Entries from November 2005 ↓

Well. After two weeks of having what felt like the cold that would never leave, I went to the doctor and got some antibiotics. Sinusitis, most likely. Strong medicine, too.

But now, thanks to my illness-induced asthma, I have begun to cough.

I still hope to be feeling better before my gig on Saturday. If this medicine works, I’ll be able to sing for an hour, no problem.

If not, expect to hear an awful lot of instrumental music.

We pause at last for Christmas past
Simplicity of Babe and creche
We sing the songs, confess our wrongs
As hearts of stone are turned to flesh

If you are looking for the lyrics to my Christmas songs, here are the links:

• Christmas in Our Town (quoted here)
• And Mary Said
• Nativity
• Blanket of Snow

And God descends and calls us friends
And grants the presence Jesus gave
We eat His meal and humbly kneel
Before the Son who came to save

Come and sing along at my gig Saturday afternoon at The Anchor Room.

But I’m not done yet. We bought a few more boxes of lights for the downstairs windows, which are still bare.

I want our house to be seen from space.

UPDATE: The Dec. 17 gig at The Anchor Room has been canceled. By me. I may try to get another gig on a different day instead.

The good folks at The Anchor Room are allowing me to perform a Christmas gig during December. Plus, I have three new gigs to mention for 2006.

The December gig is on a Saturday afternoon:

• Saturday, Dec. 3, 2005, from 1-2 p.m.
• Saturday, Dec. 17, 2005, from 1-2 p.m.

The gigs for 2006 are:

• Friday, Jan. 13, 2006, from 7:30-9:30 p.m.
• Friday, March 10, 2006, from 7:30-9:30 p.m.
• Friday, May 12, 2006, from 7:30-9:30 p.m.

And and always, go to the engagements page for more details, including maps.

Some very small, but good, news:

• Today, the men came to cut up and clean up the fallen tree in our neighbor’s yard, and they went ahead and got all the tree in our yard, too!
• I received my Behringer UB802 Eurorack 8 Input Mixer in the mail on Wednesday, just two days after ordering!

While looking through cookbooks, Mary said:

I found a recipe for leftovers, but it takes two days to make.

This is a repost of something I put on a former blog on Feb. 17 — but my wife still finds this funny:

Someday, it is our hope that science will discover the secret part of the brain that gives my wife such wacky dreams.

In her dream earlier this week, a couple of close friends were arguing. Then Friend 1 accused Friend 2 of just being “hypochronical.”

Not “hypocritical.” “Hypochronical.”

Now for the funny part.

In the dream, my wife does a double take and thinks to herself, “How does a woman of that intelligence make a mistake like that? She made that word up!”

Part of me wants to make fun of my wife for having a brain that makes up weird words, broadcasts them in the middle of her dreams, and then alerts her while she is still dreaming that it made up a weird word.

But making fun of her would be hypochronical.

So, why am I buying the Behringer UB802 Eurorack 8 Input Mixer?

As many of you know, I’ve been experimenting with doing some home recordings of some of my songs, perhaps even to be able to produce a demo CD.

I own an eMac, which is cool enough, but I also have GarageBand, an easy-to-use and dirt cheap digital recording application. I’ve have plenty of success recording from my keyboard — actually, I’m recording MIDI notes from the keyboard, not its actual sounds — and you can even listen to and download two of my songs over at my downloads page.

But I have not been able to record any good vocals. The problem is one of impedance.

Most devices you plug into your computer or stereo have high-impedance signals that need no boosting — the sound comes in at a level that can be heard by whatever you’re plugging them into. But, as the folks at MacJams say:

professional-level microphones are typically low-impedance signal devices. … As such, if you plug a good quality mic directly into your Mac, you won’t hear anything.

And I wasn’t hearing anything. I needed something to boost that microphone signal so my Mac could hear it. And the Behringer UB802 Eurorack 8 Input Mixer does just that.

But it doesn’t do just that. The Behringer UB802 Eurorack 8 Input Mixer also has separate EQ channels for each track.

EQ is just music-geek for equalization, which is still music-geek for the adjustment of highs and lows of sound. Simple EQ adjustments are your treble and bass knobs on your car radio. By using the Behringer UB802 Eurorack 8 Input Mixer at my gigs, I can adjust the highs and lows of my vocals separately from the highs and lows of my piano, so if my vocals are too “bass-y” and the piano is too “treble-y,” I can adjust each.

Which means a better-sounding gig for you.