Thursday, June 5, 2008

Tolerance and Audacity

Tolerance and Audacity;

This was to be a piece about tolerance. You know, the ability to bear pain and hardship, to endure, to allow without interfering. It was to be my atonement for rude behavior at a jam session. A brief clash of egos which I chose to win. Victory didn't taste so sweet. It seemed to tarnish an otherwise sterling exposition of the musical gifts I bear. (Bare?). After stewing over a bone of contention that left a bad taste in my craw, I felt the need to refresh my palate with a study of tolerance. That's enough.

Tonight, or more precisely, 4 AM, I am so happy to be in a place where I can sit on the patio watching the trees wave and dance in the gusting wind, and be wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. It's 70 degrees and the breeze caresses my skin like a beautiful woman.

I found a video about 2012 that explains a lot of what I have been reading and telling people about. December 21, 2012 is the day the Mayan long calendar ends. The I-ching, (mathematical calculations indicate), ends. The solar systems' 26,000 year journey through the Zodiac ends. Numerous celestial events occur, and it's the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Really.

2012 is the beginning of a new age of enlightenment. A new world order, and a life less reliant on material products. Back to nature, as if we somehow are separated from, and are not part of the natural world anyhow.

So I found a video that addresses these things and then some. http://www.december212012.com/download/2012/Esoteric_Agenda-1.htm
There's not a lot of comic relief in this 13 part info-mentary, but it does provoke some thought. I would rate it SE, for the semi-enlightened and further evolved intellect.

Audacity is the willingness to take bold risks. It's also the name of a recording/editing program I recently downloaded. With it I have moved beyond the loss of my recording equipment and can once again produce good quality CD's. ( During my period of grief and sorrow over chrissy's death, unscrupulous and opportunistic people relieved me of my analog and digital studio equipment.)

I found a free download of Audacity and I am thrilled with it's performance. First I experimented with recordings I had made and stored in itunes. The editing functions worked wonders. Then Marian Sauer sent me a cassette of some songs we had recorded with the LMP Trio that had never been put on CD. I no longer had the original tracks because the workstation and disks were part of the equipment that was stolen, so I looked at the cassette, and I looked at this iMac, and felt there had to be a way to get that music into the computer. Now, just a couple of weeks earlier, I had purchased some audio cables and adapters at the 99¢ store so I could play the sound from my computer through the stereo. If I could do that, then I should be able to reverse that and send sound from the stereo to the computer. I went online and looked at audio input hardware and figured I would have to buy something, but then I remembered there is a microphone input on the side of the mac. I went into system preferences, looked in sound and saw that the mic input was also a stereo line input. I had what I needed and didn't even know it! Thank you Apple.

So I played the cassette, recorded to Audacity, sliced and diced the songs, and presto...CD.

Now to record live music I am getting a little mixer and we should be back in business. Stay tuned.


Hard at work in the, "studio".
6/4/08...Okay, Got a XENYX 802 mixer and it works.I recorded a little song and now must figure out a way for you to hear it.

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