Hacks, tracks, tools, and cool

[mdlbear]

I'm not normally home at 4:30 in the afternoon, and I don't normally expect calls, either. But there I was, setting up to do some recording (more on that later), when I got a call from one Buck P. Creacy, a storyteller and retired toolmaker in Kentucky, who promptly put me on a speakerphone to listen to his performance of my song "The Toolmakers", in front of a live audience. Is that cool, or what?

Buck performs "The Toolmakers" as a dramatic recitation, since he first encountered it years ago without the music. As I've said many times, I love hearing what other people do with my songs, and this kind of thing is one of the reasons why.

I stayed home today mainly to do some recording -- I'm hoping to finish the recording on my CD this weekend, and the mixing hopefully in the next week. I also got in a four-mile walk, picked up some random bits of hardware at Guitar Showcase, and moved my recording box back to the back bedroom studio. The random bits of hardware are intended to make it unnecessary to move it back to the office -- instead, I'm going to try running the audio out from the Delta 66 soundcard to the monitor speakers in the office, using an unused run of Cat5. Unshielded twisted pair isn't the best thing for audio, but when it's low impedance at fairly high levels it should be OK.

Recorded vocal retakes for "Little Computing Machine" and "Mushrooms". That leaves two vocal parts to redo ("Someplace in the Net" and "Guilty Pleasures"), three guitar parts ("TEOTWAWKI", and "Guilty Pleasures", and "Silk and Steel", and two songs that ought to be re-recorded because the recording was sub-standard ("Uncle Ernie's" and "Stuck Here"). Those last two were among my earliest attempts at recording -- I've learned a few things since then, especially about mic placement.

That makes some seven tracks to do, in an evening plus two days. Even a notorious procrastinator like myself ought to be able to do that. (The editing and mixing are another matter, but...)

And did I mention that I need to get moving on my taxes? I kept thinking, "plenty of time after I finish the album sometime in March..." Yeah, right.

Comments

[hms42]

I have been meaning to email you about this... I was cleaning up a tape from OVFF 1 (one) that someone had recorded and it has Leslie Fish singing Toolmakers. She does give you credit on the recording.

I just handed off a copy of the recordings to OVFF for their archives and I have a few more tapes to get from the same source.

This was NOT a commercial tape, but a personal recording.

Harold S.

[mdlbear]

It's fine with me; I'd be interested in a copy of the song for my archives. The more people are singing my songs, the better I like it.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Toolmakers would be a good song for next Loscon...

[mdlbear]

Yes, it would. Enough people have been asking about it (including Cat Faber at GAFilk) that I'm almost certainly putting it back into my repertoire.