Monday blogness

Newark market place (not taken by me)

So, it is Monday morning, and it’s actually quite a nice bit of sunshine today.  The wind is up here in the market town of Newark-On-Trent, but still the sun is out, so moaning is not called for so much today.

The Troggs

You find me at work again, but cheekily I have brought my laptop with me again, which I won’t be doing again for the next two shifts.  I foresee bringing one of the biographies that my uncle has loaned me to start reading during those shifts.  These are one about The Troggs and the other about Clifford T Ward.  The latter is an artist I had heard a couple of songs by before my uncle introduced me to him, but now that oversight has been made up for.

Clifford T Ward

I don’t expect to read that quickly because, although the Ozzy Osbourne book was finished relatively quickly, I am not Mr Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation!!!  Much as I would like to be able to read that quickly.  They always have to have someone like that I those things don’t they – Mr Spock (Vulcan) in The Original Series, Seven Of Nine (Borg) (ding dong) from Voyager, Doctor Bashir (Genetically engineered) from Deep Space Nine, and of course T’Pol from Enterprise (well hello).  Sorry, the geek came out in me there.  It’s been a long time since I’ve caught any Star Trek L

Star Trek collage - "I made this!"

As you can probably tell I am making this up as I go along.  There may be a point to this blog or they may not.  I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.  No change there then hey J

I am relatively happy with how the other blog series is going, but I must repeat that it isn’t something that will be updating very often.  I have enjoyed it so far, but it reminds me of the fact that I wish that my recording equipment at home was better than it is.  I do have a great bit of POD equipment that acts as an interface, but it doesn’t work with Vista, and I can’t afford to download all the programs that I have on my hard drive.  Not having internet at home means that I have Mobile Broadband, which needs topping up, and that costs money.  To get internet at home would cost money as well and, to be completely honest with you, I’d rather put that money aside to move somewhere and then once there sort out the internet and that sort of thing.

Until then though, I will have to do my home recordings in the way that I have or, alternatively, record onto four-track, and then use studio time to make them into digital wav files.  When I found that the interface for the POD was incompatible with Vista, I thought that I could just connect the 4-track to the laptop from the stereo out connections on there and into the microphone socket on the laptop, and then record that.  This however isn’t working either, because that adds the sort of hiss that drives me up the wall.  Grr!!!

Sorry, wasn’t intending to moan about anything.

Anyway, in some ways the very basic recording method that I have been using has sort of given the recordings a very different sound, which I suppose I don’t really mind so much.  It’s sort of thanks to Cory about that as well, because he suggested that if I couldn’t do anything else, then just use the laptop’s own inbuilt microphone.  It’s a shame though considering that I have a very nice Shure microphone, as well as the POD gear, my bass effects, and even the keyboards.

I do however have a plan for something else.  If and when I get to working with a band again, I like the idea of recording rehearsals onto the 4-track, and then if anything happens during rehearsals, then I can use the recording to work on, using the other two or three tracks available.  This may sound ridiculous, but then again maybe not.  It’s been a while since I last played with a band.

Any way, today you catch me with many thoughts in my head, and in need of sifting through them.  No different to the usual me, but today I am more hmm, uncertain as to what to write here.

I will leave you all to your day, wherever in the world you may be, and whatever time of that aforementioned day that it is.  Isn’t that strange?  Somewhere else on this planet it could be an entirely day.  That is weird.

Anyway, thank you for reading.  I hope that there was at least a modicum of sense in there somewhere.  Please take care.

5 September 2011 (40 years, 9 months, and 10 days old)

P.S. A very happy birthday to the great Freddie Mercury.  He would have been 65 today if he were still alive.  Now there’s another subject for a blog – could you actually imagine him as a 65 year old, or John Lennon as a 71 year old?  Now there’s a blog all of it’s own I think.