Lost in Ear Space

02023-04-09 | Funny, Lx, Recording


Yesterday I recorded rhythm guitars for a piece that I had been thinking about for a long time. It took me a while to figure out how to play the rhythm for the first bar of the chorus melody, which has an extra beat in it. The piece is in 4/4, except for the beginning of that melody, which is 5/4. Turned out well, I thought. Today I started recording a guitar melody for the piece. Didn’t love the tone of the guitar and began moving the mic into different positions to find a natural solution to the problem. Always better when one can create the desired sound with the mic itself instead of using lots of EQ settings. Took a while but found a great sound. (I have the Negra here in Lisbon and I had not yet found the right sound for a melody with the that guitar.)

There was a notification on my phone and I pulled the IEMs out of my ears, to take a break and read the message. Perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention, or maybe I didn’t grab them at the best angle, or maybe the tips weren’t held tight enough on the earphones, but one silicone ear tip stayed in my ear. Bummer. What to do? I could go to the emergency room and wait for a medical person to pull it out. Safe option but time consuming. I could try to pull it out myself. My fingers were too big to get a grip on the little thing. I didn’t want to try for too long because I worried the tip could slide deeper into the ear canal. I could ask someone to look at my ear but here I don’t know anyone well enough to do that.

So I went to a pharmacy in the neighborhood and bought a pair of tweezers. Didn’t bring my own this time because I didn’t fly with a suitcase.

Sat on the sofa and stabilized my hands by putting the elbows on my thighs. Started gingerly moving the tweezers into my ear. There that’s it. No, ouch, that was a hair. A few tries later I got the damn thing out. I guess I’ll try the foam tips next time.

HuHeartDrive Mobile

02023-04-07 | HuHeartDrive, Lx, Photos, Recording, Studio


Did some work on a new piece this morning. This is the HuHeartDrive Mobile in situ in Lisbon. The Genelec are powered monitors I bought in the mid Nineties. Carried them here in a suitcase a year ago. I use them to play music in the apartment, normally plugging them straight into the computer. In this case they are plugged into the headphone output of the MixPre6. The second screen, on the left, is my iPad and it’s attached to a foldable magnetic stand by a company called Lululook. I carried the stand in my carryon bag. Left of the laptop are the MixPre6 and the Euclid IEMs, to the right is a vertical Bluetooth mouse by Logitech.

Postcards

02023-01-17 | Lx, Photos



Do you like postcards?
I have been using a service called MyPostcard to send cards to friends. Easy and quick to create and they arrive in a timely manner. On one hand it’s more paper, on the other hand the postperson gets to deliver a smile rather than exasperation from too much junk mail.

Social Club

02022-12-21 | Environment, Lx, Trees

In the evenings I sometimes pass a hotel, located on the corner of an intersection. Large trees line the street and three of them stand in front of the hotel. Birds congregate in those particular trees, as one can hear because they are the only ones from which their chatter spills. There are lights mounted on the hotel that shine against the warm yellow walls, creating a pleasant indirect light. Birds pick those three trees to meet in, nightly, as if they were a public house for birds. And why wouldn’t city birds pick three pleasantly lit trees to meet in, after a long day of searching for food. The Three Tree Social Club for Birds.