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Six years ago today
12.47: Official word from Joel, he can’t make it either (and continued back problems on his part as well). Guess I gotta keep calling.
Friday, 19 July 2002
5.41: Couldn’t sleep so starting doing some mixing of the live tracks from March (sigh, very late in getting this out). Finished off SYOF and SAI rather quickly, then started in on Rock and Roll. Eek, George’s vocals are barely audible. Boosting his vocal level brings them out, but also picks up a lot of environmental noise on other channels. I rather painstakingly edited the whole damn thing to remove the non-vocal sections, but never bothered to do a test listen. It sounds like crap. Better to have the major mono-ness of letting the instruments in on the vocal track. Now to start over. At least, I can get all the track settings down from here and be pretty quick about getting it all out.
Random blast from the past
NP: Mahler 5
Sunday, 15 December 2002
Yippee! Dream in Color has a percussionist again. He was one of the two percussionists that I talked to on Tuesday at Rhythm and he’s a good fit for us personality-wise and musically. We went through a lot of material, much of which we’ve not played in quite a while. I’ll try and have him lay down some percussion tracks for “Go to Bar” this week, and we may also tackle “Set Yourself on Fire” as well.
Sunday, 6 July 2008.
I fully expected today’s diary entry to be a bit routine: Played sloppily, needed to practice a bit more, etc. But as it turns out, we had our first person come forward interested in being part of the “choir” at 12p mass. I should really push this a bit more.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008.
First rehearsal for the Observatory Orchestra concert. A lot of really fast passages which will mean some serious woodshedding. I’m realizing that fast stuff is my great weakness as a bass player.
Sunday, 29 June 2008.
Turns out that the pastor doesn’t want the Our Father to be sung. Oh well. I’ll find some other context to use this at some point in my life.
Sunday, 22 June 2008.
We almost did the Notre Dame Our Father this week, but I forgot to let the priest know that it was coming so it didn’t happen.
Saturday, 21 June 2008.
Saw Carlyn’s performance in “The Little Sweep” with the Paulist Choristers. Not necessarily the best of operatic stories, perhaps because of its very linear moralistic story courtesy of its nature.
While waiting for the opera to start, I had a bit of inspiration for a melody/rhythm which I might be able to use for the psalm for September.
Sunday, 15 June 2008.
Played reasonably well at mass in the morning. I need to spend more time prepping music, though.
Spent some time planning out music for the rest of ordinary time. I don’t seem to have a psalm for the Exaltation of the Cross, so I think I’ll write my own setting.
Music for the Mendelssohn Octet came by e-mail today. I’ll have to squeeze in practice time for that as well.
Sunday, 8 June 2008.
Despite being without practice for a week, I played remarkably well. Some of my ad libs on “Amazing Grace,” though were a little off.
Monday, 26 May 2008.
Musical dream last night where I was playing some really bizarre music, a 1-5-1-b9 bassline against a variation on a diminished chord in the right hand (1-b3-b5-6-7). Close enough to waking that I was able to check the memory of the sound of the bassline against what it actually sounded like and turns out that I’m accurately connecting notes and sounds in my sleep.
Sunday, 25 May 2008.
Pretty decent mass. My piano playing felt very confident and strong during rehearsal, a bit less so during mass, but there’s always room for improvement. I should spend time playing and singing in my individual practice.
Sunday, 18 May 2008.
Morning mass went ok. The new songs were less problematic than I anticipated although I found myself singing the verses of the psalm somewhat unexpectedly. Looking at the schedule for the rest of the summer, this psalm comes back a lot, so I should really work on properly learning the piano part.
The evening mass started looking a bit scary since there were only John-August Swanson and myself there initially. Bass guitar and violin, quite an interesting accompaniment. But then the piano player and the other two singers arrived. I somehow ended up singing “On This Day” solo with a not quite there accompaniment, so we cut the song short after a single verse.