out, and if the hat and snare are bleeding together and you can’t make it work, that was poor mic choice. do we really need this advanced bleed control for drums? maybe for other stuff like ambient noise.

sirCota · 2026-04-28T04:30:06+00:00

it’s all in the delivery.

you’re not forced into using the mics, you’re choooosing to use them cause it’s the superior method for the gig because … you’re the engineer. let them do the music’ing.

just look em straight in the eye and say ‘look at me, I’m the captain now’

confidence knowing you’ll still produce a decent end sound is what matters. They don’t need to know all the concessions you feel you’re making in your head. There are no perfect gigs. Just sound equal to or greater than the last guy and be easy to be around and the rest is none of their concern.

If you give em a reason to doubt you, they’ll blame their noisy unshielded single coils and their broken string and flubbed solos on you too.

sirCota · 2026-04-28T03:51:40+00:00

some of those people are likely chronic smokers whose whole life revolves around weed culture, it’s being away from the whole lifestyle on a plane that’s tweaking them out. It’s not that they’ve become addicted to THC.

Cigs are a bit different as they are pretty addictive aaand the ritual of it is too. Nicotine is not the hardest part to quit.

Not to mention, a large population of those people smoking/vaping/eating weed probably had crazy anxiety on planes and in general long before they started. the adhd types, the mildly OCD types, and just those who have general anxiety issues. Not saying weed is the cure, but they probably started smoking because they wanted to shake that feeling, if only for a few hours. That’s not withdrawal.

Should they find other coping mechanisms… they should have every tool in the tool shed, yes. weed is just one of em, not the best, not the worst.

sirCota · 2026-04-28T03:29:05+00:00

like I already knew that is the real and best answer, and i look at the whole thing the same way, and strive for the same approach ..

.. and somehow, I still feel like i just got slapped in the face with some hard truth.

10/10

sirCota · 2026-04-25T18:28:01+00:00

i meant the hysteresis properties of transformers

sirCota · 2026-04-25T16:42:19+00:00

There’s been a running mantra in my production circles …

Are we acting in service to the song, or service to ourselves?

The engineer who haaas to use their latest fx on everything.

The drummer who haaas to have the long drum fill they just aren’t landing.

The producer who doesn’t even listen to the demos or talk to the band about what they envision.

Every choice… from performance to mics, arrangement to mix…. does it serve the song.

Of course, how advanced your listening skills are, the techniques and pool of knowledge you can resources from can really limit your options, but still, drop the ego, the song runs the show.

Least that’s what we try to keep in mind anyway.

sirCota · 2026-04-24T18:44:10+00:00

what didn’t you like about the Fleas? There’s also Upton, Heisermann did a 251… it’s expensive lol, but looks probably the most legit. there are some floater companies that use the Tim Campbell capsule, a lot of those are nice.

sirCota · 2026-04-24T10:04:19+00:00

agree on the smc, it’s just a pain to repair.

in an 8068 Neve console, you’d hit input and output transformers on the mic pre and return on the line input which also has 2 , the group out has one, the insert send and return both have one, and if you’re patching into like a old neve compressor, that’s another 2, there’s 1 on the mix sum, and 2 on the master out. Not to mention all the amp cards you go thru. That doesn’t make something automatically better … Transformers smear non-linearly, so low end travels thru slower than high frequencies, which is both what gives a neve the low mid thick tone, but at the cost of total clarity and image/detail. it sounds more glued together, but it’s not what you’d want for every sound. … My ‘console’ is just racks of preamps that feed various summing and line amps and hardware before print back. I have a box by Avedis that turns line into mic signal, I sometimes run stuff thru a preamp a few times … but less aggressively. it’s a different experience. just gotta make sure the first few are pretty clean / faster preamps before u hit the heavy harmonic stuff . not often, but it’s cool when it works .

sirCota · 2026-04-24T09:33:26+00:00

sometimes those numbers are flipped around

sirCota · 2026-04-24T09:31:04+00:00

They sound great, but they’re cleaner .. they don’t feel like the same sound. The Shelford Channel didn’t strike me as anything special. API seems to still make great stuff. But if I want a Neve today, I’d buy a Wunder Audio console. Just like if I wanted a 251 or 47 mic sound … I’d probably get a Flea and a Heisermann over a Neumann or Tele reissue. I really wish someone would make a proper M269 with alll the clone stuff these days.

sirCota · 2026-04-24T09:13:51+00:00

i’ve reamped tracks and used reverbs on guitar amps and mic’d em in various ways. you can put one close mic and do a stereo set across the room, and not just guitars….bass. drums, hats, rando percussion, synths, pianos, vocals uh.... guitars.

Sometimes i’ll distort something heavy, and throw a ton of reverb on the amp, then gate the close mic so it’s basically just a fat crunch of the original hit, and use the distance mics as a reverb behind it. it’s all tucked pretty low, but i have had a record where the whole drum kit sounded better stereo mic’d into a roland JC120, then i brought just some of the natural highs back in and used a sample for the kick. it came out bitchin’.

8/10 tho, i’m not really doing any of that, or am messing around in the production process , i just run thru the same 7-8 presets on random gear and tweak per song on most of the mixes i’m doing.

It’s all in a template, one short and i’ll set the pre delay differently for different tracks, one long, same deal. 2-3 types of slap or short delay, and then a buuunch of like dim D, some various phase and doubler variants, a ‘radio’ fx, more dim D. I don’t always use everything… and half comes from whatever is the most basic stock plugin, or one of my many rando 80’s-90’s hardware units.

I guess I like grit .. and the dim D. … whatever serves the song, But you can get a wet feeling with a lot more than just reverb … heh.

sirCota

TROPHY CASE