Fairly productive weekend

Here in Aussie-land, a lot of what I would call "religious holidays" are federal holidays -- such as Good Friday, and Easter. Sure: I'll take what days off I can get!

So, we got Friday off, as well as Monday and Tuesday. Five day weekend: woo!!!


Had hoped to **finally** move great-grandpa's workbench over from my wife's uncle's, to my place. Moved a bunch of potted plants out of the way of where I'd need to back up the trailer, and mowed that area as well. But, it rained to day before (and most of the day of), so my backyard got a bit mushy -- and I didn't want to get the car bogged. So, the workbench-moving didn't happen. But, laid some good groundwork for it.


Similarly, I'd hoped to finally get around to figuring out my (free! Audacity) recording software, and record a complete song -- first time since 1996!

Spent from around 8:30pm on Friday night, to about 1:30 in the morning. A lot of it was just figuring out where the heck I'd put my microphone, which cables worked, how my mini-mixer worked (bought it years ago, after moving to Australia, but hadn't really used it) -- and of course, how the Audacity software worked. But still, managed to record a few scratch tracks.

Spent another session Monday night, from 10pm to 12:45am. Recorded some "keeper" percussion tracks, a better version of the scratch vocals, and some guitar parts which I may or may not be able to use (they're a little sloppy).

Rather than aiming for perfection, I'm being pretty minimal: using the same mic for everything, the same guitar for everything, a small little practice amp, and going direct in (rather than micing an amp) for a lot of it. Plus, I'm using whatever's handy for percussion, rather than trying to mic up my drum kit. And, no effects, no compression, no EQ except for the Low/Mid/High controls on the mixer. Just bare bones.

Some of my time was spent just trying to learn to play the guitar parts without messing up.

I tried to remember to time how long it took to set up, and put things away. Basically 17-18 minutes (including tuning my guitar). So that means I need to have about an hour available, or else the setup and packup time would make it hardly worth it.

That said, I think another 10pm-1am session (Friday nights, probably) or two might get me a completed song.

But still: had hoped to completely record a song over this long weekend -- and it didn't happen. A little disappointing. But, eh.


Oh: And my daughter and I finally sat down and unearthed her room -- **major** room-cleaning session. Some tonight, and some last night. Good progress -- but a long way to go.


So, a highly productive weekend (also saw a movie with the wife and kids, and went to a dinosaur exhibit). No projects completed -- but still, lots of progress.


--GG