OK, OK…updates have just been waaaay too far between. Life’s been busy…what can I tell you? It’s been one of those kind of lives lately. We survived the Holidays without too much aggravation and I now have three kids in the double-digits (Cam turned 10 yesterday – Happy Birthday, buddy!!). I’m finally starting to get additional work other than just the handful of hours I can eke out of the Showroom. On top of that, I’m also working for the Comedy Festival – woohoo! I get to do sound at the Old Town Playhouse for some of the acts performing for the Festival. Word has it that this could lead to other work, perhaps with the Film Festival this summer…who knows?

The experiment here is with Scribefire’s video embedding tool. If this works, “Quiet Little Voices” from We Were Promised Jetpacks should appear in a small box right about here…

WOOHOO! Looks like it worked! I think I’m gonna start using those instead of the little animated gif’s I was putting in before. Each time I (finally) do an update, I’ll include a video clip – might be music, might be something else.

Musically speaking, not much is happening right now. I sent the guitar in for service and the bill for the work came to about $165. As I’m barely working right now and the bill was a lot more than I originally thought about, the guitar is languishing at teh shop waiting for the work to be paid for. In the meantime, I finally got a pic of my current music workstation:

(Click the photo for a slightly larger view)

The signal goes from the guitar to the Tascam US-122 USB interface to the laptop. I can monitor through either powered studio monitors or headphones (the usual case as it lets me work on music when the rest of the house is asleep). I got a copy of Guitar Rig 4 Pro from a friend, which gives me an unreal array of tone-shaping tools on the computer. The same disk that had Guitar Rig also had a copy of SoundForge 9, so it looks like the portable studio is more or less complete. All I need now is a decent vocal mic and I can record at home. I’m still on the hunt for a small amp (in the 30-60 watt range) and effects for live use. I’ve seen folks using Guitar Rig in live settings, but they are using the version that is adjusted with a foot controller. That version is going for around $400 new – a bit out of my reach at this point, but that’s OK. What I have now ought to do fine for the time being.