Update

[catsittingstill]

Canoe: I epoxied in the first inwale yesterday. I meant to epoxy in the second inwale today but kind of came to a sputtering halt. I really need to go to bed earlier so I don't run out of oomph in the afternoon.

Album. I got up early and changed my strings this morning, because if I bought a nice mic, isn't it silly to put in recording effort with dead strings? I didn't hear much change per individual string (except the single newer string has a bit of an edge--almost a buzz) but I'm pretty sure it made a difference in the overall sound once I changed all the strings. I also did several short sessions yesterday practicing playing along with my scratch track, and thought I was doing pretty well.

I spent some time recording --and a lot more time puttering--in the recording booth. Bringing the external mic along about doubles my set-up time. Trying to interface with external mic *and* the computer too probably increases it by a factor of three.  The mic is worth it.  I'm not sure about the computer--though I will generally be bringing it to mix anyway.

I tried using the Zoom as an audio interface to record directly from the external mic into Audacity, and this worked okay but wasn't any noticeable improvement in sound quality over recording from the external mic into the Zoom and then moving things into Audacity afterward.  However on the bright side I didn't notice additional noise from the computer fan.  Putting the laptop under the table may help to make it less audible to the mic.  Also the sealing earbuds are still keeping the metronome from ending up on the recorded track.  For one of my takes I took one earbud out--I don't know what it is but I can't quite hear myself right sometimes when I'm recording and the best fix I've found is to leave one ear bare--and I put my thumb firmly over the earbud opening to make sure the clicks didn't end up on that take and they didn't.  I won't be able to do that when playing the mando, but really I only ever have this problem with my voice.

I worked on "The King's Lute" and laid down a pretty good octave mando part and a pretty good vocal part, but I'm not quite happy with the alignment of the two parts. I think the problem is that my scratch track doesn't quite line up with the metronome in a couple of places (mostly it's quite good) and I hurry the mando part to catch up and the vocal part doesn't match the hurry correctly, but that's reasonable because the hurry doesn't sound right on its own. Perhaps I should try re-recording mando against vocals rather than the other way around, or perhaps I need to go back to the beginning, practice with the metronome until I can do it perfectly and then re-record the scratch track and subsequently everything else. Not sure. Gah.

And I'm pretty sure GarageBand could handle this--but Garageband ...will only import 16-bit files--but in MTR mode I can only *record* 16-bit files, and that's okay as long as I keep the level reasonably hot.  Hmm.  That's another thing I might try.

The new strings on the mando sound just great, though.  Or maybe it's the combination of the new strings and the nice mic.

Anyway, I had to stop recording at noon and pack up and hurry home to meet a friend who is helping me with the League of Women Voters Booklet this year, which I am determined not to do at the last minute for once.

And *then* I was planning to work on the canoe and this is where I ran out of steam.  I have checked that the fitted inwale still fits (I fitted both before I epoxied one in, but a little blob of epoxy at one end would mean the second inwale won't fit without work, and believe me, you do *not* want to find this out when it's all epoxied up and needs to be clamped in.  But it fitted and I put the blue tape below where the inwale will go so it won't drool dookie schmutz into the boat.  I just need to tape on the wax paper "skirt" and epoxy up the inwale and go.  Hopefully I'll do that tomorrow after I work at the clinic.