I Wrote This Yesterday

Arriving too late to get a cup of coffee from the Starbucks, here at Harrah's Casino

I have spent the last couple hours recording vocals at a brand new to me location.

There is a good deal of noise there, but that just makes my voice blend in from a distance and I don't feel like I am personally affecting any one while there.

In front of the University Medical Center there is an area about the size of a football field which contains paths that cut it into sections, each of which being adorned by statues and water fountain type things and modern sculptures, plants and large pebbles filling in the rest.

I found that, by taking a place on one of the two foot high walls which border the beautified areas, I was about a hundred feet from the nearest traffic and basically sitting in a football field sized area holding the microphone inches from my mouth with the sensitivity of the Snowball set to fifty percent.

I use ninety three percent to record an acoustic guitar from a couple feet away, just to use that as a reference. The result of setting the Snowball to be that deaf -as that is what the effect of turning the sensitivity down is- is that the traffic that is a hundred feet away has its sound attenuated by half, making the cars sound like they are ten times farther away, I think the logarithm is...

So, singing loudly -because the decibel level of the whole area is high enough so that my voice probably only "carries" a couple hundred feet, making me feel free to just belt out melodies, offensive or otherwise- into a microphone held 4 inches from my mouth is acceptable from a noise reduction standpoint.

It's like; would you rather have someone whisper vital information in your ear while you both stand at a noisy construction site, or have them yell the same information to you from a hundred feet away at a beach where it isn't technically "loud" but there is the sound of surf crashing, the wind, the seagulls an an occasional ships horn from a half mile out at sea?

If the information is vital, why flirt with the possibility of a seagulls' obscuring a syllable or the crash of a wave making the word "session" sound like it could have been "lesson" because the "sh" sounds blended in with the seething froth?
So, I have discovered one more recording technique destined for a "making decent sounding home recordings on a shoestring" type post or book that might come in the future.

I have written a couple posts offline and at odd times and I now go to fetch them and perhaps put them below. Or to write "Never mind." and move on.

The first post I found had more about the forty-seven dollar Sunday that I had, mentioned the keyboard on this laptop now having keys that don't work -the digits seven through zero, one of the "Ctrl" keys, and most important to me, the parenthesis, both of them -it's going to be more dashes now.

Then, I voiced concern over leaving my key with Wayne, my neighbor, before embarking upon any trip, missing digits seven through zero.

The way I wrote it was:

$1Ꞁ.Oꝯ night.

The reason that amount looks funny is because the keyboard on my laptop has, at this time at least, some non functioning keys.

Most annoying, when using the Audacity recording studio is that the "Ctl" key on the left doesn't seem to work. And the "end" key doesn't bring the cursor to the end of anything, as far as I can tell.

Going out so late on a Sunday night so as to not even arrive until almost midnight and making forty seven bucks was good.

It is a mere eight days now, before my food money comes.

Harold the cat might just have to be an outdoor cat, unless Wayne, my neighbor does indeed want to take my house key while I'm gone and let the thing in and out.

Now that I think of it, it might give me a sense of insecurity to be miles away from home and to know that I have a place waiting for me if I can just get back to New Orleans, if some calamity is to befall me, but to also not have my key on my ring.

The Key To Serenity

In this world where "anything can happen" it's possible to imagine my neighbor Wayne, God forbid dying while I'm away, and myself returning after an arduous journey, hungry and tired, overheated and just wanting so much to take a lukewarm shower, eat something and take a nap, but, I am unable to get into my apartment.

Perhaps I have to wait around for a locksmith to show up.

Maybe after Wayne died, his apartment was cleaned out and my one and only key to my apartment, they found on a table somewhere when cleaning the place, and chucked into some box which was mailed to Wayne's family in wherever because it looked like it might be important...

And, there I would be, unable to let myself and a meowing Harold the cat in.

I better make myself a copy of the key if I'm going to leave one with him.