Chris Howard's Writing & Art

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Chris Howard's Writing & Art

 

When they make the Seaborn Rock Opera...

I want them to include "Take a Bow" by Muse.  Listening to it as I type this, and it's...perfect, this slowly building tale of corruption and payment, gaining momentum, heavy guitars, straining voices, cool techno, and just keeps climbing until we're in the thunder.  Very rock opera.  Also makes me miss the Arpeggiator on my old KORG keyboard--left it in California.  Ugh.

Take a listen:

http://www.last.fm/music/Muse/_/Take+a+Bow

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Band name Friday

You know how it is, you say something strange and think to yourself, that would make a great band name.

Here they are, my first three four. You should try to see one this weekend:

Monofilament Trousers

PCP Violinists

Raggedy Antediluvian

Prolix Librarians

Get your tickets now!

New microphone test

Just picked up a Snowball, a low cost USB mic from Blue Microphones.  You can see why it gets the name. I've heard nothing but good things about it.  I have some decent equipment, but it runs through a mixer, cables all over the place.  I was really hoping to be able to cut down on line noise, external noise, noise, noise, noise (you have to say that like the Grinch). 

So, I busted the white spherical thing out tonight and plugged it in.  I have other machines, Windows, Linux, but I'm using my Macbook running Audacity for this out of the box, default settings test.  I just want to hear how it sounds.

Before I get to that, I'll say the mic looks good, very cool white painted steel.  It's got a nice weight, comes with a little tripod.  Everything feels good about the hardware here.

So, I jacked in, opened Audacity, told it to listen to the Snowball, hit the record button and started talking.  Literally, that's all I've done so far.  Up and recording in seconds. 

And I think it sounds damn fine, very low background noise, and I even sound halfway decent with my cold.  I give it a five stars, looking forward to recording more and podcasting.

Here's my short Seaborn chapter 2 test reading.  What do you think?

http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/audio/SeabornChapter2Test96kbps.mp3

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