Good Day

I’ve had a good day today, just relaxing and taking it easy with youngest son, while the others were out to an all-day swim meet. 

Ran by wal-mart and bought a USB cable to connect the newer Dell monitor to the tower.  This way we can access four USB ports off the monitor and not have to crawl down and try to access the two that hard to reach on the lower front panel of the tower.  That was a pretty poor design, actually. 

Worked out for an hour on the treadmill;  I managed to burn 650 calories walking four miles.  It felt great!  I’ve had a pretty good day calorie/point wise, too.  I’ve just eaten a bowl of grapenuts and some coffee today — and lots of water.

Instruments

I have been meaning to post some pics of instruments I have been fortunate enough to be steward of.  Yesterday, I took some pics for my Facebook page, and I thought I’d add them here, too, for the masses to view.  Actually, I do not believe any person has ever viewed my blog, which is understandable, considering I have never told anyone about it. 

I will dig around and find pictures of some of the other instruments soon.  I am still researching strings for the upright bass.  There are a few good forums out there devoted to basses.  The Bluegrass Bass Place looks good, but they have yet to activate my account, so I cannot post to it yet. 

Yesterday, my longer (25′) microphone cable arrived.  I bought it to reach the music room, specifically so that I could record the piano.  My oldest two are quite accomplished players, and I wanted to make sure to get some recordings of them playing.  I’ve never recorded a piano, and, having only one microphone, I knew it would be challenging.  I use a Studio Projects B1 large diaphram condenser microphone on almost everything because . . . well . . . it’s all I have.  I was actually pleasantly suprised at the fidelity.  My son was tired, though, and quickly became frustrated at the numerous takes, so we sacked it and will try again later.  I think, although I’m not sure, that a lot of the sound of a console piano resonates off its back, which means I might be better off pulling it from the wall a little.  I don’t know.  Do you? 

I placed the mic on a boom about six feet up over his right shoulder, angled downward at the piano at about forty-five degrees.  I cloned the track (since it is recorded in mono) and it did not sound too bad.  I look forward to doing more recording.  I really want to get the boys excited about it;  I want them to be as creative as possible when it comes to their music.  They are both so gifted. 

I spent a little bit of time yesterday cleaning/clearing off the tower computer and workstation  This is all part of an agreement between my wife and me.  She really wanted a new laptop for scooting around to various swim meets and the like, so we bought her a new Dell laptop, and her concession was that I could use the main home computer for recording.  I am going to work today on configuring the work area so that it is more usable.  The main problem is that the area becomes a dumping ground for various tidbits of paper, mail, trash, etc.